Academy of Natural Sciences
Encyclopedia
The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University
, formerly Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, is the oldest natural science
research institution and museum
in the New World
. It was founded in 1812 by many of the leading naturalist
s of the young republic with an expressed mission of "the encouragement and cultivation of the sciences." For over nearly two centuries of continuous operations, the Academy has sponsored expeditions, conducted original environmental and systematics
research, and amassed natural history
collections containing more than 17 million specimens. The Academy also has a long tradition of public exhibits and educational programs for both schools and the general public.
was the cultural capital and one of the country's commercial centers. Two of the city's institutions, the Library Company
and the American Philosophical Society
, were centers of enlightened thought and scientific inquiry. Yet, the increasing sophistication of the earth and life sciences combined with a growing awareness of the great variety of life and landscape in the American wilderness waiting to be discovered merited the establishment of an institution dedicated to the natural sciences.
In response, a small group of naturalists established the Academy of Natural Sciences in the winter of 1812. Such an academy would foster a gathering of fellow naturalists, but it would also nurture the growth and credibility of American science. Although they frequently looked to their European counterparts for inspiration and expertise, they longed to be regarded as equals. Besides, the Nature to be studied was American, not British nor French.
Within a decade of its founding, the Academy became the undisputed center of natural sciences in the United States. Academy members were frequently enlisted to participate in national surveys of the western territories and other major expeditions. Several of its earliest members, including William Bartram
, John Godman, Richard Harlan
, Charles Alexandre Lesueur
, William McClure, Titian Peale
, Charles Pickering
, Thomas Say
, and Alexander Wilson
were among the pioneers or recognized authorities in their respective areas of study. Thomas Jefferson
of Virginia, John Edwards Holbrook
of South Carolina, Thomas Nuttall
and Richard Owen
of the United Kingdom, Georges Cuvier
of France, and Alexander von Humboldt
of Prussia were among the corresponding members (members who lived far from Philadelphia) of the Academy's first decades.
Later during the 19th century, other notable naturalists and scientists, including John James Audubon
, Charles S. Boyer, John Cassin
, Edward Drinker Cope
, Ezra Townsend Cresson
, Richard Harlan
, Ferdinand V. Hayden
, Isaac Lea
, John Lawrence LeConte
, Joseph Leidy
, Samuel Morton, George Ord
, and James Rehn were also members. Corresponding members included such luminaries as Charles Darwin
, Asa Gray
, and Thomas Henry Huxley. Notable 20th century scientists include James Böhlke, James Bond
, Henry Weed Fowler
, Ruth Patrick
, Henry Pilsbry
, and Witmer Stone
.
In 2011 the Academy became affiliated as a subsidiary of the nearby Drexel University
. As a result the Academy's name was changed to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University.
are the hallmark of museums and those at The Academy of Natural Sciences are among the more important of their kind. The size and scope of its collections have grown substantially since the early years. Currently, there are over 17 million biological specimens, and hundreds of thousands of volumes, journals, illustrations, photographs, and archival items in its library. These collections grew through a combination of means, including the donation or purchase of existing collections or individual items, the collection activities of Academy-sponsored expeditions, or those of individual scientists, whether or not they work at the Academy. Sometimes the Academy is also enlisted to house and care for collections originally gathered by other institutions. For example, a number of the natural history collections at the American Philosophical Society were relocated to the Academy by the end of the 19th century.
But these collections are not maintained just to collect dust. They provide a library of biodiversity
. Traditionally, researchers at natural science (or natural history) institutions such as the Academy engaged in biological taxonomy
, the science of discovering, describing, naming, and classifying species: in essence, the cataloging of Nature. In recent decades, research has shifted in emphasis to the science of systematics
, the study of the evolutionary relationships among these species.
Either way, the collections are invaluable. They provide the type specimens
, the reference material that helps establish a species' identity. They also provide raw materials with which scientists can investigate the nature of these species, their relationships with other species, their evolutionary history, or even their conservation status. New questions and new technology illustrate the importance of these collections. Titian Peale
(1799–1885) may not have been interested in the conservation biology of the butterflies he collected while Henry Pilsbry
(1862–1957) probably did not consider comparing the DNA of his snails. Yet, modern scientists have such options because these specimens are part of the collections.
. It's also the science with which current natural history collections are most intimately associated. The Academy's collections and systematics research are presented below.
collections at the Academy, which are housed in the Philadelphia Herbarium
(PH), include some of the oldest and most important botanical collections in the Americas. Notable early collectors include Benjamin Smith Barton, Constatine Rafinesque, Thomas Meehan
, Thomas Nuttall
, and Fredrick Pursh
. The current curator, Tatyana Livshultz, studies the systematics of and the development of flowers
in the Apocynaceae
(milkweed or dogbane family). The herbarium contains approximately 1.5 million specimens of vascular plant
s, fungi
, lichen
s, algae
, and fossil plants
. It also contains some special collections, including the plants collected by Johann
and Georg Forster
during the voyages of Captain James Cook, and by Meriwether Lewis
during the Lewis and Clark expedition (Corps of Discovery)
.
, the largest in the Americas and the second largest in the world, contains approximately 220,000 slides of these microscopic algae. The herbarium contains many specimens contributed by notable collectors, a diversity of fossil diatoms, and diatoms collected as part of numerous freshwater environmental surveys in the United States. The Diatom Herbarium also provides collections and taxonomic services for the Phycology Section of the Patrick Center for Environmental Research. Former curators of note include Charles S. Boyer, Ruth Patrick
, and Charles Reimer.
has been important to the Academy since its founding. Two of its earliest members include Thomas Say
, regarded as the "father" of American entomology, and Titian Peale
, a leading natural history illustrator and the chief naturalist on the United States Exploring Expedition (1834–1842). The entomology collection currently contains more than 3.5 million specimens and includes the remarkable Titian Peale Moth and Butterfly Collection, the oldest entomology collection in the United States. Senior curator Daniel Otte
, an expert on Orthoptera
(crickets, grasshoppers, and their relatives) is a pioneer of presenting biological data on the internet through the creation of the Orthopera Species File. Another curator, Jon Gelhaus, an expert on crane flies
, manages the Mongolian Aquatic Insect Survey.
has also been a part of Academy collections and research since its beginnings, but the size of the collection was relatively modest until acquisition of Edward Drinker Cope
's personal collections in 1898. A few years later, Henry Weed Fowler
began his remarkable tenure at the Academy, during which he systematized the collections and described 1,408 species. James E. Böhlke, William Saul, and William Smith-Vaniz are among the notable scientist who followed Fowler. The current curator, John Lundberg, an expert in catfish
es, pioneered deep channel collecting in large tropical rivers and is the lead author of a seminal scientific paper on the biological and geographic history of the Amazon River Basin
. The Ichthyology collection, which currently houses nearly 1.2 million specimens and nearly 3,000 types, is one of the most important such collections in the United States. The department also hosts the All Catfish Species Inventory (a comprehensive online resource on catfish) and Catfish Bones (an online digital atlas of catfish morphology), and is a participant in Neodat II (an online resource of Neotropic ichthyology collections).
and Isaac Lea
, were malacologists
(see also conchologists
). R. Tucker Abbott
, Samuel Stehman Haldeman
, Henry A. Pilsbry
, and George W. Tryon, Jr. were other noted malacologists who worked at the Academy. The Academy's malacology collection is the oldest such collection in the United States and one of the largest in the world. It currently contains over 10 million specimens, including types erected by more than 400 authors. Curator Gary Rosenberg, an expert on Jamaican land snails, is a leader in moving museum collections and research data online. Research websites include the Malacology Georeferencing Project an online database of Atlantic Marine Mollusca (Malacolog), and the OBIS Indo-Pacific Mollusc database. Research associated and former curator Daniel L. Graf, an expert on Unionidae
(freshwater mussels), maintains the MUSSEL Project web site.
, William Bartram
, Charles Lucien Bonaparte
, John Cassin
, Thomas Nuttall
, George Ord
, John Kirk Townsend
, and Alexander Wilson
(the "father" of American ornithology
), either operated out of or worked closely with The Academy of Natural Sciences. Later notable Academy ornithologists include James Bond
, Frank Gill
, Rodolphe Meyer de Schauensee
, Pete Myers, Fred Sheldon, and Witmer Stone
. With nearly 200,000 specimens representing over 9,000 species, the Ornithology collection is one of the largest and most taxonomically complete bird collections in the world.
in the United States originated in Philadelphia through the efforts of naturalists and scientists associated with the American Philosophical Society
(APS) during the first decade of the 19th century and at The Academy of Natural Sciences thereafter. By the end of the 19th century, the holdings from the APS, including the Thomas Jefferson Fossil Collection, had been transferred to the Academy for safekeeping. Currently, the collection contains more than 22,000 specimens, including many types. Richard Harlan
was an early member who introduced many American naturalists to the groundbreaking works of Georges Cuvier
. Joseph Leidy, who described Hadrosaurus
and alerted the scientific world to the paleontological treasures of the American West, is considered the "father" of American vertebrate paleontology. Edward Drinker Cope
, who also worked extensively on other vertebrates, is best known for his rivalry with Othniel Charles Marsh
during the infamous Bone Wars
. Curator Edward B. Daeschler is currently studying the evolution of Devonian
tetrapod
s. He is a co-discoverer of the transitional "fishapod" Tiktaalik roseae from the Canadian Arctic and the discoverer of two tetrapods, Hynerpeton
and Densignathus from the Catskill Formation in Pennsylvania.
collection contains approximately 18,000 lots, while the invertebrate paleontology
collection contains approximately 105,000 lots. Both contain numerous type specimens. The Frank J. Myers Rotifer Collection is the most comprehensive collection of rotifer
s on microslides. The herpetology
collection contains approximately 40,000 specimens, including more than 500 type specimens. The mammalogy
collection contains approximately 36,000 specimens and 180 holotype
s. Timothy Conrad, Edward Drinker Cope
, Richard Harlan
, John Edwards Holbrook
, Henry Charles Lea
, Isaac Lea
, Joseph Leidy
, Samuel G. Morton, and Thomas Say
are among the naturalists and scientists associated with these collections.
Department, is an unusual operation to have in a natural history institution. Rather than concentrating on biological systematics, anthropology, archaeology, or geology, the Patrick Center for Environmental Research concerns itself with applied ecology
. Founded in 1947 by Ruth Patrick
, formerly of the Diatom Herbarium, it was one of the earliest environmental consulting concerns in the United States. However, its genesis within the Academy has had its consequences. It was also the first to employ interdisciplinary teams of scientists to study freshwater
systems and the first to regard biodiversity
as a central criterion of water quality
.
One of its first undertakings, the 1948 biological survey of the Conestoga River Basin in Pennsylvania, is regarded as a milestone in environmental research
. Similar surveys and other studies were subsequently conducted throughout much of the United States. Characteristically, these earlier projects resulted from a partnership of the Patrick Center (then the Limnology Department) with private industry. However, with the rise of the environmental movement
in the 1960s and 1970s and the resulting increases in governmental regulation of water pollution
, the environmental assessments pioneered at the Academy are increasingly being conducted by private environmental consulting firms
.
Much of the current research at the Patrick Center is conducted in partnership with regulatory agencies and other governmental bodies. These studies can encompass fields as diverse as diatom autecology, environmental chemistry
and toxicology
, habitat restoration
, long-term environmental trends, species conservation, and watershed management
. Some of the work, such as recent studies on the ecological effects of small dams or the ecological benefits of riparian reforestation
, employ most of the center's expertise and capabilities, while other studies may involve only one or a couple of the research programs.
An example of the latter is a current project sampling sediment cores
in tidal marsh
es throughout the Delaware
Estuary
. This undertaking, possibly the most comprehensive core sampling in any estuary, relies extensively on the center's expertise in biogeochemistry
and phycology
. Once the sampling is completed, scientist will be able to investigate historical trends in marsh development, carbon
, nitrogen
and phosphorus cycling
, water pollution
, salinity variations, and climatic change
by analyzing the core's sediments, chemistry, and diatom assemblages.
Section of the Patrick Center is concerned with the influence of aquatic organisms on the sources, fate and transport of chemicals in aquatic systems
. Studies frequently deal with the carbon and nutrient cycling as well as those of trace elements (e.g., lead, copper, mercury, and zinc) and organic contaminants such as polychlorinated biphenyl
s (PCBs), and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon
s (PAHs). The section regularly provides water, sediment and tissue analyses for government, intergovernmental agencies, and private companies from around the country. In addition to the sediment core project mentioned above, it has recently studied the effects of small dams on sediment contaminants, photochemical transformation of marsh-derived dissolved organic matter, and sedimentation and eutrophication
in salt marsh
es.
Section employs sophisticated and rigorous mathematical modeling techniques to address a variety of questions in basic and applied research. Examples include watershed-scale
modeling and risk assessment
; nonlinear population models
structured by age, body size, or space; particle transport in turbulent aquatic systems
; and the ecology and control of exotic invasive
plants in urban parks.
, and management
of lotic
and estuarine fishes. Studies may range from the analysis of fish tissues for contaminants, monitoring fish populations for environmental assessments, to investigating the life histories of individual species. Recent and ongoing work include, glass eel (the larvae of freshwater or American eel
s) recruitment in the Delaware River basin, the ecology and genetics of bridal shiner (a fish that's endangered in Pennsylvania), and the impacts of flow management (dam releases) in the Upper Delaware River
to native and introduced fish
populations.
, particularly diatom
s, make excellent indicators of water quality
. Moreover, diatoms are readily preserved in sediments, which make them ideal organisms for studying paleolimnology
(the long-term trends of streams and lakes). Because of their expertise and their close working relationship with the Academy's Diatom Herbarium, the Phycology
Section of the Patrick Center is able to provide algal analyses for governmental and other agencies interested in both assessing water quality
and long-term environmental trends. One such undertaking is the analyses of diatom assemblages in lake sediments (sediment cores
) throughout the eastern United States. This work, part of a large project managed by the EPA
, will try to establish reference (pre-anthropogenic) conditions for lakes throughout the country.
In addition to these research efforts, the Phycology Section of the Patrick Center has developed a set of online resources for using algae in environmental research. These include an algal image database, autecology datasets for freshwater algae, algae research with the USGS National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) program, and a diatom paleolimnology database.
and systematics
were conducted using comparative morphology
. In recent decades, however, advances in molecular biology
and computational technologies have opened new possibilities for studying the diversity and history of life through the use of cladistics
and computational phylogenetics
. These technologies also offer new opportunities for molecular ecology
and conservation genetics
.
Academy scientists have been early adapters of molecular biology
techniques. Allozymes, DNA-DNA hybridization, immunoelectrophoresis
, restriction site analyses of mitochondrial DNA and serology
were used extensively since the late 1960s. Recent molecular work mainly employs DNA sequencing
, microsatellites, and AFLP (amplified fragment length polymorphism
). In 2004, the Laboratory for Molecular Systematics and Ecology (LMSE) was formed as a shared, multi-user facility to improve access to and provide training for the use of molecular data in systematic and ecological research. In addition to supporting staff, the lab offers research opportunities for students and post-doctoral fellowships.
, Nanjing Paleontological Museum and Zhejiang Ocean University in China and the Institute of the Biological Problems of the North in the Russian Far East.
started with the realization of the unique research opportunities available at Lake Hovsgol (Hovsgol Nuur). This large lake and its watershed were remarkably pristine and relatively unknown, especially in comparison to its sister lake in Russia, Lake Baikal
. In 1995, a multidisciplinary team of scientists from the Academy, as well as from other American institutions, Mongolia, Russia, and Japan started a multi-year study of the lake's biodiversity
, limnology
, and watershed.
Although this research was scientifically rewarding, it was apparent that issues concerning environmental protection and sustainable economic development
needed addressing. Consequently, work at Hovsgol shifted to ecosystem studies
and capacity building
. One early undertaking was the enhancement of the operational and physical infrastructure at Hovsgol National Park. Long-term ecological monitoring of several tributary watersheds
began in 1997 and soon the site would be adopted into the
International Long Term Ecological Research Network.
Recent work at Hovsgol is focusing on the consequences of and sustainable responses to climate change
. The region lies in a transitional zone between the semi-arid Eurasian Steppe
(grasslands) to the south and the Eurasian Taiga
(boreal forest) to the north. As such, it is an ideal mid-continental site at which to monitor the ecological effects of climate change. In addition, changes in livestock herding practices raise concerns about overgrazing
and desertification
. In response, the team at Hovsgol created and distributed a Herder Handbook and continues to conduct research and work with nomadic herders to develop sustainable practices.
survey, environmental monitoring
and capacity building
project managed by Jon Gelhaus of the Academy's Entomology Department. A total of 217 sites from the Selenge River Basin, the most populous and most extensive drainage in Mongolia, were surveyed from 2003 to 2006. Most of these sites are in rivers or streams, but some are in freshwater and saltwater lakes, hot and cold springs, and marsh wetlands. Additional sites from the remote drainage systems in western Mongolia will be sampled in 2008.
The survey has yielded numerous new species and hundreds of geographic records for known aquatic insects, provided an extensive dataset for ongoing environmental monitoring, and has helped develop research and technical infrastructures in Mongolia. This capacity building includes, in collaboration with the Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology, the building of the first research laboratory in Mongolia dedicated to the study of aquatic invertebrates. It also includes training of Mongolian scientists and students.
The center hosts or participates in a number of public programs that are free and open to the public. Urban Sustainability Forums feature panels of local and national experts discussing environmental and sustainability topics as they relate to the Philadelphia region. Town Square, which may feature a panel or an individual, addresses a variety of topics relating to the environment or public science. The center also hosts candidate forums, conferences and workshops.
The center acts as a logistical hub for a number of Working Groups organized around sustainability issues. Currently active groups one for condominium and building co-op owners, a network of faith-based environmental groups, and a forum of senior executives in the private sector.
The library is notable for the historical depth of its collections. It currently houses nearly 200,000 volumes ranging from works published in the 16th century to current journals and books. Its holdings also include numerous illustrated works from as early as the 15th century, including Konrad Gessner's
Historia animalium, Maria Sibylla Merian
's Insects of Surinam, Edward Lear
's Psittacidae or Parrots, and a double elephant folio of John James Audubon
's The Birds of America
.
The Archives is comprised not only of administrative records and official Academy documents, but also an abundance of scientific and personal unpublished materials derived from the collections of scientists and others associated with the Academy. It houses a wide diversity of media including manuscripts, correspondence, field notebooks, personal diaries, and many photographic formats. The Archives also houses an important portrait collection and more than 8000 original works of art on paper.
s. The last volume was issued in 1918.
The Academy publishes three other series. The occasional series Notulae Naturae began in 1939 as a means to quickly publish short items, usually not longer than 16 pages on subject areas such as zoology, botany, ecology, geology and paleontology. The Monographs series, which began in 1935, is composed principally of larger systematic reviews of selected taxonomic groups. The Special Publications series, begun in 1922, includes works such as biography, taxonomy, historical reviews, and collections surveys.
) is the most comprehensive collection of bird images
in the world. Started in 1979, the collection contains over 140,000 photographs representing more than 7,000 species. The collection contains work by some of the world's most talented photographers. VIREO licenses bird images for a wide variety of commercial and non-profit uses.
. In fact, the size of the crowds flocking to this display prompted the Academy to relocate to its present-and roomier-location in 1876.
. These three-dimensional displays were the virtual reality of their time, providing generations of museum visitors with their only opportunity to experience distant places and exotic wildlife. By presenting the wilderness to the public, dioramas nurtured an appreciation of our natural heritage, which, in turn, contributed to the growth of the Conservation Movement
in the United States. The Academy currently has 37 dioramas, most of which were installed in the 1930s and 1940s. They feature a variety of animals from Africa, Asia, and North America. Some of these, such as the caribou
, lion
, and plains zebra
are familiar and relatively common, but others, such as the desert bighorn
, kiang
, Kodiak bear
, panda
, and passenger pigeon
, are threatened, endangered
, or extinct
.
skeleton. The first of these, the Hadrosaurus
mount created by noted natural history artist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
, made its debut at the Academy in 1868. Hadrosaurus mounts also found their way into other public venues, including Princeton University
, the Royal Scottish Museum, the Smithsonian
, and the 1876 American Centennial Exposition
. A special exhibit on the history of Hadrosaurus foulkii will run from November 22, 2008 to April 19, 2009.
A skeletal mount of a related dinosaur, Corythosaurus
, served as the centerpiece of the Academy's "Hall of Earth History" during the middle of the 20th century. In 1986, the Academy opened a new exhibit, "Discovering Dinosaurs." This was the first large-scale exhibit to incorporate the findings of the "dinosaur renaissance
." Instead of cold-blooded and lumbering reptiles, dinosaurs were conceived as active-and possibly warm-blooded-animals more akin to birds than lizards.
In 1979 another type of dinosaur was the subject of an exhibition at the academy when it featured Jim Gary's Twentieth Century Dinosaurs
and found that it was an enormous success with the public. This unconventional exhibition for a museum of science that featured contemporary sculpture, which focused upon the subjects of intense scientific inquiry, began a trend among its peer institutions, who then began to invite Gary and several other artists who specialized in scientific topics and subjects to museums that always had shied away from anything identified as "contemporary art" as exhibitions.
The museum also has special, changing exhibits. Recent changing exhibits include "Amazon Voyage: Vicious Fishes and Other Riches", "Frogs: a Chorus of Colors", "The Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Exhibition", and "The Scoop on Poop: The Science of What Animals Leave Behind."
"Wild Weekends", held on selected weekends throughout the year, offer a variety of children's programs, including hands-on exploration of museum specimens, crafts and live animal shows with mammals, birds and reptiles. Live animal shows are also presented at regular times on other days and featured prominently in the educational programs.
s to the Academy are available throughout the year for schools, summer camps and other groups. Optional directed programs include Discovery Lessons for younger age groups (pre-K and higher) and Science Explorers for older children (grades 7 through 9). "Academy on the Go" is an educational outreach program that visits schools, camps, and community centers.
and skill-building activities, and opportunities for personal growth in a uniquely nurturing setting.
participants are eligible for the George Washington Carver Scholars summer program, which is also held at the Academy. Educator workshops are held throughout the year. The most recent series covered the integration of science and literacy skills. Self-guided workbooks tailored for younger children are available for some of the museum exhibits.
, a distinguished American geologist and pioneering surveyor of the American West who had extensive ties to the Academy. Past recipients include Edward D. Cope
, Charles D. Walcott
, William B. Scott
, George Gaylord Simpson
, and John Ostrom
. It was most recently awarded to Edward B. (Ted) Daeschler for his work on the early evolution of tetrapods.
, BBC Natural History Unit
, Peter Matthiessen
, Roger Tory Peterson
, and Ray Troll.
, David Attenborough
, Lewis Thomas
, Robert M. Peck, and Thomas Lovejoy
.
with the Academy. Past recipients include Henry Pilsbry
, Ernst Mayr
, G. Evelyn Hutchinson
, Edward O. Wilson
, and David Janzen.
The John J. & Anna H. Gallagher Fellowship provides a unique opportunity for original, multi-year, postdoctoral or sabbatical research on the systematics of microscopic invertebrates, especially Rotifera. The research focus must be on systematics and may employ ecological, behavioral, physiological, molecular or developmental tools.
Jessup and McHenry Awards are competitively awarded to students wishing to conduct studies at the postgraduate, doctoral and postdoctoral levels under the supervision or sponsorship of a member of the curatorial staff of the Academy. The Jessup Award is given for any specialty in which our curators have expertise. The McHenry Fund is restricted to botanists.
The Eckelberry Endowment helps support the efforts of wildlife painters, sculptors, printmakers, and other artists to better acquaint themselves with the natural world through both museum and field research. In addition, artistic and scientific mentors counsel and assist these artists as their careers develop. One grant will be given each year.
Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU)
, a program of the National Science Foundation
, provides summer research experience for students attending colleges and universities. Each summer the Academy offers 5-10 separate research projects which can include collections, field, imaging and/or lab work. The projects vary but typically include environmental, library collections, and/or systematics research.
Drexel University
Drexel University is a private research university with the main campus located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. It was founded in 1891 by Anthony J. Drexel, a noted financier and philanthropist. Drexel offers 70 full-time undergraduate programs and accelerated degrees...
, formerly Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, is the oldest natural science
Natural science
The natural sciences are branches of science that seek to elucidate the rules that govern the natural world by using empirical and scientific methods...
research institution and museum
Museum
A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...
in the New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
. It was founded in 1812 by many of the leading naturalist
Naturalist
Naturalist may refer to:* Practitioner of natural history* Conservationist* Advocate of naturalism * Naturalist , autobiography-See also:* The American Naturalist, periodical* Naturalism...
s of the young republic with an expressed mission of "the encouragement and cultivation of the sciences." For over nearly two centuries of continuous operations, the Academy has sponsored expeditions, conducted original environmental and systematics
Systematics
Biological systematics is the study of the diversification of terrestrial life, both past and present, and the relationships among living things through time. Relationships are visualized as evolutionary trees...
research, and amassed natural history
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
collections containing more than 17 million specimens. The Academy also has a long tradition of public exhibits and educational programs for both schools and the general public.
History
During the first decades of the United States, PhiladelphiaHistory of Philadelphia
The written history of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, goes back to 1682, when the city was founded by William Penn.Before then, the area was inhabited by the Lenape Indians and Swedish settlers who arrived in the area in the early 17th century...
was the cultural capital and one of the country's commercial centers. Two of the city's institutions, the Library Company
Library Company of Philadelphia
The Library Company of Philadelphia is a non-profit organization based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded by Benjamin Franklin as a library, the Library Company of Philadelphia has accumulated one of the most significant collections of historically valuable manuscripts and printed material in...
and the American Philosophical Society
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society, founded in 1743, and located in Philadelphia, Pa., is an eminent scholarly organization of international reputation, that promotes useful knowledge in the sciences and humanities through excellence in scholarly research, professional meetings, publications,...
, were centers of enlightened thought and scientific inquiry. Yet, the increasing sophistication of the earth and life sciences combined with a growing awareness of the great variety of life and landscape in the American wilderness waiting to be discovered merited the establishment of an institution dedicated to the natural sciences.
In response, a small group of naturalists established the Academy of Natural Sciences in the winter of 1812. Such an academy would foster a gathering of fellow naturalists, but it would also nurture the growth and credibility of American science. Although they frequently looked to their European counterparts for inspiration and expertise, they longed to be regarded as equals. Besides, the Nature to be studied was American, not British nor French.
Within a decade of its founding, the Academy became the undisputed center of natural sciences in the United States. Academy members were frequently enlisted to participate in national surveys of the western territories and other major expeditions. Several of its earliest members, including William Bartram
William Bartram
William Bartram was an American naturalist. The son of Ann and John Bartram, William Bartram and his twin sister Elizabeth were born in Kingsessing, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. As a boy, he accompanied his father on many of his travels, to the Catskill Mountains, the New Jersey Pine Barrens,...
, John Godman, Richard Harlan
Richard Harlan
Richard Harlan was an American naturalist, zoologist, physicist and paleontologist....
, Charles Alexandre Lesueur
Charles Alexandre Lesueur
Charles Alexandre Lesueur was a French naturalist, artist and explorer.Pictured here is the oil portrait by Charles Willson Peale of Charles-Alexandre Lesueur...
, William McClure, Titian Peale
Titian Peale
Titian Ramsay Peale was a noted American artist, naturalist, entomologist and photographer. He was the sixteenth child and youngest son of noted American naturalist Charles Willson Peale.-Biography:...
, Charles Pickering
Charles Pickering (naturalist)
Charles Pickering was an American naturalist.Born in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, the grandson of Colonel Timothy Pickering, he grew up in Wenham, Massachusetts and received a medical degree from Harvard University in 1823...
, Thomas Say
Thomas Say
Thomas Say was an American naturalist, entomologist, malacologist, herpetologist and carcinologist. A taxonomist, he is often considered to be the father of descriptive entomology in the United States. He described more than 1,000 new species of beetles and over 400 species of insects of other...
, and Alexander Wilson
Alexander Wilson
Alexander Wilson was a Scottish-American poet, ornithologist, naturalist, and illustrator.Wilson was born in Paisley, Scotland, the son of an illiterate distiller. In 1779 he was apprenticed as a weaver. His main interest at this time was in writing poetry...
were among the pioneers or recognized authorities in their respective areas of study. Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
of Virginia, John Edwards Holbrook
John Edwards Holbrook
John Edwards Holbrook American zoologist, herpetologist, physician, and naturalist, was born in Beaufort, South Carolina, the son of Silas Holbrook, a teacher, and Mary Edwards....
of South Carolina, Thomas Nuttall
Thomas Nuttall
Thomas Nuttall was an English botanist and zoologist, who lived and worked in America from 1808 until 1841....
and Richard Owen
Richard Owen
Sir Richard Owen, FRS KCB was an English biologist, comparative anatomist and palaeontologist.Owen is probably best remembered today for coining the word Dinosauria and for his outspoken opposition to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection...
of the United Kingdom, Georges Cuvier
Georges Cuvier
Georges Chrétien Léopold Dagobert Cuvier or Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier , known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist...
of France, and Alexander von Humboldt
Alexander von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt was a German naturalist and explorer, and the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt...
of Prussia were among the corresponding members (members who lived far from Philadelphia) of the Academy's first decades.
Later during the 19th century, other notable naturalists and scientists, including John James Audubon
John James Audubon
John James Audubon was a French-American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter. He was notable for his expansive studies to document all types of American birds and for his detailed illustrations that depicted the birds in their natural habitats...
, Charles S. Boyer, John Cassin
John Cassin
John Cassin was an American ornithologist.He is considered to be one of the giants of American ornithology, and was America's first taxonomist, describing 198 birds not previously mentioned by Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon...
, Edward Drinker Cope
Edward Drinker Cope
Edward Drinker Cope was an American paleontologist and comparative anatomist, as well as a noted herpetologist and ichthyologist. Born to a wealthy Quaker family, Cope distinguished himself as a child prodigy interested in science; he published his first scientific paper at the age of nineteen...
, Ezra Townsend Cresson
Ezra Townsend Cresson
Ezra Townsend Cresson, also Ezra Townsend senior was an American entomologist who specialised in Hymenoptera. He wrote Synopsis of the families and genera of the Hymenoptera of America, north of Mexico Philadelphia: Paul C. Stockhausen, Entomological printer and many other works. His son Ezra...
, Richard Harlan
Richard Harlan
Richard Harlan was an American naturalist, zoologist, physicist and paleontologist....
, Ferdinand V. Hayden
Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden
Dr. Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden was an American geologist noted for his pioneering surveying expeditions of the Rocky Mountains in the late 19th century. He was also a physician who served with the Union Army during the Civil War.-Early life:Ferdinand Hayden was born in Westfield, Massachusetts...
, Isaac Lea
Isaac Lea
Isaac Lea was an American conchologist, geologist, and businessman, who was born in Wilmington, Delaware.-Life:...
, John Lawrence LeConte
John Lawrence LeConte
John Lawrence LeConte was the most important American entomologist of the 19th century, responsible for naming and describing approximately half of the insect taxa known in the United States during his lifetime, including some 5,000 species of beetles...
, Joseph Leidy
Joseph Leidy
Joseph Leidy was an American paleontologist.Leidy was professor of anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania, and later was a professor of natural history at Swarthmore College. His book Extinct Fauna of Dakota and Nebraska contained many species not previously described and many previously...
, Samuel Morton, George Ord
George Ord
George Ord was an American ornithologist.Ord was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father was a rope maker and Ord joined him in the business, continuing after his father's death in 1806...
, and James Rehn were also members. Corresponding members included such luminaries as Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
, Asa Gray
Asa Gray
-References:*Asa Gray. Dictionary of American Biography. American Council of Learned Societies, 1928–1936.*Asa Gray. Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998.*Asa Gray. Plant Sciences. 4 vols. Macmillan Reference USA, 2001....
, and Thomas Henry Huxley. Notable 20th century scientists include James Böhlke, James Bond
James Bond (ornithologist)
James Bond was a leading American ornithologist whose name was appropriated by writer Ian Fleming for his fictional spy, James Bond.-Biography:...
, Henry Weed Fowler
Henry Weed Fowler
Henry Weed Fowler was an American zoologist born in Holmesburg, Pennsylvania.He studied at Stanford University under David Starr Jordan...
, Ruth Patrick
Ruth Patrick
Dr. Ruth Myrtle Patrick is a botanist and limnologist specializing in diatoms and freshwater ecology, who developed ways to measure the health of freshwater ecosystems and established a number of research facilities. She attended the Sunset Hill School in Kansas City, Missouri, graduating in 1925....
, Henry Pilsbry
Henry Augustus Pilsbry
Henry Augustus Pilsbry was an American biologist, malacologist and carcinologist, among other areas of study. He was a dominant presence in many fields of invertebrate taxonomy for the better part of a century...
, and Witmer Stone
Witmer Stone
Witmer Stone was an American ornithologist, botanist, and mammalogist, and was considered one of the last of the “great naturalists.” Stone is remembered principally as an ornithologist. He was president of the American Ornithologists’ Union 1920–23, and was editor of the AOU’s periodical The...
.
In 2011 the Academy became affiliated as a subsidiary of the nearby Drexel University
Drexel University
Drexel University is a private research university with the main campus located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. It was founded in 1891 by Anthony J. Drexel, a noted financier and philanthropist. Drexel offers 70 full-time undergraduate programs and accelerated degrees...
. As a result the Academy's name was changed to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University.
Collections and research
CollectionsCollection (museum)
A museum is distinguished by a collection of often unique objects that forms the core of its activities for exhibitions, education, research, etc. This differentiates it from an archive or library, where the contents may be more paper-based, replaceable and less exhibition oriented...
are the hallmark of museums and those at The Academy of Natural Sciences are among the more important of their kind. The size and scope of its collections have grown substantially since the early years. Currently, there are over 17 million biological specimens, and hundreds of thousands of volumes, journals, illustrations, photographs, and archival items in its library. These collections grew through a combination of means, including the donation or purchase of existing collections or individual items, the collection activities of Academy-sponsored expeditions, or those of individual scientists, whether or not they work at the Academy. Sometimes the Academy is also enlisted to house and care for collections originally gathered by other institutions. For example, a number of the natural history collections at the American Philosophical Society were relocated to the Academy by the end of the 19th century.
But these collections are not maintained just to collect dust. They provide a library of biodiversity
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions...
. Traditionally, researchers at natural science (or natural history) institutions such as the Academy engaged in biological taxonomy
Alpha taxonomy
Alpha taxonomy is the discipline concerned with finding, describing and naming species of living or fossil organisms. This field is supported by institutions holding collections of these organisms, with relevant data, carefully curated: such institutes include natural history museums, herbaria and...
, the science of discovering, describing, naming, and classifying species: in essence, the cataloging of Nature. In recent decades, research has shifted in emphasis to the science of systematics
Systematics
Biological systematics is the study of the diversification of terrestrial life, both past and present, and the relationships among living things through time. Relationships are visualized as evolutionary trees...
, the study of the evolutionary relationships among these species.
Either way, the collections are invaluable. They provide the type specimens
Biological type
In biology, a type is one particular specimen of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally attached...
, the reference material that helps establish a species' identity. They also provide raw materials with which scientists can investigate the nature of these species, their relationships with other species, their evolutionary history, or even their conservation status. New questions and new technology illustrate the importance of these collections. Titian Peale
Titian Peale
Titian Ramsay Peale was a noted American artist, naturalist, entomologist and photographer. He was the sixteenth child and youngest son of noted American naturalist Charles Willson Peale.-Biography:...
(1799–1885) may not have been interested in the conservation biology of the butterflies he collected while Henry Pilsbry
Henry Augustus Pilsbry
Henry Augustus Pilsbry was an American biologist, malacologist and carcinologist, among other areas of study. He was a dominant presence in many fields of invertebrate taxonomy for the better part of a century...
(1862–1957) probably did not consider comparing the DNA of his snails. Yet, modern scientists have such options because these specimens are part of the collections.
Biological systematics
The most common science currently conducted in natural history museums is biological systematicsSystematics
Biological systematics is the study of the diversification of terrestrial life, both past and present, and the relationships among living things through time. Relationships are visualized as evolutionary trees...
. It's also the science with which current natural history collections are most intimately associated. The Academy's collections and systematics research are presented below.
Botany
BotanyBotany
Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
collections at the Academy, which are housed in the Philadelphia Herbarium
Herbarium
In botany, a herbarium – sometimes known by the Anglicized term herbar – is a collection of preserved plant specimens. These specimens may be whole plants or plant parts: these will usually be in a dried form, mounted on a sheet, but depending upon the material may also be kept in...
(PH), include some of the oldest and most important botanical collections in the Americas. Notable early collectors include Benjamin Smith Barton, Constatine Rafinesque, Thomas Meehan
Thomas Meehan
Thomas Meehan , was a noted British-born nurseryman, botanist and author. He worked as a Kew gardener in 1846–1848, and thereafter he moved to Germantown in Philadelphia...
, Thomas Nuttall
Thomas Nuttall
Thomas Nuttall was an English botanist and zoologist, who lived and worked in America from 1808 until 1841....
, and Fredrick Pursh
Frederick Traugott Pursh
Frederick Traugott Pursh was a German-American botanist.Born in Grossenhain, Saxony, to the name Friedrich Traugott Pursh, he was educated at Dresden Botanical Gardens, and emigrated to the United States in 1799...
. The current curator, Tatyana Livshultz, studies the systematics of and the development of flowers
Plant evolutionary developmental biology
Evolutionary developmental biology refers to the study of developmental programs and patterns from an evolutionary perspective. It seeks to understand the various influences shaping the form and nature of life on the planet. Evo-devo arose as a separate branch of science rather recently. An early...
in the Apocynaceae
Apocynaceae
The Apocynaceae or dogbane family is a family of flowering plants that includes trees, shrubs, herbs, and lianas.Many species are tall trees found in tropical rainforests, and most are from the tropics and subtropics, but some grow in tropical dry, xeric environments. There are also perennial herbs...
(milkweed or dogbane family). The herbarium contains approximately 1.5 million specimens of vascular plant
Vascular plant
Vascular plants are those plants that have lignified tissues for conducting water, minerals, and photosynthetic products through the plant. Vascular plants include the clubmosses, Equisetum, ferns, gymnosperms and angiosperms...
s, fungi
Fungus
A fungus is a member of a large group of eukaryotic organisms that includes microorganisms such as yeasts and molds , as well as the more familiar mushrooms. These organisms are classified as a kingdom, Fungi, which is separate from plants, animals, and bacteria...
, lichen
Lichen
Lichens are composite organisms consisting of a symbiotic organism composed of a fungus with a photosynthetic partner , usually either a green alga or cyanobacterium...
s, algae
Algae
Algae are a large and diverse group of simple, typically autotrophic organisms, ranging from unicellular to multicellular forms, such as the giant kelps that grow to 65 meters in length. They are photosynthetic like plants, and "simple" because their tissues are not organized into the many...
, and fossil plants
Paleobotany
Paleobotany, also spelled as palaeobotany , is the branch of paleontology or paleobiology dealing with the recovery and identification of plant remains from geological contexts, and their use for the biological reconstruction of past environments , and both the evolutionary history of plants, with a...
. It also contains some special collections, including the plants collected by Johann
Johann Reinhold Forster
Johann Reinhold Forster was a German Lutheran pastor and naturalist of partial Scottish descent who made contributions to the early ornithology of Europe and North America...
and Georg Forster
Georg Forster
Johann Georg Adam Forster was a German naturalist, ethnologist, travel writer, journalist, and revolutionary. At an early age, he accompanied his father on several scientific expeditions, including James Cook's second voyage to the Pacific...
during the voyages of Captain James Cook, and by Meriwether Lewis
Meriwether Lewis
Meriwether Lewis was an American explorer, soldier, and public administrator, best known for his role as the leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition also known as the Corps of Discovery, with William Clark...
during the Lewis and Clark expedition (Corps of Discovery)
Lewis and Clark Expedition
The Lewis and Clark Expedition, or ″Corps of Discovery Expedition" was the first transcontinental expedition to the Pacific Coast by the United States. Commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson and led by two Virginia-born veterans of Indian wars in the Ohio Valley, Meriwether Lewis and William...
.
Diatoms
The Academy's Diatom HerbariumHerbarium
In botany, a herbarium – sometimes known by the Anglicized term herbar – is a collection of preserved plant specimens. These specimens may be whole plants or plant parts: these will usually be in a dried form, mounted on a sheet, but depending upon the material may also be kept in...
, the largest in the Americas and the second largest in the world, contains approximately 220,000 slides of these microscopic algae. The herbarium contains many specimens contributed by notable collectors, a diversity of fossil diatoms, and diatoms collected as part of numerous freshwater environmental surveys in the United States. The Diatom Herbarium also provides collections and taxonomic services for the Phycology Section of the Patrick Center for Environmental Research. Former curators of note include Charles S. Boyer, Ruth Patrick
Ruth Patrick
Dr. Ruth Myrtle Patrick is a botanist and limnologist specializing in diatoms and freshwater ecology, who developed ways to measure the health of freshwater ecosystems and established a number of research facilities. She attended the Sunset Hill School in Kansas City, Missouri, graduating in 1925....
, and Charles Reimer.
Entomology
EntomologyEntomology
Entomology is the scientific study of insects, a branch of arthropodology...
has been important to the Academy since its founding. Two of its earliest members include Thomas Say
Thomas Say
Thomas Say was an American naturalist, entomologist, malacologist, herpetologist and carcinologist. A taxonomist, he is often considered to be the father of descriptive entomology in the United States. He described more than 1,000 new species of beetles and over 400 species of insects of other...
, regarded as the "father" of American entomology, and Titian Peale
Titian Peale
Titian Ramsay Peale was a noted American artist, naturalist, entomologist and photographer. He was the sixteenth child and youngest son of noted American naturalist Charles Willson Peale.-Biography:...
, a leading natural history illustrator and the chief naturalist on the United States Exploring Expedition (1834–1842). The entomology collection currently contains more than 3.5 million specimens and includes the remarkable Titian Peale Moth and Butterfly Collection, the oldest entomology collection in the United States. Senior curator Daniel Otte
Dan Otte
Daniel Otte is a noted behavior ecologist, a world expert on crickets and grasshoppers and a prominent scientific illustrator. He has made significant contributions to evolutionary biology...
, an expert on Orthoptera
Orthoptera
Orthoptera is an order of insects with paurometabolous or incomplete metamorphosis, including the grasshoppers, crickets and locusts.Many insects in this order produce sound by rubbing their wings against each other or their legs, the wings or legs containing rows of corrugated bumps...
(crickets, grasshoppers, and their relatives) is a pioneer of presenting biological data on the internet through the creation of the Orthopera Species File. Another curator, Jon Gelhaus, an expert on crane flies
Crane fly
A crane fly is an insect in the family Tipulidae. Adults are very slender, long-legged flies that may vary in length from though tropical species may exceed to ....
, manages the Mongolian Aquatic Insect Survey.
Ichthyology
IchthyologyIchthyology
Ichthyology is the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish. This includes skeletal fish , cartilaginous fish , and jawless fish...
has also been a part of Academy collections and research since its beginnings, but the size of the collection was relatively modest until acquisition of Edward Drinker Cope
Edward Drinker Cope
Edward Drinker Cope was an American paleontologist and comparative anatomist, as well as a noted herpetologist and ichthyologist. Born to a wealthy Quaker family, Cope distinguished himself as a child prodigy interested in science; he published his first scientific paper at the age of nineteen...
's personal collections in 1898. A few years later, Henry Weed Fowler
Henry Weed Fowler
Henry Weed Fowler was an American zoologist born in Holmesburg, Pennsylvania.He studied at Stanford University under David Starr Jordan...
began his remarkable tenure at the Academy, during which he systematized the collections and described 1,408 species. James E. Böhlke, William Saul, and William Smith-Vaniz are among the notable scientist who followed Fowler. The current curator, John Lundberg, an expert in catfish
Catfish
Catfishes are a diverse group of ray-finned fish. Named for their prominent barbels, which resemble a cat's whiskers, catfish range in size and behavior from the heaviest and longest, the Mekong giant catfish from Southeast Asia and the second longest, the wels catfish of Eurasia, to detritivores...
es, pioneered deep channel collecting in large tropical rivers and is the lead author of a seminal scientific paper on the biological and geographic history of the Amazon River Basin
Amazon Basin
The Amazon Basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries that drains an area of about , or roughly 40 percent of South America. The basin is located in the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, and Venezuela...
. The Ichthyology collection, which currently houses nearly 1.2 million specimens and nearly 3,000 types, is one of the most important such collections in the United States. The department also hosts the All Catfish Species Inventory (a comprehensive online resource on catfish) and Catfish Bones (an online digital atlas of catfish morphology), and is a participant in Neodat II (an online resource of Neotropic ichthyology collections).
Malacology
Two of the early members of the Academy, Thomas SayThomas Say
Thomas Say was an American naturalist, entomologist, malacologist, herpetologist and carcinologist. A taxonomist, he is often considered to be the father of descriptive entomology in the United States. He described more than 1,000 new species of beetles and over 400 species of insects of other...
and Isaac Lea
Isaac Lea
Isaac Lea was an American conchologist, geologist, and businessman, who was born in Wilmington, Delaware.-Life:...
, were malacologists
Malacology
Malacology is the branch of invertebrate zoology which deals with the study of the Mollusca , the second-largest phylum of animals in terms of described species after the arthropods. Mollusks include snails and slugs, clams, octopus and squid, and numerous other kinds, many of which have shells...
(see also conchologists
Conchology
Conchology is the scientific or amateur study of mollusc shells. Conchology is one aspect of malacology, the study of molluscs, however malacology studies molluscs as whole organisms, not just their shells. Conchology pre-dated malacology as a field of study. It includes the study of land and...
). R. Tucker Abbott
R. Tucker Abbott
Robert Tucker Abbott was an American conchologist and malacologist . He was the author of more than 30 books on malacology, which have been translated into many languages....
, Samuel Stehman Haldeman
Samuel Stehman Haldeman
Samuel Stehman Haldeman , American naturalist and philologist, was born at Locust Grove, Pennsylvania.Haldeman was educated at Dickinson College. He visited Texas in 1851 to investigate the presidency of an institution there, but declined the position...
, Henry A. Pilsbry
Henry Augustus Pilsbry
Henry Augustus Pilsbry was an American biologist, malacologist and carcinologist, among other areas of study. He was a dominant presence in many fields of invertebrate taxonomy for the better part of a century...
, and George W. Tryon, Jr. were other noted malacologists who worked at the Academy. The Academy's malacology collection is the oldest such collection in the United States and one of the largest in the world. It currently contains over 10 million specimens, including types erected by more than 400 authors. Curator Gary Rosenberg, an expert on Jamaican land snails, is a leader in moving museum collections and research data online. Research websites include the Malacology Georeferencing Project an online database of Atlantic Marine Mollusca (Malacolog), and the OBIS Indo-Pacific Mollusc database. Research associated and former curator Daniel L. Graf, an expert on Unionidae
Unionidae
Unionidae is a family of freshwater mussels, the largest in the order Unionoida, the bivalve mollusks sometimes known as river mussels, naiads, or simply as unionids.The range of distribution for this family is world-wide...
(freshwater mussels), maintains the MUSSEL Project web site.
Ornithology
Just about any ornithologist active in the United States during the first half of the 19th century, including John James AudubonJohn James Audubon
John James Audubon was a French-American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter. He was notable for his expansive studies to document all types of American birds and for his detailed illustrations that depicted the birds in their natural habitats...
, William Bartram
William Bartram
William Bartram was an American naturalist. The son of Ann and John Bartram, William Bartram and his twin sister Elizabeth were born in Kingsessing, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. As a boy, he accompanied his father on many of his travels, to the Catskill Mountains, the New Jersey Pine Barrens,...
, Charles Lucien Bonaparte
Charles Lucien Bonaparte
Charles Lucien Jules Laurent Bonaparte, 2nd Prince of Canino and Musignano was a French naturalist and ornithologist.-Biography:...
, John Cassin
John Cassin
John Cassin was an American ornithologist.He is considered to be one of the giants of American ornithology, and was America's first taxonomist, describing 198 birds not previously mentioned by Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon...
, Thomas Nuttall
Thomas Nuttall
Thomas Nuttall was an English botanist and zoologist, who lived and worked in America from 1808 until 1841....
, George Ord
George Ord
George Ord was an American ornithologist.Ord was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father was a rope maker and Ord joined him in the business, continuing after his father's death in 1806...
, John Kirk Townsend
John Kirk Townsend
John Kirk Townsend was an American naturalist, ornithologist and collector.Townsend was born in Philadelphia and trained as a physician and pharmacist. He developed an interest in natural history in general and bird collecting in particular...
, and Alexander Wilson
Alexander Wilson
Alexander Wilson was a Scottish-American poet, ornithologist, naturalist, and illustrator.Wilson was born in Paisley, Scotland, the son of an illiterate distiller. In 1779 he was apprenticed as a weaver. His main interest at this time was in writing poetry...
(the "father" of American ornithology
Ornithology
Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the study of birds. Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and the aesthetic appeal of birds...
), either operated out of or worked closely with The Academy of Natural Sciences. Later notable Academy ornithologists include James Bond
James Bond (ornithologist)
James Bond was a leading American ornithologist whose name was appropriated by writer Ian Fleming for his fictional spy, James Bond.-Biography:...
, Frank Gill
Frank Gill (ornithologist)
Frank Bennington Gill is an American ornithologist with worldwide research interests and birding experience. He is perhaps best known as the author of the textbook Ornithology , which is considered the leading textbook in the field.Gill was raised in Teaneck, New Jersey...
, Rodolphe Meyer de Schauensee
Rodolphe Meyer de Schauensee
Rodolphe Meyer de Schauensee was an American ornithologist.He was born in Rome, and his family moved to the United States in 1913. He was curator of birds at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia for nearly fifty years. He was particularly noted for his study of South American birds...
, Pete Myers, Fred Sheldon, and Witmer Stone
Witmer Stone
Witmer Stone was an American ornithologist, botanist, and mammalogist, and was considered one of the last of the “great naturalists.” Stone is remembered principally as an ornithologist. He was president of the American Ornithologists’ Union 1920–23, and was editor of the AOU’s periodical The...
. With nearly 200,000 specimens representing over 9,000 species, the Ornithology collection is one of the largest and most taxonomically complete bird collections in the world.
Vertebrate paleontology
Vertebrate paleontologyVertebrate paleontology
Vertebrate paleontology is a large subfield to paleontology seeking to discover the behavior, reproduction and appearance of extinct animals with vertebrae or a notochord, through the study of their fossilized remains...
in the United States originated in Philadelphia through the efforts of naturalists and scientists associated with the American Philosophical Society
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society, founded in 1743, and located in Philadelphia, Pa., is an eminent scholarly organization of international reputation, that promotes useful knowledge in the sciences and humanities through excellence in scholarly research, professional meetings, publications,...
(APS) during the first decade of the 19th century and at The Academy of Natural Sciences thereafter. By the end of the 19th century, the holdings from the APS, including the Thomas Jefferson Fossil Collection, had been transferred to the Academy for safekeeping. Currently, the collection contains more than 22,000 specimens, including many types. Richard Harlan
Richard Harlan
Richard Harlan was an American naturalist, zoologist, physicist and paleontologist....
was an early member who introduced many American naturalists to the groundbreaking works of Georges Cuvier
Georges Cuvier
Georges Chrétien Léopold Dagobert Cuvier or Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier , known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist...
. Joseph Leidy, who described Hadrosaurus
Hadrosaurus
Hadrosaurus is a valid genus of hadrosaurid dinosaur. In 1858, a skeleton of a dinosaur from this genus was the first dinosaur skeleton known from more than isolated teeth to be found in North America. In 1868, it became the first ever mounted dinosaur skeleton...
and alerted the scientific world to the paleontological treasures of the American West, is considered the "father" of American vertebrate paleontology. Edward Drinker Cope
Edward Drinker Cope
Edward Drinker Cope was an American paleontologist and comparative anatomist, as well as a noted herpetologist and ichthyologist. Born to a wealthy Quaker family, Cope distinguished himself as a child prodigy interested in science; he published his first scientific paper at the age of nineteen...
, who also worked extensively on other vertebrates, is best known for his rivalry with Othniel Charles Marsh
Othniel Charles Marsh
Othniel Charles Marsh was an American paleontologist. Marsh was one of the preeminent scientists in the field; the discovery or description of dozens of news species and theories on the origins of birds are among his legacies.Born into a modest family, Marsh was able to afford higher education...
during the infamous Bone Wars
Bone Wars
The Bone Wars, also known as the "Great Dinosaur Rush", refers to a period of intense fossil speculation and discovery during the Gilded Age of American history, marked by a heated rivalry between Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh...
. Curator Edward B. Daeschler is currently studying the evolution of Devonian
Devonian
The Devonian is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic Era spanning from the end of the Silurian Period, about 416.0 ± 2.8 Mya , to the beginning of the Carboniferous Period, about 359.2 ± 2.5 Mya...
tetrapod
Tetrapod
Tetrapods are vertebrate animals having four limbs. Amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals are all tetrapods; even snakes and other limbless reptiles and amphibians are tetrapods by descent. The earliest tetrapods evolved from the lobe-finned fishes in the Devonian...
s. He is a co-discoverer of the transitional "fishapod" Tiktaalik roseae from the Canadian Arctic and the discoverer of two tetrapods, Hynerpeton
Hynerpeton
Hynerpeton was a basal carnivorous tetrapod that lived in the lakes and estuaries of the Late Devonian period around 360 million years ago. Like many primitive tetrapods, it is sometimes referred to as an "amphibian", though it is not a true member of the modern Lissamphibia...
and Densignathus from the Catskill Formation in Pennsylvania.
Other collections
The Academy houses several other major collections that, while relatively small in size, are historically and scientifically important. The general invertebrateInvertebrate
An invertebrate is an animal without a backbone. The group includes 97% of all animal species – all animals except those in the chordate subphylum Vertebrata .Invertebrates form a paraphyletic group...
collection contains approximately 18,000 lots, while the invertebrate paleontology
Invertebrate paleontology
Invertebrate paleontology is sometimes described as Invertebrate paleozoology or Invertebrate paleobiology....
collection contains approximately 105,000 lots. Both contain numerous type specimens. The Frank J. Myers Rotifer Collection is the most comprehensive collection of rotifer
Rotifer
The rotifers make up a phylum of microscopic and near-microscopic pseudocoelomate animals. They were first described by Rev. John Harris in 1696, and other forms were described by Anton van Leeuwenhoek in 1703...
s on microslides. The herpetology
Herpetology
Herpetology is the branch of zoology concerned with the study of amphibians and reptiles...
collection contains approximately 40,000 specimens, including more than 500 type specimens. The mammalogy
Mammalogy
In zoology, mammalogy is the study of mammals – a class of vertebrates with characteristics such as homeothermic metabolism, fur, four-chambered hearts, and complex nervous systems...
collection contains approximately 36,000 specimens and 180 holotype
Holotype
A holotype is a single physical example of an organism, known to have been used when the species was formally described. It is either the single such physical example or one of several such, but explicitly designated as the holotype...
s. Timothy Conrad, Edward Drinker Cope
Edward Drinker Cope
Edward Drinker Cope was an American paleontologist and comparative anatomist, as well as a noted herpetologist and ichthyologist. Born to a wealthy Quaker family, Cope distinguished himself as a child prodigy interested in science; he published his first scientific paper at the age of nineteen...
, Richard Harlan
Richard Harlan
Richard Harlan was an American naturalist, zoologist, physicist and paleontologist....
, John Edwards Holbrook
John Edwards Holbrook
John Edwards Holbrook American zoologist, herpetologist, physician, and naturalist, was born in Beaufort, South Carolina, the son of Silas Holbrook, a teacher, and Mary Edwards....
, Henry Charles Lea
Henry Charles Lea
Henry Charles Lea was an American historian, civic reformer, and political activist. Lea was born and lived in Philadelphia.-Parents:...
, Isaac Lea
Isaac Lea
Isaac Lea was an American conchologist, geologist, and businessman, who was born in Wilmington, Delaware.-Life:...
, Joseph Leidy
Joseph Leidy
Joseph Leidy was an American paleontologist.Leidy was professor of anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania, and later was a professor of natural history at Swarthmore College. His book Extinct Fauna of Dakota and Nebraska contained many species not previously described and many previously...
, Samuel G. Morton, and Thomas Say
Thomas Say
Thomas Say was an American naturalist, entomologist, malacologist, herpetologist and carcinologist. A taxonomist, he is often considered to be the father of descriptive entomology in the United States. He described more than 1,000 new species of beetles and over 400 species of insects of other...
are among the naturalists and scientists associated with these collections.
Patrick Center for Environmental Research
The Patrick Center, formerly the LimnologyLimnology
Limnology , also called freshwater science, is the study of inland waters. It is often regarded as a division of ecology or environmental science. It covers the biological, chemical, physical, geological, and other attributes of all inland waters...
Department, is an unusual operation to have in a natural history institution. Rather than concentrating on biological systematics, anthropology, archaeology, or geology, the Patrick Center for Environmental Research concerns itself with applied ecology
Applied ecology
Applied ecology is a subfield within ecology, which considers the application of the science of ecology to real-world questions. It is an integrated treatment of the ecological, social, and biotechnological aspects of natural resource conservation and management. It is also called ecological or...
. Founded in 1947 by Ruth Patrick
Ruth Patrick
Dr. Ruth Myrtle Patrick is a botanist and limnologist specializing in diatoms and freshwater ecology, who developed ways to measure the health of freshwater ecosystems and established a number of research facilities. She attended the Sunset Hill School in Kansas City, Missouri, graduating in 1925....
, formerly of the Diatom Herbarium, it was one of the earliest environmental consulting concerns in the United States. However, its genesis within the Academy has had its consequences. It was also the first to employ interdisciplinary teams of scientists to study freshwater
Freshwater
Fresh water is naturally occurring water on the Earth's surface in ice sheets, ice caps, glaciers, bogs, ponds, lakes, rivers and streams, and underground as groundwater in aquifers and underground streams. Fresh water is generally characterized by having low concentrations of dissolved salts and...
systems and the first to regard biodiversity
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions...
as a central criterion of water quality
Water quality
Water quality is the physical, chemical and biological characteristics of water. It is a measure of the condition of water relative to the requirements of one or more biotic species and or to any human need or purpose. It is most frequently used by reference to a set of standards against which...
.
One of its first undertakings, the 1948 biological survey of the Conestoga River Basin in Pennsylvania, is regarded as a milestone in environmental research
Environmental science
Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physical and biological sciences, to the study of the environment, and the solution of environmental problems...
. Similar surveys and other studies were subsequently conducted throughout much of the United States. Characteristically, these earlier projects resulted from a partnership of the Patrick Center (then the Limnology Department) with private industry. However, with the rise of the environmental movement
Environmental movement in the United States
In the United States today, the organized environmental movement is represented by a wide range of organizations sometimes called non-governmental organizations or NGOs. These organizations exist on local, national, and international scales...
in the 1960s and 1970s and the resulting increases in governmental regulation of water pollution
Water pollution
Water pollution is the contamination of water bodies . Water pollution occurs when pollutants are discharged directly or indirectly into water bodies without adequate treatment to remove harmful compounds....
, the environmental assessments pioneered at the Academy are increasingly being conducted by private environmental consulting firms
Environmental consulting
Environmental consulting is often a form of compliance consulting, in which the consultant ensures that the client maintains an appropriate measure of compliance with environmental regulations...
.
Much of the current research at the Patrick Center is conducted in partnership with regulatory agencies and other governmental bodies. These studies can encompass fields as diverse as diatom autecology, environmental chemistry
Environmental chemistry
Environmental chemistry is the scientific study of the chemical and biochemical phenomena that occur in natural places. It should not be confused with green chemistry, which seeks to reduce potential pollution at its source...
and toxicology
Aquatic toxicology
Aquatic toxicology is the study of the effects of manufactured chemicals and other anthropogenic and natural materials and activities on aquatic organisms at various levels of organization, from subcellular through individual organisms to communities and ecosystems.In the United States aquatic...
, habitat restoration
Restoration ecology
-Definition:Restoration ecology is the scientific study and practice of renewing and restoring degraded, damaged, or destroyed ecosystems and habitats in the environment by active human intervention and action, within a short time frame...
, long-term environmental trends, species conservation, and watershed management
Watershed management
Watershed management is the study of the relevant characteristics of a watershed aimed at the sustainable distribution of its resources and the process of creating and implementing plans, programs, and projects to sustain and enhance watershed functions that affect the plant, animal, and human...
. Some of the work, such as recent studies on the ecological effects of small dams or the ecological benefits of riparian reforestation
Riparian zone
A riparian zone or riparian area is the interface between land and a river or stream. Riparian is also the proper nomenclature for one of the fifteen terrestrial biomes of the earth. Plant habitats and communities along the river margins and banks are called riparian vegetation, characterized by...
, employ most of the center's expertise and capabilities, while other studies may involve only one or a couple of the research programs.
An example of the latter is a current project sampling sediment cores
Core sample
A core sample is a cylindrical section of a naturally occurring substance. Most core samples are obtained by drilling with special drills into the substance, for example sediment or rock, with a hollow steel tube called a core drill. The hole made for the core sample is called the "core hole". A...
in tidal marsh
Tidal marsh
A tidal marsh is a type of marsh that is found along coasts and estuaries of which the flooding characteristics are determined by the tidal movement of the adjacent estuary, sea or ocean . According to the salinity of the flooding water, freshwater, brackish and saline tidal marshes are...
es throughout the Delaware
Delaware River
The Delaware River is a major river on the Atlantic coast of the United States.A Dutch expedition led by Henry Hudson in 1609 first mapped the river. The river was christened the South River in the New Netherland colony that followed, in contrast to the North River, as the Hudson River was then...
Estuary
Estuary
An estuary is a partly enclosed coastal body of water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea....
. This undertaking, possibly the most comprehensive core sampling in any estuary, relies extensively on the center's expertise in biogeochemistry
Biogeochemistry
Biogeochemistry is the scientific discipline that involves the study of the chemical, physical, geological, and biological processes and reactions that govern the composition of the natural environment...
and phycology
Phycology
Phycology is the scientific study of algae. Phycology is a branch of life science and often is regarded as a subdiscipline of botany....
. Once the sampling is completed, scientist will be able to investigate historical trends in marsh development, carbon
Carbon cycle
The carbon cycle is the biogeochemical cycle by which carbon is exchanged among the biosphere, pedosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere of the Earth...
, nitrogen
Nitrogen cycle
The nitrogen cycle is the process by which nitrogen is converted between its various chemical forms. This transformation can be carried out by both biological and non-biological processes. Important processes in the nitrogen cycle include fixation, mineralization, nitrification, and denitrification...
and phosphorus cycling
Phosphorus cycle
The phosphorus cycle is the biogeochemical cycle that describes the movement of phosphorus through the lithosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere. Unlike many other biogeochemical cycles, the atmosphere does not play a significant role in the movement of phosphorus, because phosphorus and...
, water pollution
Water pollution
Water pollution is the contamination of water bodies . Water pollution occurs when pollutants are discharged directly or indirectly into water bodies without adequate treatment to remove harmful compounds....
, salinity variations, and climatic change
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
by analyzing the core's sediments, chemistry, and diatom assemblages.
Biogeochemistry
The BiogeochemistryBiogeochemistry
Biogeochemistry is the scientific discipline that involves the study of the chemical, physical, geological, and biological processes and reactions that govern the composition of the natural environment...
Section of the Patrick Center is concerned with the influence of aquatic organisms on the sources, fate and transport of chemicals in aquatic systems
Environmental chemistry
Environmental chemistry is the scientific study of the chemical and biochemical phenomena that occur in natural places. It should not be confused with green chemistry, which seeks to reduce potential pollution at its source...
. Studies frequently deal with the carbon and nutrient cycling as well as those of trace elements (e.g., lead, copper, mercury, and zinc) and organic contaminants such as polychlorinated biphenyl
Polychlorinated biphenyl
Polychlorinated biphenyls are a class of organic compounds with 2 to 10 chlorine atoms attached to biphenyl, which is a molecule composed of two benzene rings. The chemical formula for PCBs is C12H10-xClx...
s (PCBs), and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons , also known as poly-aromatic hydrocarbons or polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, are potent atmospheric pollutants that consist of fused aromatic rings and do not contain heteroatoms or carry substituents. Naphthalene is the simplest example of a PAH...
s (PAHs). The section regularly provides water, sediment and tissue analyses for government, intergovernmental agencies, and private companies from around the country. In addition to the sediment core project mentioned above, it has recently studied the effects of small dams on sediment contaminants, photochemical transformation of marsh-derived dissolved organic matter, and sedimentation and eutrophication
Eutrophication
Eutrophication or more precisely hypertrophication, is the movement of a body of water′s trophic status in the direction of increasing plant biomass, by the addition of artificial or natural substances, such as nitrates and phosphates, through fertilizers or sewage, to an aquatic system...
in salt marsh
Salt marsh
A salt marsh is an environment in the upper coastal intertidal zone between land and salt water or brackish water, it is dominated by dense stands of halophytic plants such as herbs, grasses, or low shrubs. These plants are terrestrial in origin and are essential to the stability of the salt marsh...
es.
Ecological Modeling
The Ecological ModelingEcosystem model
An ecosystem model is an abstract, usually mathematical, representation of an ecological system , which is studied to gain a deeper understanding of the real system.Ecosystem models are formed by combining known ecological relations An ecosystem model is an abstract, usually mathematical,...
Section employs sophisticated and rigorous mathematical modeling techniques to address a variety of questions in basic and applied research. Examples include watershed-scale
Watershed management
Watershed management is the study of the relevant characteristics of a watershed aimed at the sustainable distribution of its resources and the process of creating and implementing plans, programs, and projects to sustain and enhance watershed functions that affect the plant, animal, and human...
modeling and risk assessment
Risk assessment
Risk assessment is a step in a risk management procedure. Risk assessment is the determination of quantitative or qualitative value of risk related to a concrete situation and a recognized threat...
; nonlinear population models
Population modeling
A population model is a type of mathematical model that is applied to the study of population dynamics.Models allow a better understanding of how complex interactions and processes work. Modeling of dynamic interactions in nature can provide a manageable way of understanding how numbers change over...
structured by age, body size, or space; particle transport in turbulent aquatic systems
Fluid dynamics
In physics, fluid dynamics is a sub-discipline of fluid mechanics that deals with fluid flow—the natural science of fluids in motion. It has several subdisciplines itself, including aerodynamics and hydrodynamics...
; and the ecology and control of exotic invasive
Introduced species
An introduced species — or neozoon, alien, exotic, non-indigenous, or non-native species, or simply an introduction, is a species living outside its indigenous or native distributional range, and has arrived in an ecosystem or plant community by human activity, either deliberate or accidental...
plants in urban parks.
Fisheries
The Fisheries Section of the Patrick Center conducts research into the ecology, conservationWildlife management
Wildlife management attempts to balance the needs of wildlife with the needs of people using the best available science. Wildlife management can include game keeping, wildlife conservation and pest control...
, and management
Fisheries management
Fisheries management draws on fisheries science in order to find ways to protect fishery resources so sustainable exploitation is possible. Modern fisheries management is often referred to as a governmental system of appropriate management rules based on defined objectives and a mix of management...
of lotic
Lotic System Ecology
A lotic ecosystem is the ecosystem of a river, stream or spring. Included in the environment are the biotic interactions as well as the abiotic interactions ....
and estuarine fishes. Studies may range from the analysis of fish tissues for contaminants, monitoring fish populations for environmental assessments, to investigating the life histories of individual species. Recent and ongoing work include, glass eel (the larvae of freshwater or American eel
American eel
The American eel, Anguilla rostrata, is a catadromous fish found on the eastern coast of North America. It has a snake-like body with a small sharp pointed head. It is brown on top and a tan-yellow color on the bottom. It has sharp pointed teeth but no pelvic fins...
s) recruitment in the Delaware River basin, the ecology and genetics of bridal shiner (a fish that's endangered in Pennsylvania), and the impacts of flow management (dam releases) in the Upper Delaware River
Delaware River
The Delaware River is a major river on the Atlantic coast of the United States.A Dutch expedition led by Henry Hudson in 1609 first mapped the river. The river was christened the South River in the New Netherland colony that followed, in contrast to the North River, as the Hudson River was then...
to native and introduced fish
Introduced species
An introduced species — or neozoon, alien, exotic, non-indigenous, or non-native species, or simply an introduction, is a species living outside its indigenous or native distributional range, and has arrived in an ecosystem or plant community by human activity, either deliberate or accidental...
populations.
Macroinvertebrates
Benthic macroinvertebrates (primarily aquatic insects, crustaceans, and mollusks) are useful for biological monitoring programs. Their varied life spans, ranging from weeks to years, are long enough to reveal intermittent and continuous pollutants, yet short enough respond to worsening or improving water quality. The Macroinvertebrate Section at the Patrick Center has extensive experience in bioassessment, biomonitoring, and inventorying of freshwater habitats throughout the United States.Phycology
Because of their great diversity and specific ecological requirements, algaeAlgae
Algae are a large and diverse group of simple, typically autotrophic organisms, ranging from unicellular to multicellular forms, such as the giant kelps that grow to 65 meters in length. They are photosynthetic like plants, and "simple" because their tissues are not organized into the many...
, particularly diatom
Diatom
Diatoms are a major group of algae, and are one of the most common types of phytoplankton. Most diatoms are unicellular, although they can exist as colonies in the shape of filaments or ribbons , fans , zigzags , or stellate colonies . Diatoms are producers within the food chain...
s, make excellent indicators of water quality
Indicator species
An indicator species is any biological species that defines a trait or characteristic of the environment. For example, a species may delineate an ecoregion or indicate an environmental condition such as a disease outbreak, pollution, species competition or climate change...
. Moreover, diatoms are readily preserved in sediments, which make them ideal organisms for studying paleolimnology
Paleolimnology
Paleolimnology is a scientific subdiscipline closely related to both limnology and paleoecology. Palaeolimnological studies are concerned with reconstructing the paleoenvironments of inland waters – and especially changes associated with such events as climatic change, human impacts , and...
(the long-term trends of streams and lakes). Because of their expertise and their close working relationship with the Academy's Diatom Herbarium, the Phycology
Phycology
Phycology is the scientific study of algae. Phycology is a branch of life science and often is regarded as a subdiscipline of botany....
Section of the Patrick Center is able to provide algal analyses for governmental and other agencies interested in both assessing water quality
Water quality
Water quality is the physical, chemical and biological characteristics of water. It is a measure of the condition of water relative to the requirements of one or more biotic species and or to any human need or purpose. It is most frequently used by reference to a set of standards against which...
and long-term environmental trends. One such undertaking is the analyses of diatom assemblages in lake sediments (sediment cores
Core sample
A core sample is a cylindrical section of a naturally occurring substance. Most core samples are obtained by drilling with special drills into the substance, for example sediment or rock, with a hollow steel tube called a core drill. The hole made for the core sample is called the "core hole". A...
) throughout the eastern United States. This work, part of a large project managed by the EPA
United States Environmental Protection Agency
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress...
, will try to establish reference (pre-anthropogenic) conditions for lakes throughout the country.
In addition to these research efforts, the Phycology Section of the Patrick Center has developed a set of online resources for using algae in environmental research. These include an algal image database, autecology datasets for freshwater algae, algae research with the USGS National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) program, and a diatom paleolimnology database.
Laboratory for Molecular Systematics and Ecology
For most of its history, biological taxonomyAlpha taxonomy
Alpha taxonomy is the discipline concerned with finding, describing and naming species of living or fossil organisms. This field is supported by institutions holding collections of these organisms, with relevant data, carefully curated: such institutes include natural history museums, herbaria and...
and systematics
Systematics
Biological systematics is the study of the diversification of terrestrial life, both past and present, and the relationships among living things through time. Relationships are visualized as evolutionary trees...
were conducted using comparative morphology
Comparative anatomy
Comparative anatomy is the study of similarities and differences in the anatomy of organisms. It is closely related to evolutionary biology and phylogeny .-Description:...
. In recent decades, however, advances in molecular biology
Molecular biology
Molecular biology is the branch of biology that deals with the molecular basis of biological activity. This field overlaps with other areas of biology and chemistry, particularly genetics and biochemistry...
and computational technologies have opened new possibilities for studying the diversity and history of life through the use of cladistics
Cladistics
Cladistics is a method of classifying species of organisms into groups called clades, which consist of an ancestor organism and all its descendants . For example, birds, dinosaurs, crocodiles, and all descendants of their most recent common ancestor form a clade...
and computational phylogenetics
Computational phylogenetics
Computational phylogenetics is the application of computational algorithms, methods and programs to phylogenetic analyses. The goal is to assemble a phylogenetic tree representing a hypothesis about the evolutionary ancestry of a set of genes, species, or other taxa...
. These technologies also offer new opportunities for molecular ecology
Molecular ecology
Molecular ecology is a field of evolutionary biology that is concerned with applying molecular population genetics, molecular phylogenetics, and more recently genomics to traditional ecological questions...
and conservation genetics
Conservation genetics
Conservation genetics is an interdisciplinary science that aims to apply genetic methods to the conservation and restoration of biodiversity. Researchers involved in conservation genetics come from a variety of fields including population genetics, molecular ecology, biology, evolutionary biology,...
.
Academy scientists have been early adapters of molecular biology
Molecular biology
Molecular biology is the branch of biology that deals with the molecular basis of biological activity. This field overlaps with other areas of biology and chemistry, particularly genetics and biochemistry...
techniques. Allozymes, DNA-DNA hybridization, immunoelectrophoresis
Immunoelectrophoresis
Immunoelectrophoresis is a general name for a number of biochemical methods for separation and characterization of proteins based on electrophoresis and reaction with antibodies. All variants of immunoelectrophoresis require immunoglobulins, also known as antibodies reacting with the proteins to be...
, restriction site analyses of mitochondrial DNA and serology
Serology
Serology is the scientific study of blood serum and other bodily fluids. In practice, the term usually refers to the diagnostic identification of antibodies in the serum...
were used extensively since the late 1960s. Recent molecular work mainly employs DNA sequencing
DNA sequencing
DNA sequencing includes several methods and technologies that are used for determining the order of the nucleotide bases—adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine—in a molecule of DNA....
, microsatellites, and AFLP (amplified fragment length polymorphism
Amplified fragment length polymorphism
Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism PCR is a PCR-based tool used in genetics research, DNA fingerprinting, and in the practice of genetic engineering. Developed in the early 1990s by Keygene, AFLP uses restriction enzymes to digest genomic DNA, followed by ligation of adaptors to the sticky...
). In 2004, the Laboratory for Molecular Systematics and Ecology (LMSE) was formed as a shared, multi-user facility to improve access to and provide training for the use of molecular data in systematic and ecological research. In addition to supporting staff, the lab offers research opportunities for students and post-doctoral fellowships.
Asia Center
The Asia Center is a new initiative to develop programs and partnerships for research and capacity building throughout Asia. Clyde Goulden is the director of the Asia Center. It's modeled on a series of successful programs conducted in Mongolia since 1995 under the auspices of the Academy's Institute for Mongolian Biodiversity and Ecological Studies (IMBES). The main activities of IMBES occur in the vicinity of Lake Hovsgol in northern Mongolia, but a separate program, the Mongolian Aquatic Insect Survey, extends to other parts of the country. More recently, the Asia Center has undertaken joint-projects with Nanjing UniversityNanjing University
Nanjing University , or Nanking University, is one of the oldest and most prestigious institutions of higher learning in China...
, Nanjing Paleontological Museum and Zhejiang Ocean University in China and the Institute of the Biological Problems of the North in the Russian Far East.
Hovsgol
The Academy's work in MongoliaMongolia
Mongolia is a landlocked country in East and Central Asia. It is bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south, east and west. Although Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan, its western-most point is only from Kazakhstan's eastern tip. Ulan Bator, the capital and largest...
started with the realization of the unique research opportunities available at Lake Hovsgol (Hovsgol Nuur). This large lake and its watershed were remarkably pristine and relatively unknown, especially in comparison to its sister lake in Russia, Lake Baikal
Lake Baikal
Lake Baikal is the world's oldest at 30 million years old and deepest lake with an average depth of 744.4 metres.Located in the south of the Russian region of Siberia, between Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast, it is the most voluminous freshwater lake in the...
. In 1995, a multidisciplinary team of scientists from the Academy, as well as from other American institutions, Mongolia, Russia, and Japan started a multi-year study of the lake's biodiversity
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions...
, limnology
Limnology
Limnology , also called freshwater science, is the study of inland waters. It is often regarded as a division of ecology or environmental science. It covers the biological, chemical, physical, geological, and other attributes of all inland waters...
, and watershed.
Although this research was scientifically rewarding, it was apparent that issues concerning environmental protection and sustainable economic development
Sustainable development
Sustainable development is a pattern of resource use, that aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but also for generations to come...
needed addressing. Consequently, work at Hovsgol shifted to ecosystem studies
Ecosystem ecology
Ecosystem ecology is the integrated study of biotic and abiotic components of ecosystems and their interactions within an ecosystem framework. This science examines how ecosystems work and relates this to their components such as chemicals, bedrock, soil, plants, and animals.Ecosystem ecology...
and capacity building
Capacity building
Capacity building also referred to as capacity development is a conceptual approach to development that focuses on understanding the obstacles that inhibit people, governments, international organizations and non-governmental organizations from realizing their developmental goals while enhancing...
. One early undertaking was the enhancement of the operational and physical infrastructure at Hovsgol National Park. Long-term ecological monitoring of several tributary watersheds
Drainage basin
A drainage basin is an extent or an area of land where surface water from rain and melting snow or ice converges to a single point, usually the exit of the basin, where the waters join another waterbody, such as a river, lake, reservoir, estuary, wetland, sea, or ocean...
began in 1997 and soon the site would be adopted into the
International Long Term Ecological Research Network.
Recent work at Hovsgol is focusing on the consequences of and sustainable responses to climate change
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
. The region lies in a transitional zone between the semi-arid Eurasian Steppe
Steppe
In physical geography, steppe is an ecoregion, in the montane grasslands and shrublands and temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biomes, characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes...
(grasslands) to the south and the Eurasian Taiga
Taiga
Taiga , also known as the boreal forest, is a biome characterized by coniferous forests.Taiga is the world's largest terrestrial biome. In North America it covers most of inland Canada and Alaska as well as parts of the extreme northern continental United States and is known as the Northwoods...
(boreal forest) to the north. As such, it is an ideal mid-continental site at which to monitor the ecological effects of climate change. In addition, changes in livestock herding practices raise concerns about overgrazing
Overgrazing
Overgrazing occurs when plants are exposed to intensive grazing for extended periods of time, or without sufficient recovery periods. It can be caused by either livestock in poorly managed agricultural applications, or by overpopulations of native or non-native wild animals.Overgrazing reduces the...
and desertification
Desertification
Desertification is the degradation of land in drylands. Caused by a variety of factors, such as climate change and human activities, desertification is one of the most significant global environmental problems.-Definitions:...
. In response, the team at Hovsgol created and distributed a Herder Handbook and continues to conduct research and work with nomadic herders to develop sustainable practices.
Mongolian Aquatic Insect Survey
The Mongolian Aquatic Insect Survey is a multi-year biodiversityBiodiversity
Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions...
survey, environmental monitoring
Water quality
Water quality is the physical, chemical and biological characteristics of water. It is a measure of the condition of water relative to the requirements of one or more biotic species and or to any human need or purpose. It is most frequently used by reference to a set of standards against which...
and capacity building
Capacity building
Capacity building also referred to as capacity development is a conceptual approach to development that focuses on understanding the obstacles that inhibit people, governments, international organizations and non-governmental organizations from realizing their developmental goals while enhancing...
project managed by Jon Gelhaus of the Academy's Entomology Department. A total of 217 sites from the Selenge River Basin, the most populous and most extensive drainage in Mongolia, were surveyed from 2003 to 2006. Most of these sites are in rivers or streams, but some are in freshwater and saltwater lakes, hot and cold springs, and marsh wetlands. Additional sites from the remote drainage systems in western Mongolia will be sampled in 2008.
The survey has yielded numerous new species and hundreds of geographic records for known aquatic insects, provided an extensive dataset for ongoing environmental monitoring, and has helped develop research and technical infrastructures in Mongolia. This capacity building includes, in collaboration with the Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology, the building of the first research laboratory in Mongolia dedicated to the study of aquatic invertebrates. It also includes training of Mongolian scientists and students.
Center for Environmental Policy
The Center for Environmental Policy informs and engages various constituents, promotes solutions, and builds public and professional awareness on important environmental topics. Much of its activities focus on public programs and working groups.The center hosts or participates in a number of public programs that are free and open to the public. Urban Sustainability Forums feature panels of local and national experts discussing environmental and sustainability topics as they relate to the Philadelphia region. Town Square, which may feature a panel or an individual, addresses a variety of topics relating to the environment or public science. The center also hosts candidate forums, conferences and workshops.
The center acts as a logistical hub for a number of Working Groups organized around sustainability issues. Currently active groups one for condominium and building co-op owners, a network of faith-based environmental groups, and a forum of senior executives in the private sector.
Ewell Sale Stewart Library
The Library and Archives were established at the Academy's founding meeting in 1812 with the express purpose of supporting its natural science research. The library currently provides a variety of services to Academy staff, visiting scientists and scholars, and others by utilizing the Library and Archives collections, providing imaging services, sharing resources with other libraries, and accessing information available electronically.The library is notable for the historical depth of its collections. It currently houses nearly 200,000 volumes ranging from works published in the 16th century to current journals and books. Its holdings also include numerous illustrated works from as early as the 15th century, including Konrad Gessner's
Conrad Gessner
Conrad Gessner was a Swiss naturalist and bibliographer. His five-volume Historiae animalium is considered the beginning of modern zoology, and the flowering plant genus Gesneria is named after him...
Historia animalium, Maria Sibylla Merian
Maria Sibylla Merian
Maria Sibylla Merian was a naturalist and scientific illustrator who studied plants and insects and made detailed paintings about them...
's Insects of Surinam, Edward Lear
Edward Lear
Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, author, and poet, renowned today primarily for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularised.-Biography:...
's Psittacidae or Parrots, and a double elephant folio of John James Audubon
John James Audubon
John James Audubon was a French-American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter. He was notable for his expansive studies to document all types of American birds and for his detailed illustrations that depicted the birds in their natural habitats...
's The Birds of America
Birds of America (book)
The Birds of America is a book by naturalist and painter John James Audubon, containing illustrations of a wide variety of birds of the United States. It was first published as a series of sections between 1827 and 1838, in Edinburgh and London....
.
The Archives is comprised not only of administrative records and official Academy documents, but also an abundance of scientific and personal unpublished materials derived from the collections of scientists and others associated with the Academy. It houses a wide diversity of media including manuscripts, correspondence, field notebooks, personal diaries, and many photographic formats. The Archives also houses an important portrait collection and more than 8000 original works of art on paper.
Scientific publications
The Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences was the first peer-reviewed publication in the United States devoted to the natural sciences. The first volume was published in 1817. By 1842, it had been superseded by the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences. The Proceedings have been published continuously since 1841. The Journal was reborn in 1847 as a larger-format publication that could accommodate longer articles and monographMonograph
A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...
s. The last volume was issued in 1918.
The Academy publishes three other series. The occasional series Notulae Naturae began in 1939 as a means to quickly publish short items, usually not longer than 16 pages on subject areas such as zoology, botany, ecology, geology and paleontology. The Monographs series, which began in 1935, is composed principally of larger systematic reviews of selected taxonomic groups. The Special Publications series, begun in 1922, includes works such as biography, taxonomy, historical reviews, and collections surveys.
VIREO
VIREO (VIsual REsource for OrnithologyOrnithology
Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the study of birds. Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and the aesthetic appeal of birds...
) is the most comprehensive collection of bird images
Stock photography
Stock photography is the supply of photographs licensed for specific uses. It is used to fulfill the needs of creative assignments instead of hiring a photographer. Today, stock images can be presented in searchable online databases. They can be purchased and delivered online...
in the world. Started in 1979, the collection contains over 140,000 photographs representing more than 7,000 species. The collection contains work by some of the world's most talented photographers. VIREO licenses bird images for a wide variety of commercial and non-profit uses.
Public exhibits
The Academy first opened its collections to the public in 1828. The popularity of its exhibits soared in 1868 with the debut of the world's first mounted dinosaur skeleton, HadrosaurusHadrosaurus
Hadrosaurus is a valid genus of hadrosaurid dinosaur. In 1858, a skeleton of a dinosaur from this genus was the first dinosaur skeleton known from more than isolated teeth to be found in North America. In 1868, it became the first ever mounted dinosaur skeleton...
. In fact, the size of the crowds flocking to this display prompted the Academy to relocate to its present-and roomier-location in 1876.
Collections and the public
As with most museums in the 19th century, there was little separation of the Academy's collections, which were vital to scientific work, and the public spaces. Not only did this subject the collections to extra wear and tear, but visitors were typically confronted with a bewildering assemblage of specimens with little in the way of supplemental information. Over time, however, museums such as the Academy started to showcase their more popular specimens while sequestering the bulk of the collections. In addition, they spent more effort interpreting their public displays. Museums started to play a more active role in educating the public.Dioramas
One expression of this transformation was the rise of that icon of natural history museums, the dioramaDiorama
The word diorama can either refer to a nineteenth century mobile theatre device, or, in modern usage, a three-dimensional full-size or miniature model, sometimes enclosed in a glass showcase for a museum...
. These three-dimensional displays were the virtual reality of their time, providing generations of museum visitors with their only opportunity to experience distant places and exotic wildlife. By presenting the wilderness to the public, dioramas nurtured an appreciation of our natural heritage, which, in turn, contributed to the growth of the Conservation Movement
Conservation movement
The conservation movement, also known as nature conservation, is a political, environmental and a social movement that seeks to protect natural resources including animal, fungus and plant species as well as their habitat for the future....
in the United States. The Academy currently has 37 dioramas, most of which were installed in the 1930s and 1940s. They feature a variety of animals from Africa, Asia, and North America. Some of these, such as the caribou
Reindeer
The reindeer , also known as the caribou in North America, is a deer from the Arctic and Subarctic, including both resident and migratory populations. While overall widespread and numerous, some of its subspecies are rare and one has already gone extinct.Reindeer vary considerably in color and size...
, lion
Lion
The lion is one of the four big cats in the genus Panthera, and a member of the family Felidae. With some males exceeding 250 kg in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger...
, and plains zebra
Plains Zebra
The plains zebra , also known as the common zebra or Burchell's zebra, is the most common and geographically widespread species of zebra. It ranges from the south of Ethiopia through East Africa to as far south as Angola and eastern South Africa...
are familiar and relatively common, but others, such as the desert bighorn
Desert Bighorn Sheep
The Desert Bighorn Sheep is a subspecies of Bighorn Sheep that occurs in the desert Southwest regions of the United States and in the northern regions of Mexico. The trinomial of this species commemorates the American naturalist Edward William Nelson...
, kiang
Kiang
The kiang is the largest of the wild asses. It is native to the Tibetan Plateau, where it inhabits montane and alpine grasslands. Its current range is restricted to Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir, plains of the Tibetan plateau and northern Nepal along the Tibetan border...
, Kodiak bear
Kodiak Bear
The Kodiak bear , also known as the Kodiak brown bear or the Alaskan grizzly bear or American brown bear, occupies the islands of the Kodiak Archipelago in South-Western Alaska. Its name in the Alutiiq language is Taquka-aq. It is the largest subspecies of brown bear.- Taxonomy :Taxonomist C.H...
, panda
Panda
Panda or Panda bear most often refers to:*Giant panda, an animal in the Bear familyPanda may also refer to:*Red panda, the only living member in the Ailuridae family-In biology:* Species related to the Giant panda...
, and passenger pigeon
Passenger Pigeon
The Passenger Pigeon or Wild Pigeon was a bird, now extinct, that existed in North America and lived in enormous migratory flocks until the early 20th century...
, are threatened, endangered
Endangered species
An endangered species is a population of organisms which is at risk of becoming extinct because it is either few in numbers, or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters...
, or extinct
Extinction
In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point...
.
Dinosaurs
Another icon of natural history museums is the dinosaurDinosaur
Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals of the clade and superorder Dinosauria. They were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous , when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of...
skeleton. The first of these, the Hadrosaurus
Hadrosaurus
Hadrosaurus is a valid genus of hadrosaurid dinosaur. In 1858, a skeleton of a dinosaur from this genus was the first dinosaur skeleton known from more than isolated teeth to be found in North America. In 1868, it became the first ever mounted dinosaur skeleton...
mount created by noted natural history artist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins was an English sculptor and natural history artist renowned for combining both in his work on the life-size models of dinosaurs in the Crystal Palace Park, Sydenham, south London...
, made its debut at the Academy in 1868. Hadrosaurus mounts also found their way into other public venues, including Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, the Royal Scottish Museum, the Smithsonian
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
, and the 1876 American Centennial Exposition
Centennial Exposition
The Centennial International Exhibition of 1876, the first official World's Fair in the United States, was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from May 10 to November 10, 1876, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. It was officially...
. A special exhibit on the history of Hadrosaurus foulkii will run from November 22, 2008 to April 19, 2009.
A skeletal mount of a related dinosaur, Corythosaurus
Corythosaurus
Corythosaurus is a genus of duck-billed dinosaur from the Upper Cretaceous Period, about 77-76.5 million years ago. It lived in what is now North America...
, served as the centerpiece of the Academy's "Hall of Earth History" during the middle of the 20th century. In 1986, the Academy opened a new exhibit, "Discovering Dinosaurs." This was the first large-scale exhibit to incorporate the findings of the "dinosaur renaissance
Dinosaur renaissance
The dinosaur renaissance was a small-scale scientific revolution that started in the late 1960s, and led to renewed academic and popular interest in dinosaurs...
." Instead of cold-blooded and lumbering reptiles, dinosaurs were conceived as active-and possibly warm-blooded-animals more akin to birds than lizards.
In 1979 another type of dinosaur was the subject of an exhibition at the academy when it featured Jim Gary's Twentieth Century Dinosaurs
Jim Gary
Jim Gary was an American sculptor popularly known for his large, colorful creations of dinosaurs made from discarded automobile parts...
and found that it was an enormous success with the public. This unconventional exhibition for a museum of science that featured contemporary sculpture, which focused upon the subjects of intense scientific inquiry, began a trend among its peer institutions, who then began to invite Gary and several other artists who specialized in scientific topics and subjects to museums that always had shied away from anything identified as "contemporary art" as exhibitions.
Other exhibits
In 1979, the academy also opened "Outside-In", a hands-on children's nature museum. In 1995, it pioneered the hands-on simulation of a dinosaur dig, with its "The Big Dig." Other permanent exhibits include "Butterflies!", a live butterfly zoo, and "Science at the Academy", which showcases current Academy research.The museum also has special, changing exhibits. Recent changing exhibits include "Amazon Voyage: Vicious Fishes and Other Riches", "Frogs: a Chorus of Colors", "The Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Exhibition", and "The Scoop on Poop: The Science of What Animals Leave Behind."
Festivals
Four weekend festivals organized around scientific disciplines, are held during the year. Paleopalooza, held in mid-February, features fossil collections and talks by leading paleontologists. Earth Day Festival, held in mid-April, features scientists from the Academy's Patrick Center for Environmental Research. Bug Fest, held in mid August, features entomologists, insect collections and live insects. The Philadelphia Shell Show, held in mid-October, features an international shell market and competitive shell displays.Programs for adults
The Academy began offering lectures to the public as early as the 1820s. Current offerings include natural history author talks, lectures by scientists, workshops and classes. In addition, the Center for Environmental Policy produces public programs on environmental issues.Programs for families and children
Since its Nature Club in the 1930s, the Academy has offered programming just for children. Several programs appropriate for different age groups are currently offered. Safari Overnight sleepovers (camp-ins) are held on selected weekends during Fall, Winter, and Spring. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts can participate in day workshops and sleepovers to fulfill badge and pin requirements. Tiny Tot Explorers is a program for toddlers. A new series of Family Workshops designed for both adults and children was launched in early 2010."Wild Weekends", held on selected weekends throughout the year, offer a variety of children's programs, including hands-on exploration of museum specimens, crafts and live animal shows with mammals, birds and reptiles. Live animal shows are also presented at regular times on other days and featured prominently in the educational programs.
Field Trips and Outreach
Field TripField Trip
"Field Trip" is the twenty-first episode of the sixth season of the science fiction television series The X-Files. The episode first aired in the United States and Canada on May 9, 1999 on the Fox Network, and subsequently aired in the United Kingdom on Sky1. Frank Spotnitz came up with the story...
s to the Academy are available throughout the year for schools, summer camps and other groups. Optional directed programs include Discovery Lessons for younger age groups (pre-K and higher) and Science Explorers for older children (grades 7 through 9). "Academy on the Go" is an educational outreach program that visits schools, camps, and community centers.
Women in Natural Sciences
WINS (Women in Natural Sciences) is an innovative and successful science enrichment program conducted by The Academy of Natural Sciences in collaboration with the School District of Philadelphia. Since its founding in 1982, WINS has been providing female public school students with hands-on science classes, scientific literacyScientific literacy
Scientific literacy encompasses written, numerical, and digital literacy as they pertain to understanding science, its methodology, observations, and theories.-Definition:...
and skill-building activities, and opportunities for personal growth in a uniquely nurturing setting.
Other programs
Academy Explorers Camp is a day camp program offered during Spring Break and the Summer. The George Washington Carver Science Fair is held in February or March. Science fairScience fair
A science fair is generally a competition where contestants present their science project results in the form of a report, display board, and models that they have created. Science fairs allow students in grade schools and high schools to compete in science and/or technology activities...
participants are eligible for the George Washington Carver Scholars summer program, which is also held at the Academy. Educator workshops are held throughout the year. The most recent series covered the integration of science and literacy skills. Self-guided workbooks tailored for younger children are available for some of the museum exhibits.
Hayden Memorial Geological Award
The Hayden Award is given to prominent scientists working in geology or paleontology. It was established in 1888 in memory of Ferdinand V. HaydenFerdinand Vandeveer Hayden
Dr. Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden was an American geologist noted for his pioneering surveying expeditions of the Rocky Mountains in the late 19th century. He was also a physician who served with the Union Army during the Civil War.-Early life:Ferdinand Hayden was born in Westfield, Massachusetts...
, a distinguished American geologist and pioneering surveyor of the American West who had extensive ties to the Academy. Past recipients include Edward D. Cope
Edward Drinker Cope
Edward Drinker Cope was an American paleontologist and comparative anatomist, as well as a noted herpetologist and ichthyologist. Born to a wealthy Quaker family, Cope distinguished himself as a child prodigy interested in science; he published his first scientific paper at the age of nineteen...
, Charles D. Walcott
Charles Doolittle Walcott
Charles Doolittle Walcott was an American invertebrate paleontologist. He became known for his discovery in 1909 of well-preserved fossils in the Burgess Shale of British Columbia, Canada.-Early life:...
, William B. Scott
William Berryman Scott
William Berryman Scott was an American vertebrate paleontologist, authority on mammals, and principal author of the White River Oligocene monographs. He was a professor of geology and paleontology at Princeton University....
, George Gaylord Simpson
George Gaylord Simpson
George Gaylord Simpson was an American paleontologist. Simpson was perhaps the most influential paleontologist of the twentieth century, and a major participant in the modern evolutionary synthesis, contributing Tempo and mode in evolution , The meaning of evolution and The major features of...
, and John Ostrom
John Ostrom
John H. Ostrom was an American paleontologist who revolutionized modern understanding of dinosaurs in the 1960s, when he demonstrated that dinosaurs are more like big non-flying birds than they are like lizards , an idea first proposed by Thomas Henry Huxley in the 1860s, but which had garnered...
. It was most recently awarded to Edward B. (Ted) Daeschler for his work on the early evolution of tetrapods.
Gold Medal for Distinction in Natural History Art
Established in 1980, the Gold Medal for Distinction in Natural History Art is awarded to people whose artistic endeavors and life's work have contributed to our understanding and appreciation of living things. It was established in 1980. Recipients include Ansel AdamsAnsel Adams
Ansel Easton Adams was an American photographer and environmentalist, best known for his black-and-white photographs of the American West, especially in Yosemite National Park....
, BBC Natural History Unit
BBC Natural History Unit
The BBC Natural History Unit is a department of the BBC dedicated to making television and radio programmes with a natural history or wildlife theme, especially nature documentaries...
, Peter Matthiessen
Peter Matthiessen
Peter Matthiessen is a two-time National Book Award-winning American novelist and non-fiction writer, as well as an environmental activist...
, Roger Tory Peterson
Roger Tory Peterson
Roger Tory Peterson , was an American naturalist, ornithologist, artist, and educator, and held to be one of the founding inspirations for the 20th century environmental movement.-Background:...
, and Ray Troll.
Richard Hopper Day Memorial Medal
The Richard Hopper Day Memorial Medal, established in 1960 by his granddaughter, Margaret Day Dilks, is awarded in recognition of outstanding contributions in interpreting the natural sciences to the public. Past recipients include Louis LeakeyLouis Leakey
Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey was a British archaeologist and naturalist whose work was important in establishing human evolutionary development in Africa. He also played a major role in creating organizations for future research in Africa and for protecting wildlife there...
, David Attenborough
David Attenborough
Sir David Frederick Attenborough OM, CH, CVO, CBE, FRS, FZS, FSA is a British broadcaster and naturalist. His career as the face and voice of natural history programmes has endured for more than 50 years...
, Lewis Thomas
Lewis Thomas
Lewis Thomas was a physician, poet, etymologist, essayist, administrator, educator, policy advisor, and researcher.Thomas was born in Flushing, New York and attended Princeton University and Harvard Medical School...
, Robert M. Peck, and Thomas Lovejoy
Thomas Lovejoy
Dr. Thomas Eugene Lovejoy III is chief biodiversity adviser to the president of the World Bank, senior adviser to the president of the United Nations Foundation, and president of the Heinz Center for Science,...
.
Joseph Leidy Award
The Joseph Leidy Award honors research in the natural sciences. It was established in 1923 as a tribute to the many contributions and long association of Joseph LeidyJoseph Leidy
Joseph Leidy was an American paleontologist.Leidy was professor of anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania, and later was a professor of natural history at Swarthmore College. His book Extinct Fauna of Dakota and Nebraska contained many species not previously described and many previously...
with the Academy. Past recipients include Henry Pilsbry
Henry Augustus Pilsbry
Henry Augustus Pilsbry was an American biologist, malacologist and carcinologist, among other areas of study. He was a dominant presence in many fields of invertebrate taxonomy for the better part of a century...
, Ernst Mayr
Ernst Mayr
Ernst Walter Mayr was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, historian of science, and naturalist...
, G. Evelyn Hutchinson
G. Evelyn Hutchinson
George Evelyn Hutchinson FRS was an Anglo-American zoologist known for his studies of freshwater lakes and considered the father of American limnology....
, Edward O. Wilson
E. O. Wilson
Edward Osborne Wilson is an American biologist, researcher , theorist , naturalist and author. His biological specialty is myrmecology, the study of ants....
, and David Janzen.
Endowments and Fellowships
The Böhlke Memorial Endowment Fund honors the memory of James E. Böhlke and Eugenia B. Böhlke who were prominent ichthyologists at the Academy. This fund provides support for graduate students and recent postdoctoral researchers to work with the Ichthyology Collection and the Academy's Library.The John J. & Anna H. Gallagher Fellowship provides a unique opportunity for original, multi-year, postdoctoral or sabbatical research on the systematics of microscopic invertebrates, especially Rotifera. The research focus must be on systematics and may employ ecological, behavioral, physiological, molecular or developmental tools.
Jessup and McHenry Awards are competitively awarded to students wishing to conduct studies at the postgraduate, doctoral and postdoctoral levels under the supervision or sponsorship of a member of the curatorial staff of the Academy. The Jessup Award is given for any specialty in which our curators have expertise. The McHenry Fund is restricted to botanists.
The Eckelberry Endowment helps support the efforts of wildlife painters, sculptors, printmakers, and other artists to better acquaint themselves with the natural world through both museum and field research. In addition, artistic and scientific mentors counsel and assist these artists as their careers develop. One grant will be given each year.
Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU)
Research Experiences for Undergraduates
Research Experiences for Undergraduates are competitive summer research programs in the United States for undergraduates studying science, engineering, or mathematics. Such programs usually focus on targeting women and underrepresented minorities...
, a program of the National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
, provides summer research experience for students attending colleges and universities. Each summer the Academy offers 5-10 separate research projects which can include collections, field, imaging and/or lab work. The projects vary but typically include environmental, library collections, and/or systematics research.
See also
- American Philosophical SocietyAmerican Philosophical SocietyThe American Philosophical Society, founded in 1743, and located in Philadelphia, Pa., is an eminent scholarly organization of international reputation, that promotes useful knowledge in the sciences and humanities through excellence in scholarly research, professional meetings, publications,...
: The first "learned society" in the Americas, and an important scientific and cultural institution in Philadelphia. - Franklin InstituteFranklin InstituteThe Franklin Institute is a museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and one of the oldest centers of science education and development in the United States, dating to 1824. The Institute also houses the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial.-History:On February 5, 1824, Samuel Vaughn Merrick and...
: Another Philadelphia science museum. - Logan SquareLogan Circle (Philadelphia)Logan Circle, also known as Logan Square, is an open-space park in Center City Philadelphia's northwest quadrant and one of the five original planned squares laid out on the city grid. The circle itself exists within the original bounds of the square; the names Logan Square and Logan Circle are...
: A landmark adjacent to the Academy that contains the Swann Memorial FountainSwann Memorial FountainThe Swann Memorial Fountain is a fountain sculpture located in the center of Logan Circle in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States....
. - Library Company of PhiladelphiaLibrary Company of PhiladelphiaThe Library Company of Philadelphia is a non-profit organization based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded by Benjamin Franklin as a library, the Library Company of Philadelphia has accumulated one of the most significant collections of historically valuable manuscripts and printed material in...
: The "mother of all subscription libraries", the Library Company was founded in 1731. - Please Touch MuseumPlease Touch MuseumThe Please Touch Museum is a children's museum located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The museum focuses on teaching children through interactive exhibits and special events, mostly aimed at children seven years old and younger.-History:...
, a children's museum that was housed within the Academy before moving in 1981. - Wagner Free Institute of ScienceWagner Free Institute of ScienceThe Wagner Free Institute of Science is a natural history museum located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1855 by William Wagner, a notable merchant, philanthropist, and gentleman scientist of the time, who sought to offer free educational courses to all who would seek to learn...
: A museum of a museum (a Victorian era Natural History museum) located in Philadelphia. - Listing of Natural History MuseumsMuseum of Natural HistoryA museum of natural history is a museum with exhibits about natural history, including such topics as animals, plants, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, and climatology. Some museums feature natural-history collections in addition to other collections, such as ones related to history, art and...
External links
- Official Website
- All Catfish Species Inventory
- Art Collections in the Academy Library
- Asia Center at the Academy of Natural Sciences
- Audubon Bird of the Week
- Catfish Bones Digital Atlas
- Center for Environmental Policy
- Digital Collections of The Academy of Natural Sciences
- Ewell Sale Stewart Library
- Hadrosaurus foulkii: The Dinosaur that Changed the World
- Joseph Leidy Online Exhibit
- Library's online resources on American Natural Science in the First Half of the 19th Century
- Library's Online Catalog (OPAC)
- Malacolog 4.1
- Malacology Georeferencing Project
- Mongolian Aquatic Insect Survey website
- Mussel Project website
- OBIS IndoPacific Mollusc Database
- Phycology Section website
- REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates at the Academy)
- Thomas Jefferson Fossil Collection
- Town Square at the Academy
- VIREO Bird stock photography
- Mounting the Hadrosaurus skeleton
- National Science Foundation's REU Program
- Orthoptera Species File