As humans, we are drawn to the extreme – the grotesque, exciting, adorable, implausible and incredible. Organisms on this earth are equipped with extreme adaptations, capable of achieving amazing feats, while inhabiting and surviving in the seemingly impossible. Today, the Beaty Biodiversity Museum launches its newest programming theme – Extreme Adaptations.
Colleen Tsoukalas attended the fashion show of our temporary exhibition INVOKING VENUS, Feathers and Fashion, and wrote on the blog of the Society for the Museum of Original Costume (SMOC) about this opening night event. Click through to read her post.
Another year has passed with engaging presentations from the Way Cool Biodiversity Series, but only one of them can be crowned as the “Best of Way Cool 2012”. The votes from the public have spoken, and without further ado, may I have the drum roll, please… The winner of the “Best of Way Cool 2012” is…
For any not-for-profit organization, hosting a major exhibition like INVOKING VENUS, Feathers and Fashion depends heavily on the support from the community, and the Beaty Biodiversity Museum is no exception. The exhibit features photo-based images by Catherine Stewart and accessories from the clothing collections of Claus Jahnke and Ivan Sayers. Through the juxtaposition of bird plumage with vintage fabrics and actual feathered fashion accessories, the parallels in human and bird behaviour become apparent.
Evolution explains how amazing organisms came to be and links us all together on one giant tree of life. But how does evolution happen? How long does it take? And how does it help us better understand and explore the biodiversity that we see today? Visit the Beaty Biodiversity Museum and get hands-on with museum specimens in the lab, learn about current biodiversity research, and participate in daily programming that highlights relationships among species.
In April, the Museum’s Biodiversity Lecture Series took us to the exquisite Serengeti with Dr. Anthony R.E. Sinclair at a presentation titled, 50 Years in Serengeti: the Story Behind the Science. It’s easy to see why Dr. Sinclair is passionate about this World Heritage Site. Delighting us with stories of acacia trees, elephant, wildebeest, and lions, Dr. Sinclair truly brought us into his research life in Serengeti.
For people who have visited the UBC Point Grey campus two weeks ago and strolled along Main Mall, you might have noticed some laminated signs that stuck up from the ground. Did your curious mind drag you closer to investigate? They were identification signs for mushrooms that have sprung up on the grassy patches along Main Mall.
In a partnership among the Beaty Biodiversity Museum’s Fish Collection, UBC Library’s Digital Initiatives, and Fishbase, the field collection records for over 850,000 fishes are being digitized.
The introduction of exotic species and their potential to become invasive is one of the leading causes of the declining status of native biodiversity. In addition, costs to the economy from the prevention, control, elimination, and the mitigation of effects of exotic/invasive species, and costs from lost opportunities are estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars per year worldwide. For Canadian freshwater fishes, exotic/invasive species are the second most important cause of extinction or extirpation (after habitat loss and degradation).
Congratulations to Ildiko Szabo, Assistant Curator of the Cowan Tetrapod Collection at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum, for becoming a member of the American Ornithology Union (AOU) Committee for Bird Collections. The AOU was founded in 1883 and is the oldest and largest North American society for the scientific study of birds. This AOU sub-committee represents both traditional and non-traditional collections, including skins, skeletons, fluid-preserved material, eggs and nests, genetic resources, and sound or video holdings.
