This story was originally published in the 2024 edition of Discovery magazine, the College of Science's publication. This edition of Discovery celebrated the 20th anniversary of the College of Science.
The University’s Museum of Natural History is located on the southern end of campus, in a repurposed library space. Visitors are greeted by a mountain lion, looking ready to pounce. The small lobby includes displays about Â鶹ӳ»’s mammals, native bird species, live beetles and reptiles and two live fish exhibits. Visitors that have coordinated a tour with one of the museum’s curators can experience what is arguably the most exciting part of the museum: its scientific collections of over one million biological specimens, mostly held in large metal cabinets behind the exhibit space. The museum may have a modest footprint, but it holds biological treasures of scientific importance and conducts substantial public engagement.
With three faculty curators and two full-time staff members, education and collections coordinator Cynthia Scholl '08 (biology), '12 M.S. (biology), and herbarium curator Jerry Tiehm '74 (wildlife ecology), '78 M.S. (botany), the museum has an impressive list of accomplishments over the past year, including extensive public outreach. In 2023, the museum hosted over 3,000 visitors, including over 2,000 local schoolchildren.
For a museum funded primarily by grants and gifts, the director is proud of how far the museum has come in its 10 years on campus.
"We are small but mighty," Beth Leger, foundation professor in the Department of Biology and director of the Museum of Natural History, said.
An unnatural history
The Museum of Natural History wasn’t always a part of the University’s strategy, but for ecologists and evolutionary biologists, it was important to have a place that could house and properly maintain the specimens that University students and researchers had collected over the long history of the institution. The museum holds plant and animal collections that date back to the 1850s, but it wasn’t officially established as a museum until 2013.
When the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center was built, it opened up space previously occupied by the life sciences library in the Max C. Fleischmann Building.
Leger, a plant ecologist, was associated with the University’s herbarium at the time and was asked to join a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant review panel about collections. She had the opportunity to learn about other community and university museums and their collections through proposal reviews and conversations with other panelists.
"And I thought, 'Why don't we have a museum? We should have a museum,'" Leger said. "I’m seeing, literally, how it’s done. I’m reading about how other people are doing it, which is exactly what the NSF wants, this cross-pollination."
She asked her colleague Chris Feldman to join her for a cup of coffee, and broached the idea of building a museum. Feldman, a herpetologist who has a museum background, loved the idea, and the two of them got to work putting together a proposal to their respective chairs and deans. Professor Feldman was based in the College of Science’s biology department, and at the time, Leger was based in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Science in the College of Agriculture, Biotechnology and Natural Resources (CABNR).
Jeff Thompson and Ron Pardini, the respective deans of the College of Science and CABNR at that time, approved and submitted the proposal to University administrators.
"And not only did they say yes, we could have the space, they also gave us money to renovate," Leger said.
She added that it felt very lucky for all the pieces to fall together as they did.
"We just happened to have the space, we just happened to have the people, and all this came together in this very beautiful way," Leger said.
"I'm so grateful for what Beth and Chris do," Scholl said. "There’s always been someone working on the collections and trying to safeguard them. And there is a lot of history that we don't know."
One piece of known history near and dear to Scholl’s heart is Fred Ryser, who was faculty at the University from 1958 to 1989. Ryser was one of the museum’s most prolific collectors, having added birds, mammals, fish, plants and butterflies to the collections. Scholl is the cofounder and associate director of the nonprofit Â鶹ӳ» Bugs & Butterflies and has researched butterflies in the Great Basin for years. Ryser’s butterfly collection represents some of the oldest documentation of species found around Reno.
"I don’t know much about him besides his collection history, but I know I love him," Scholl said.
Tiehm, the museum’s plant curator, has written a book about Â鶹ӳ»’s plant collectors, which includes many emeritus University faculty.
Biological specimens, which are preserved plants and animals, provide essential teaching and research material that serves as the foundation for a range of biological disciplines, from taxonomy to community ecology. Students and faculty at the University amassed some "wonderful" collections of the plants and animals of Â鶹ӳ» and the Great Basin Desert, recording the native biodiversity of the region over the years. Managing all these specimens, however, was not an easy task, and before the establishment of the Museum of Natural History, there was no central plan for oversight of specimens.
Maintaining collections is costly and time-consuming, and oftentimes falls on those who collected the specimens in the first place or those who inherited somebody else’s collections. In the late 1980s, research priorities shifted away from studies of individual plants and animals. At the same time, there were a series of faculty retirements in the biology department. The department decided to move all its animal specimens into space in the Â鶹ӳ» Terawatt Facility in Stead. There, the animal collections languished for decades, away from the watchful eyes of faculty or the curious hands of students, while the plant collection was housed in a small room in a University building on Valley Road. Years later, two emeritus biology faculty, Dick Tracy and the late Peter Brussard, brought Feldman out to Stead to see the collections.
He immediately understood their scientific value, but also their precarious situation. Thousands of fish, amphibians and reptiles were stored in jars of alcohol, hundreds of birds and mammal skins and skulls in cabinets, and thousands of pinned insects in cases. Feldman began to regularly travel to the Terawatt facility so he could top off the jars with ethanol to save the fluid-preserved specimens and manage pests that might damage the dry specimens.
Some of those specimens lie in preservation containers called coffins, which are also used for human cadavers. Leger visited the Terawatt facility with Feldman once and described the random specimens lying in coffins as "creepy."
"We still have specimens there, some really big things," Leger said.
The College of Science’s other museum curators can relate to the problems the curators of the Museum of Natural History are facing – there’s no more space.
"We have literally run out of weird closets at the University," Leger said.
The largest challenge is ethanol collections, which preserve animal specimens in alcohol. Those specimens need to be stored in fire-safe containers, and all buildings have limits on the amount of alcohol they can store for fire safety. Moving the specimens into safe containers has also proven difficult, as many are kept in large glass jars that are no longer made at that size because they’re unstable and prone to cracking. But the challenges faced by the curators don’t deter them from the work.
"I'm very grateful for what we have," Scholl said.
She acknowledges that while a larger museum space would be ideal, there is still space to teach middle school classes, engage with undergraduates and support researchers. Leger’s main concern is ensuring the museum’s specimens don’t experience a similar fate to those left behind at the Terawatt facility.
"Collections cannot rest on the enthusiasm of one person, because they last longer than one person's lifespan," Leger said.
Museum curation
Fortunately, Leger and Feldman have recruited several additional dedicated curators.
"We have curators for each section," Leger said, including plants, insects and vertebrates.
Scholl points out that the way specimens are collected and how collections are maintained can differ by background. Research collections typically have meticulous documentation and are stored to maintain specimens in excellent condition for future genetic analysis. Specimens collected for teaching purposes might not have research or documentation value, but they have outreach value.
While the museum does accept collections from outside the University, "you do not just get something into Jerry’s plant collection without it being perfect," Leger said.
Tiehm’s work is detailed and he maintains a thorough collection of plants, with a focus on Â鶹ӳ»’s flora. Tiehm has spent many years venturing into Â鶹ӳ»’s wilderness and documenting its native plants. He and Jan Nachlinger '85 M.S. (botany), a retired ecologist, have compiled a complete list of Â鶹ӳ»’s native plants, which will be published sometime in the next two years.
"This information exists nowhere else," Leger said.
The museum’s insect curators include Matt Forister, the Trevor J. McMinn Endowed Professor in Biology and Foundation Professor, and Lee Dyer, Foundation Professor. The museum also receives specimens and identification support from Â鶹ӳ» Bugs and Butterflies, an organization run by Scholl and her husband, Kevin Burls '14 Ph.D. (ecology, evolution and conservation biology).
Feldman is the museum’s curator of vertebrates, including reptiles, mammals and birds. Some of the specimens in the museum were collected before regulations to protect species and limit poaching were established. The museum curators very carefully follow regulations when identifying which specimens to accept into the museum collections. Feldman has worked to establish permits that allow him to accept donations of already-dead animals, like roadkill.
Museum centers outreach and research
Rebounding after the pandemic shutdown, the spring semester of 2024 was the busiest yet, with four to five museum events each week, keeping Scholl busy.
"The only reason we have an outreach program is because of Cynthia," Leger said. "We do what we think we can succeed at, and what feels good to Cynthia is this very organic science education based on place and local research, which is super unique."
Scholl curates the museum tours to focus on local natural history or on research being done by faculty at the University.
With this approach, "they’re asking the same questions the researchers are," Scholl said.
"In the last few years, I've gotten to involve more undergraduate students in curation," Scholl said. "Some subset of the undergrads have helped with outreach. They really enjoy these unique work opportunities."
Funded by a combination of grants and gifts, 14 paid positions were offered to undergraduates in 2023. Scholl added that, in addition to learning curatorial practices, outreach provides an opportunity for undergraduates to practice their science communication skills by simplifying science for, most often, a younger audience. The Museum of Natural History has begun to host larger and larger events, particularly by recruiting graduate student volunteers. Scholl has entire spreadsheets she’s developed to recruit and organize graduate students who want to be involved in outreach.
"It's really great to have a big enough community that the students who want to do this can," Scholl said.
The museum has also recently started hosting identification workshops. So far, there have been bee, butterfly and plant identification workshops. Attendees include state and federal agency employees, students, hobbyists and other specialists.
The museum also participates in University recruitment efforts like Â鶹ӳ» Bound and has been a part of many students’ first experiences on campus by hosting lessons for Â鶹ӳ»FIT.
Research projects by faculty whose work requires collecting and maintaining specimens also receive support from the museum, and training projects associated with the research grants utilize collections from the Museum of Natural History.
"This is why we are critical," Leger said. "We are serving so many of the University’s goals outlined in its strategic plan."
One particularly clever use of the museum’s collections was led by postdoctoral researcher Behnaz Balmaki, who investigated historic butterfly-plant interactions. Balmaki analyzed the types of pollen on the legs of butterflies in the collections and compared that to pollen found on wild-caught butterflies. Some species are extremely particular about the plants they visit, and as some plants become more vulnerable due to climate change, examining how those interactions have shifted over time allows scientists to better understand how butterflies might adapt.
Leger and Scholl are also excited about a collection of aquatic invertebrates that they hope can take up residence near their original home at the Â鶹ӳ» at Lake Tahoe. Along with Aaron Koning, a recent faculty hire in the Department of Biology, they are currently developing a proposal to build an exhibit about the natural history of aquatic insects in and surrounding the lake.
Dreaming big
The museum directors and curators would love to move the collections and public space to the ground floor of a new building one day, in a space that is purposefully built to store the many irreplaceable, priceless treasures in the collection.
"The University’s biodiversity collections are being cared for like never before but integrating them into an easily accessible space with earthquake and fire protection would be the absolute dream," Leger says.
In the short term, Scholl dreams of funding for school buses to transport students from Title I schools to the museum so there are no barriers for students attending underprivileged schools to learning about Â鶹ӳ»’s natural history.
Scholl also emphasized that it can be difficult to help children understand that "… these dead things help us protect things in the wild." To that end, Scholl would love more outdoor teaching spaces to work with children, where living pollinators and other organisms might visit.
"We are biologists because we love to be outside, because being in nature is healing, because looking at bees for an hour is extraordinary," Scholl said.
For Leger, the priority is "dipping the museum’s fingers into as many pies as possible" to ensure all the museum’s collections don’t end up in some equivalent of the Terawatt facility, after the current batch of curators retire. Leger hopes to work with a donor whose vision for the museum extends as far into the future as hers.
"The way you codify it is just by becoming inevitable," Leger said. "These collections will last indefinitely if we keep giving them the support they need."