Friends of the Georgia Museum of Natural History

Some well-deserved recognition for the museum's own Dr. Bud Freeman and Dr. Mary Freeman! Such a powerful team for understanding the natural history of Georgia's native fishes and stream biota, and for the conservation of this amazing diversity of life! https://news.uga.edu/new-fish-species-named-for-uga-ecolo/

Monday, Monday, MONDAY! In a LONG-postponed "Turtle Pond Talk", Dr. Kathrin Stanger-Hall will be giving a talk on firefly diversity for our last talk of the academic year. The talk is at 10am on Monday, April 5 and details for Zoom are at https://sites.google.com/view/gmnh-tpt/home, hope to see you there - and it won't be long before you'll be seeing these beautiful beetles :)

Good morning Friends! I got this message about a wonderful-sounding event tomorrow evening through Oconee Rivers Audubon Society: ORAS is thrilled to host Robert Gallardo for a second time for our upcoming speaker meeting (Thursday April 1st at 7pm). The title of his talk is "Birds, and now, the Butterflies of Honduras". Register at this link to get the Zoom login for the talk. ... https://forms.gle/WDCJqEqr37UGb4UAA Since an early age Robert has a passion for Nature and by the age of 11 he was already collecting butterflies. He has carried this passion with him ever since. He graduated Humboldt State University with a degree in Natural Resources Planning and Interpretation and shortly afterwards went to Honduras as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer. There, he worked with a national park and on a secondary project helped a community set up the country's first butterfly farm. He has lived and worked in Honduras ever since. He eventually became a self-taught expert on its birds and learned the calls by making recordings for six years. In 2015 he published the country's first book: "Guide to the Birds of Honduras" and two years later a full Spanish edition. With the help of donations he and the Pro Nature Honduras Foundation were able to donate 400 copies to 10,000 elementary school children in rural schools. Robert was also the lead instructor during five formal courses on training bird watching guides. By the end of two decades he had seen over 700 species in the country and added 40 country records. Robert and Olivia have been working diligently on the next book project: "Guide to the Butterflies of Honduras" for the past four years, although Robert has been 'observing' these winged creatures during his entire time in the country. They have already surpassed 300 country records and in the first 14 months discovered the country's first three endemic species, all being new for science. They reside at Emerald Valley where there alone they have documented nearly 700 species, representing more than 50% of the country's total. This diversity eventually prompted them to initiate an annual event coined the Emerald Valley Butterfly Festival which has now run for two years. This event is free; however, Robert is raising funds to publish his upcoming guide to butterflies of Honduras. Those interested can donate here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-empower-conservation-throug

"This Women’s History Month, meet America's first known female nature writer: Susan Fenimore Cooper. Her nineteenth-century writing advocated for forest conservation, mourned the loss of passenger pigeons, and won praise from Darwin. Learn more about this under-recognized figure in conservation." https://www.audubon.org//meet-susan-fenimore-cooper-americ

Do you use iNaturalist? If you do you may have already contributed data towards the dissertation of our next Turtle Pond Talk speaker! Rachel Perez-Udell will speak at 10am on Monday on exploring flower color polymorphisms in wild Geranium, as always for the info on the Zoom channel please go to https://sites.google.com/view/gmnh-tpt/home

The Pronghorn These were recognized as an antelope. A misnomer since the days of Lewis and Clark when the animal was first described for the Easterners. This un...ique ungulate has roamed the North American continent for more than a million years. Their closest relatives are the giraffes and the okapi. Yellowstone NP. March 2020

One week! December 7, 10am our next online "Turtle Pond Talk"! This month from Dr. Paola Barriga, "Understanding parasite host range with the use of natural history museum collections" https://sites.google.com/view/gmnh-tpt/home

While you contemplate the turkey (or tofurkey) on your table, or the migrant songbirds in your yard... some more food for thought. Happy Thanksgiving from FGMNH! https://www.smithsonianmag.com//why-birds-survived-and-di/

Next Monday 10am! Our 3rd "Turtle Pond Talk" of the year will be on Zoom, info at our TPT website: https://sites.google.com/view/gmnh-tpt/home This coming week on November 2 we are delighted to have Anna Willoughby, a PhD candidate in the Odum School, giving a talk on ""Parasite Collections: Critical Resources for Disease Ecology Research" - she promises cute mammals as part of the presentation! Please remember you must be signed into your Zoom account to participate! Talks are about 30 minutes with plenty of time for questions and comments.

Don’t be a monkey! Always make sure your face mask properly covers your nose. :) #georgiamuseumofnaturalhistory #wearamask #dawgstrong

The Georgia Museum of Natural History has some exciting upcoming news about our whale collection! Keep your eyes on the FGMNH facebook page for updates... In the meantime, if you have whales on your mind like we do, check out this upcoming webinar hosted by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center as part of their Earth Optimism series. Nick Pyenson, curator of fossil marine mammals at the National Museum of Natural History, will give the talk on Tuesday October 20 at 7 pm. One can join the webinar by computer or by phone, and if you cannot watch the live-stream, the SERC will make a recording available 1-2 days afterwards. If you are interested to join for the talk, you can register at this website to receive a link for the webinar: https://www.facebook.com/events/1447974495373148

What a great nature project

Next Monday! 10am on Zoom, the 2nd Turtle Pond Talk of this academic year by Dr. Mac Callaham of USFS - speaking about soil biota, earthworms and all! I know you'll dig it. https://sites.google.com/view/gmnh-tpt/home

We have so many new herpetology specimen that we are excited to add to our collection! This is just a peek, but from left to right we have some southern leopard frogs, an eastern diamondback rattlesnake, and a lot of Chattahoochee slimy salamanders!

Mystery’s at the museum is back!!! Every Friday we will post a picture and you get to guess what it is!! We post answers next week when we post next week’s Mystery at the Museum! This is this weeks! Can you guess what this crazy thing is? #gmnh #georgiamuseumofnaturalhistory #mysteryatthemuseum

don't forget Monday at 10am is our first "Turtle Pond Talk" - on Zoom! The link to the talk will be posted on our TPT website: https://sites.google.com/view/gmnh-tpt/home on Monday morning. Our first one of this year is by Dr. Krista Capps talking about super-diverse armored catfishes!

from member (and mom!) Carolyn Embach, this video might brighten your day! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq3X60H7aBo

Don't forget - two weeks until the first "Turtle Pond Talk" of this academic year, on ZOOM, 10am September 7. Dr. Krista Capps will talk on loricariid catfish and their interactions with human populations. The zoom link will be at our Turtle Pond Talk website, https://sites.google.com/view/gmnh-tpt/home see you soon!

Turtle Pond Talks! First one *is* on Labor Day, September 7! https://sites.google.com/view/gmnh-tpt/home

Dear all, just a quick note to let you know that in September we will revive our "Turtle Pond Talks", but this time using Zoom - not as fun as handling bones or scallop shells or live oak seedlings perhaps - or, er, sock puppet salamanders, or any of the other cool interactions we had last year - but, we're gonna pull it off! Go ahead and put down the first UGA Monday of each Month - meaning, skip over Labor Day, skip over that day in January where the bowl games are done but UGA isn't in session yet - and 10am each Monday we will host another naturalist and you get to ask questions. Hope you are all doing well - stay safe y'all.

I'm a huge fan of Emily Graslie and you may all enjoy this clip of her on NPR Science Friday that Director Bud Freeman pointed me to this afternoon! https://www.sciencefriday.com/segme/emily-graslie-roadtrip/