By CONNOR KEATING
Tiger Media Network
While the Sternberg Museum of Natural History is most well known for its paleontology collection, which includes a variety of marine animals once native to Kansas, behind the scenes, the museum hosts an equally impressive collection of modern-day fauna.
Jackson Roberts, the zoological collections manager at Sternberg, describes the museum’s zoology collection as six different collections, or seven if you include what he jokingly referred to as their “super secret collection,” all combined into one.
“Our six collections are our ornithology collection – so our birds – our mammalogy collection, our reptile and amphibian collection – which is considered one collection – our herpetology collection, our fish collection, our entomology collection, and our non-insect invertebrate collection, which is mostly freshwater mussels.”
The “super secret seventh collection” consists of tissue samples from many of the museum’s mammal specimens and almost all of the reptiles and amphibians.
“Our tissue collection is actually our most requested collection by researchers from across the country,” Roberts said. “This is the resource that allows researchers to use genomic data to ask questions about evolution, population, genetics, conservation genetics, all sorts of genetic based questions.”
Roberts estimates that the collection has around 19,000 reptiles and amphibians, 49,000 mammals, 6,000 birds, 100,000 insects, between 6,000 and 6,500 non-insect invertebrates, and 35,000 fish, but due to the way that fish are cataloged, having multiple individuals under one specimen number, it’s probably closer to a million fish.
Out of everything though, Roberts believes that one of, if not the most important part of the collection is the mussel section.
“Freshwater mussels are the best bioindicator of freshwater health, and water is a huge deal in our state, and because we have such an extensive Kansas mussel collection that dates back to the 1950s or 60s, it literally can provide real-time signatures of ecosystem decline or improvement.”
Fort Hays junior and curatorial assistant at the Sternberg, Isaac Fox said the importance of any natural history museum, especially zoology and botany, is to document plants and animals through space and time.
“Our job is to have as complete of a record as we can of what plants and animals occur where, when,” he said. “That’s the most important thing, it tells us how populations are doing long term, if invasive species are spreading, and where species are declining. We can do a lot with the data we collect.”
The museum is constantly working to improve its mussel collection, and recently got new drawers specifically for them. Of the many drawers of mussels, the most special one belongs to the cylindrical papershell, a species of mussel that is almost totally extinct in the state.
“The last one that was found was actually found here in Ellis County and they only found one specimen over many years of searching, and they were unable to refind it,” Roberts said. “So our cylindrical papershell collection is outstanding, but it’s also sad to know that you have representatives and you don’t know if they’re gonna bounce back.”
Similarly, Roberts considers the most important mammal drawer to be one consisting of a species that is on the verge of extinction.
“We have a great series of beautifully prepped spotted skunks, and the reason that drawer is so important is because spotted skunks are one of two endangered mammals in the state,” Roberts said. “They began declining rapidly in the 80s and 90s and we don’t really know why. It is a huge deal if a spotted skunk is observed in Kansas, so if you or anyone you know sees a spotted skunk, please call Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks.”
Another important drawer in the mammal collection is one that seems rather inconspicuous at first glance, but actually features the neotype of the short-tailed shrew.
“It’s kind of deep museum jargon, but when you get into type specimens, the holotype, or sometimes called the neotype, which is a replacement that has been designated for a lost or destroyed holotype,” Roberts said. “That’s a huge deal to have, that is the most important specimen of a species, and we have the neotype, and a few paratypes of blarina brevicauda (short-tailed shrew), which is housed right outside my office door.”
Speaking of deep museum jargon, the insect collection houses some of the paratypes for the forthaysi jumping bristletail, paratypes being a few additional specimens referenced along with the holotype of a species when it’s first described.
“(It’s) a pretty nondescript-looking insect. Kind of like a silverfish but more hunched back,” Fox said. “The species was named by Dr. Richard Packauskas back in the early 2010s, and it was named after Fort Hays State University. It was actually the type series, like the holotype, paratypes, everything was collected on Fort Hays property. It’s not restricted to this general vicinity, though. I personally have found one in Ellsworth county at Lake Kanopolis and possibly a second one down in Coffey county.”
However, the crown jewel of the insect section is the butterfly collection, due to its size and the fact that it’s almost entirely Kansas-focused. Even some of the species that aren’t native to Kansas.
“We have the only Kansas record of the orange banded longwing,” Fox said. “It’s a species of heliconian butterfly typically found in Texas and South through Central America and we have one specimen in our collection that was collected right here by Hays in 1986. So that’s a cool one. It’s the only specimen of that species ever recorded from Kansas. Probably got blown up with a storm.”
One of the favorite butterfly drawers is that of the eastern tiger swallowtail, which features one specimen that’s a gynandromorph.
“(A gynandromorph) is an individual who is half genetically male and half genetically female,” Roberts said. “It’s a species where the males are that tiger yellow and black and the females are pure black, but the specimen looks like a 5th grader cut two in half and glued them together, it’s really cool.”
In the ichthyology collection, also known as fish, there are a number of endangered species like the neosho madtom, but some of the stars of the collection are specimens of common everyday fish found throughout the state, so what makes them so special?
“We have a special section dedicated to the specimens used by world-renowned fish artist Joseph Tomelleri who went here, to Fort Hays,” Roberts said. “Joe is not just the best fish artist to come out of Fort Hays, he is one of the best to have ever done it. We have specially labeled the specimens that he used for his illustrations and it’s a really special part of that collection’s history, to be a part of Joe’s career.”
Roberts’s specialty is in reptiles, and in the herpetology section, he is quite fond of the rattlesnake collection.
“We have a ton of counting records because of work done (over) the past 20 years by specifically Travis Taggart and my predecessor, Curtis Schmidt,” Roberts said. “They filled in a ton of gaps rapidly in 25 years, and our knowledge of where reptiles and amphibians are found in the state, and we have a ton of those records housed in our museum.”
The impressive ornithology collection features specimens for a number of species that can be difficult to collect due to their endangered status, as well as specimens that show some interesting characteristics.
“We have a bunch of individuals from many species that show evidence of hybridization,” Roberts said. “Where we are geographically in Ellis County, the middle of Kansas and western Kansas are where any east-to-west distributed species hybridize.”
Roberts described an example as a bird you can see on most sunny days in Hays, the northern flicker, which is a a type of woodpecker.
“In Hays alone, you can see yellow-shafted flickers, red-shafted flickers, which is the western morph, and in the neighborhood just across the street from the museum, we have a resident orange-shafted flicker, which is the offspring of red and yellow-shafted individuals,” Roberts said. “The fact our bird collection captures so much of that ongoing evolutionary change is really cool.”
Roberts said the collection is open to the public, but requests have to be made for special access to see them as a security precaution.
“All I am is a librarian, but our ‘books’ are really weird,” Roberts said. “They’re stinky, they’re former living creatures. We loan out everything here for education, for research, this is a public resource.”
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