Prestigious Grant Helps Young Scientist Conduct Research at N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences

July 29, 2004
For Immediate Release
Contact: Maria Sadowski (919) 733-7450, ext. 305

RALEIGH - The Society for Systematic Biology (SSB) recently awarded a “mini-PEET” grant to Mike Medrano, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, to visit and conduct research at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences in 2005. The program is highly competitive, and Medrano’s award was one of only four granted this year. Medrano will work with Dr. Rowland Shelley, the Museum’s Curator of Terrestrial Invertebrates, to investigate the millipede family Atopetholidae, which is common in southwestern deserts.

The “mini-PEET” program is modeled after the National Science Foundation’s highly successful “PEET” program (Partnerships for Extending Expertise in Taxonomy). Their common goal is to facilitate the transfer of knowledge of poorly known and understudied organisms to new researchers—before the few present researchers retire or die and their knowledge is lost forever.

“There are many groups of plants and animals that are the focus of only a very few scientists,” says Shelley, “and when those one or two experts pass on, much of their knowledge and expertise goes with them. The ‘mini-PEET’ program allows experts to train new generations of researchers, to further advance scientific knowledge and build on their findings.”

In recent years, SSB has offered student and post-doctoral members “mini-PEET” grants to “apprentice” with specialists in distant parts of the United States or other countries. Award recipients spend a summer or semester working with an expert in a particular group of organisms, and grant money may be used to fund a visit by the applicant to the taxonomist’s laboratory or vice versa.

A student and a Natural Resource Program Manager at Petroglyph National Monument outside of Albuquerque, Medrano will make a preliminary, self-funded visit to the Museum and other eastern repositories in August to obtain samples from their collections to study over the fall and winter. He will drive to North Carolina and proceed to the Virginia Museum of Natural History, Smithsoni-an Institution, and Florida Collection of Arthropods. He will then return to New Mexico until his formal visit to the Museum in the spring of 2005. Medrano is the second “mini-PEET” recipient to visit the Museum in successive years, and Shelley’s second opportunity to serve as a mentor through the program.

In 2003, Amazonas Chagas, a Ph.D. candidate at the Museu Nacional/Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, spent four months conducting research with Dr. Shelley on scolopendromorph centipedes (those that can grow to over a foot in length) in a reciprocal learning experience. “Amazonas had considerable knowledge about the centipedes of Brazil and the Neotropics in general, so he actually taught me how to identify these genera and species,” says Shelley. “In return, I tried to give him focus and direction, and show him how to conduct research so he can build his career. We have published three scientific papers with more in preparation, which would otherwise have been impossible given the great distance between Raleigh and Rio.” Chagas’ four-month visit to the Museum allowed him to access resources that he had never been exposed to, including research specimens from the Smithsonian Institution. Additional travel grants allowed him to visit and examine specimens at museums in Massachusetts, New York, and Florida.

The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, in downtown Raleigh, documents and interprets the natural history of the state of North Carolina through exhibits, research, collections, publications, and educational programming. Hours: Mon.-Sat., 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sun., noon to 5 p.m. Admission is free. Visit the Museum on the web at www.naturalsciences.org. The Museum is an agency of the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources, William G. Ross Jr., Secretary.

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