MCZ newsletter

Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Volume 16, Number 1

Fall, 1985

Mammal Department Receives Major Grant

The complete overhaul of the
MCZ’s extensive mammal collec-
tions, which was begun last year
with the transfer of the alcohol col-
lections and the dermestid beetle
colonies to renovated bunker space
at the Concord Field Station, will be
continued with the assistance of a
grant from the National Science
Foundation Biological Resources
Division, Systematic Collections.
The initial grant is for a three-year
period which we hope will be
renewed for the duration of the ten-
year project begun last year.

Se
One of the overcrowded study skin

drawers, to be expanded into freed-up
space.

Among the much-needed projects
to be undertaken are: the transfer of
the whale skeletal material to more
spacious quarters at the Concord
Field Station; the replacement of the
old wooden skin cases with new

airtight metal ones; and the consol-
idation of the various parts of the
collections of small mammals so that
researchers will be able to find the
skin and skeleton of a particular bat
or mouse in one drawer; these are
currently housed in separate areas
of the collections.

The Mammal Department is one
of the most significant in the United

Cetacean material, to be transferred to
the Concord Field Station.

States with important holdings of
primates, particularly prosimians
from Madagascar and gibbons from
Southeast Asia, cetaceans from all
the world’s oceans and marsupials
from Australia and South America.
It becomes the fifth MCZ department
to receive long-term support from
the National Science Foundation
since 1972. The collections of insects,

ry hewsletter

MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY

fish, reptiles and amphibians, and
vertebrate fossils have already
undergone extensive renovation.

Wooden study skin cases to be
replaced.

Photos by Jane Winchell

New Name for Four-Museum
Complex

“Harvard University Museums of
Natural History” is the new name for
the four-museum complex which
includes the MCZ, the Peabody
Museum of Archaeology and Eth-
nology, the Botanical Museum, and
the Geological and Mineralogical
Museum. Formerly known as the
Harvard University Museums, the
new name has been chosen to avoid
confusion between this complex
and the Harvard University Art
Museums. The four museums con-
tinue to be separate administrative
entities; the new name is to more
accurately portray the museums for
the general visiting public.

Visitors

The densely populated Population
Genetics Department is hosting
Michel Veuille and Jean-Pierre Ber-
lan, two researchers from France,
this academic year.

Michel Veuille

Michel Veuille, from the Univer-
sity of Paris, is realizing a long-
cherished dream by spending the
year working on molecular genetical
polymorphism in Richard C.
Lewontin’s laboratory. His former
studies were on the genetic variation
in behavior in the fruit fly, Drosophila
melanagoster, to experimentally
determine whether avoidance of
mating between relatives, a phe-
nomenon often advocated to occur
on theoretical grounds, influences
mating behavior in this species. By
hybridizing flies which have been
made homozygous, all originating
from the same population, he
experimentally created hundreds of
identical twins for each genotype. In
2,700 confrontations between 13 lines
of heterozygous twins, Veuille found
that they mated as frequently with
related as with unrelated individu-
als. Hence, “incest avoidance’
behavior does not occur in the
geneticists’ favorite species. Fur-
thermore, the experiments evi-
denced a large genetic variation in
mating characters in both males and
females; wild populations of this
insect are highly polymorphic, even
at the level of behavior.

Jean-Pierre Berlan is an economist
from the Institut National de la
Recherche Agronomique collabo-
rating with Lewontin on a study of
the interface between biology and
economics. He is particularly inter-
ested in the relationship between
property rights and genetics in the
case of hybrid corn. Berlan is cur-
rently concerned with the scientific,
economic and historical development
of hybrid corn and questions the
conventional wisdom that a scientific
discovery, heterosis, which led to a
far-reaching technological change
(hybridization) increased corn yield
by a large margin. He suggests
rather that the thrust of this tech-
nological change was to create
property rights over the genetic
material. Hybrid corn did not
increase yield but it increased profits.

As a student of the history of sci-
ence, Berlan realizes the need to
assess the social, political, and per-
sonal factors that influence both
“pure” and applied scientists and
explores these consequences in his
far-reaching investigations.

Jean-Pierre Berlan

Travel Program

Two highly successful safaris to
Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Botswana
were conducted in August, one led
by Melanie L. J. Stiassny, Assistant
Professor of Zoology and Assistant
Curator of Ichthyology, and Gabrielle
Dundon, Director of Public Pro-
grams, the other by graduate stu-
dents Robert Dorit and Gillian
Kendall. Both groups were fortunate
to see leopards as well as all the more

commonly seen mammals. Another
expedition to the same area is
planned for January, the best birding
season, with Dr. Alfred W. Scott of
the Harvard Medical School as bird
expert. The same trip is offered again
in August, 1986 to be led by graduate
student Mark W. Skinner. Brochures
for this program will be mailed
shortly.

the August trip to Zambia, Zimbabwe,

and Botswana. Photo by Shawn Lum

Photo by Melanie L. J. Stiassny

“The Nature and Culture of India”
in February, led by Dr. John C. Con-
stable, James Moore, and Rosanne
Kumins is entirely filled with a
waiting list.

Next spring’s Provincetown
whale-watching weekend will be on
May 17-18. Stormy Mayo will bring
the group up to date on his group’s
research on the local whales.

Plans for 1987 include:

A two-week Antarctica expedition
in January aboard the Society
Explorer. Director James J. McCarthy
will be our scientific guide. This trip
will be conducted jointly with the
California Academy of Science with
John McCosker, Director of the
Steinhart Aquarium, as scientific
guide.

A nostalgic return to the lagoons
and islands off the Baja California
peninsula in March for those who
have fond memories from one or
more of our many trips to that area.
There may be space for a few fortu-
nate first-timers.

A relaxed visit to Malawi is
planned for August, led by Melanie
L. J. Stiassny, who has studied the
fishes in the lake there and looks
forward to introducing travelers to
the natural beauty of this small
African country. The trip will end
with a stay at Chinzombo Safari
Camp in Luangwa National Park,
Zambia—a highlight of our current
trips to that country.

Benjamin Shreve
1908-1985

Benjamin Shreve, who worked in
the Department of Herpetology for
fifty years, died on July 16. At a
Memorial Service held in Harvard's
Appleton Chapel on October 4,
Ernest E. Williams, Curator of Her-
petology Emeritus, honored his
memory with a vivid account of his
life and service.

A member of the Herpetology
Department for 50 years, Mr. Shreve
did not have formal training but was
personally tutored by Arthur Love-
ridge who was Curator of Herpetol-
ogy from 1924 to 1957. According to
Williams:

“Loveridge was an Englishman
who had become an expert on African

amphibians and reptiles. He had
come to Harvard to oversee a world
collection but his heart was still in
Africa. He therefore trained Ben quite
deliberately to take over all the work
of the Department that dealt with
New World animals. Loveridge
taught Ben and gave him little tests.
He obviously found in Ben a good
scholar. Within a year Ben was adept
at the tasks that Loveridge had set
him. Within two years, Ben was in

Benjamin Shreve

full charge of the Department when
Loveridge was away in Africa fora full
year. Loveridge began referring to
Ben in the Annual Reports of the
Department as “my colleague;” it was
not a term that Loveridge would have
used lightly. Soon Ben was writing
papers with the then Director of the
Museum, Thomas Barbour. Ben did
the work. Barbour revised some of
the language to suit his personal
stylet
When Williams became Curator of
the Department in 1957, Shreve con-
tinued to be an invaluable assistant.
Williams summarized his role thus:
“Ben is genuinely part of Harvard’s

history. He contributed definitively,
substantively to the building of the
Department that is probably the
largest, and, I would say, the best in
the world . . . In still another sense
Ben is part of Harvard’s history. He
was one of the last of the generations
that believed that privilege was mar-
ried to responsibility, who worked—
even without pay—because they
could not conceive a plausible alter-
native. He outlived most of the gen-

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eration for which this was reality.
Within the Museum there are now
few who knew him at all, almost no
one who knew him well—and none
at all cast in his mold ... Ben
described some 60 new forms of
amphibians and reptiles. That itself
by the rules of the game of Zoology
is a claim to immortality . . . Some
species were named after him. That
is another claim to immortality . . .
Ben served under five Directors of the
Museum of Comparative Zoology,
four Presidents of Harvard, three
Curators of Herpetology. He gave 50
years of his life to Harvard, to the
Department of Herpetology in the
Museum of Comparative Zoology.”

Fish Department Abounding in Awards

Several aspects of the work of the
MCZ’s Fish Department have been
boosted recently by recognition and
financial support. Curator Karel F.
Liem has acquired a high-speed
video system with the aid of a grant
from the National Science Founda-
tion; Assistant Curator Melanie L. J.
Stiassny has received a grant ‘‘to
further the career of a young woman
science faculty member’; graduate
student Laurie Sanderson was
awarded part of the Raney Fund for
Ichthyology of the American Society
of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists
in recognition of her work in the
combined field of ecomorphology;
and a substantial grant from the
Biological Resource Research Pro-
gram of the National Science Foun-
dation is providing for the
establishment of an archival collec-
tion of fish larvae at the MCZ with
the expert assistance of Visiting
Scholar Sally Richardson.

Karel F. Liem

The new high speed video system
allows researchers to shoot 200
“fields” per second and produce
relatively high resolution pictures lit
by a cool stroboscopic lighting sys-
tem which flashes 200 times per
second. In the past, attempts to use
high speed movie cameras have been
unsatisfactory because the light
source generated too much heat and
so much light was required that
the fish’s behavior was affected
adversely. With the new high speed

Pile perch feeding on a limpets, photo-
graphed by high-speed video.

video system, there is no need for an
intense light source, and thus the
animals are undisturbed and behave
normally. Most importantly, the new

technology will allow a more quan-
titative approach because data can be
acquired more rapidly. The new
acquisition is part of a grant to study
air ventilation in primitive lungs.
Liem is interested in the functional
aspects of the evolution of lungs
during the transition from aquatic to
terrestrial life in vertebrates and
keeps primitive lung fishes in the
laboratory for this work. Since air-
breathing is very fast in fishes—they
require only a 25,000th of a second
to take a gulp of air—the use of high
speed equipment is essential to
record and analyze the process.

Melanie L. J. Stiassny

A generous contribution from
Mrs. Joan Morthland-Hutchins is
allowing Stiassny to plan the next

Melanie Stiassny

Photo by S. Patterson

phase of her research work, a com-
prehensive study of the cichlid fishes
of Lake Tanganyika. Of the over 200
species of cichlids fishes in the lake,
an astonishing 95% are endemic to
it. Stiassny will travel to Lake Tan-
ganyika and establish contact witha
team of Japanese scientists who are
working in the area. She will gather
sufficient data to provide the basis
for a grant to the National Science

Foundation for an extended study.
The unexpected gift came with the
stipulation that the young woman
scientist recipient be prepared to
spend a day at St. Paul’s School in
Concord, New Hampshire to serve
as a role model for the students with
a goal to inspiring them to consider
careers in the sciences. Stiassny
looks forward to fulfilling this
requirement.

Laurie Sanderson

The Raney Fund for Ichthyology,
awarded by the American Society of
Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, is
to support “‘young ichthyologists
and herpetologists for museum or
laboratory study, travel, fieldwork,
or any other activity that will effec-
tively enhance their professional
careers and their contributions to the
science of ichthyology or herpetol-
ogy.’ Sandersonis particularly grat-
ified to receive an award from this
fund this year because it indicates
that the three diverse members of
the judging panel agree that her
research work, which centers on the
difficult interface between the two
disciplines of ecology and morphol-
ogy, is worthy of recognition and
encouragement.

As an undergraduate student at the
University of Hawaii, Sanderson
concentrated on the ecology of coral
reef fishes. She censused and col-
lected large numbers of wrasses, in
the diverse and abundant family
Labridae, and analyzed their stom-
ach contents as part of an ecological
study on marine foodchains. She
found that in this family, made up of
species with remarkably different
structures, there is a surprising
variety of diets. The fish generally
fall into two categories: the gener-
alists, with far-ranging tastes, and
the specialists, with a narrower di-
etary range. The ecological expla-
nation for how all the various
members of the family coexist is that
they fill different food niches. What
Sanderson wanted to study was how
the fishes partition the food
resources by looking at the actual
movements and neuromuscular
activity when a fish captures its prey.

In the process of deciding ona
graduate program which would be

compatible with her interests, she
was attracted to Karel Liem’s labo-
ratory and his approach of looking
at evolutionary and ecological ques-
tions from the viewpoint of func-
tional morphology. In general,

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ecologists tend to look at structure
in an adaptive sense and see how it
influences the animal in its environ-
ment; they do not usually look at how
the structure functions. Morpholo-
gists, on the other hand, conduct

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Laurie Sanderson with electromyographic equipment ind on

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Drawing by Laurie Sanderson

General forms for some members of the remarkably diverse family Labridae, (1. to
r.) Bodianus bilunulatus, Macropharyngodon geoffroy, Anampses cuvier,
Cheilio inermis, Gomphosus varius, Cheilinus unifasciatus.

intensive studies on how structures
function and the constraints they are
subjected to; they do not usually
consider the interface between the
animal's behavior in the laboratory
and in the wild. Some overlapping
studies have been done in the last 10-
15 years but Sanderson’s is one of the
few quantitative ecomorphological
studies on fishes. Liem’s expertise
in electromyography and the avail-
ability of this equipment in the lab-
oratory, as well as the new high
speed video camera, have made
Sanderson’s study possible.

To date her work has yielded some
unexpected results. In analyzing the
electromyographic data in four dif-
ferent species, two generalists and
two specialists, she has found that
their muscular activity is remarkably
similar regardless of the prey being
devoured. High-speed filming,
which allows the researcher to
record how the mouth opens and to
plot the gape with time as a way to
quantify movement parameters,
reveals differences caused by vari-
ation in mouth shape but otherwise
there is a surprising similarity in the
species studied.

These findings suggest to Sand-
erson that the specialist species
partition the food resources on the
basis of their morphology, such as
large mouth, big teeth, long snout,
etc., and not on functional muscular
activity; generalists do not have such
specialized features. The labrids’
behavior in the field also seems to
be more important than their mus-
cular activity. This is inconsistent
with the conclusion Liem has drawn
in his extensive study of cichlid
fishes where there seem to be strik-
ing differences in neuromuscular
patterns among the Specials:
species.

One possible explanation for the
lack of differentiation in muscle
activity in labrids could be that they
are constrained in the number of
ways they can open their mouths.
The fact that two of their facial bones,
the premaxilla and the maxilla, are
tightly linked could be the reason
there is little variation. A systematic
study of a large number of general-
ists and specialists is needed to con-
firm this theory.

(Continued on next page)

Fish Department

(continued)

Sally Richardson

Visiting Scholar Richardson is at
the MCZ for a year-and-a-half
establishing what will become a
major archival center of fish larvae
in the United States. This is the first
time the Biological Resource
Research Program of the National
Science Foundation has singled out
one institution to become a center for
a world-wide collection of larval
fishes. According to Liem: ‘’The
study of fish larvae is vital to many
areas of investigation including
evolutionary studies, plankton dis-
tribution patterns, and fisheries
management.”

Many of the collections currently
being identified, organized and cat-
alogued in renovated quarters in the
MCZ’s basement were donated by
the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution and cover the North
Atlantic, Caribbean, and South
Atlantic off Africa and Brazil. Mate-
rial also hails from Australia and the
Department is amassing local col-
lections from coastal Maine and
Massachusetts.

Some representative larval fishes illus-

trated in the Ahlstrom Volume
A: Scalloped ribbon fish, Zu cristatus;
3and C: Oarfish, Regalecus glesne.

Richardson, who was previously
affiliated with the Gulf Coast
Research Laboratory and Oregon
State University School of Ocean-
ography, was an organizer of the
Ahlstrom Symposium on ‘‘Ontog-
eny and Systematics of Fishes” held
in La Jolla, California in August,
1983. She was also an editor of the
publication of that symposium by
American Society of Ichthyologists
and Herpetologists which was
awarded a silver medal of excellence
by the United States Department of
Commerce, National Marine Fish-
eries Service. She asserts that the
symposium ‘contributed to a new
wave of thinking about and using
larval fishes in systematic and evo-
lutionary studies by getting together
larval and adult-fish experts.’’ She
is interested in the generative and
regulatory roles of development in
fish evolution, and thinks perspec-
tives from both larval and adult fish
workers have a great deal to con-
tribute to our conceptual under-
standing of the subject. The
collections are being organized sys-
tematically rather than geographi-
cally and are already proving
invaluable to visiting researchers.
An active loan program is also
underway.

Staff Notes

Stephen Jay Gould’s The Flamin-
go's Smile; Reflections in Natural His-
tory, the fourth volume of highly-
praised essays which first appeared
in Natural History, was published
this fall. Ed Haack, who designs,
constructs, and maintains the MCZ’s
exhibits, spent five months this year
“on loan” to the Harvard University
Art Museums to help ready the new
Sackler Museum for opening. He has
recently returned, refreshed from
the experience and armed with new
ideas and techniques to apply to the
MCZ’s exhibits. Ruth D. Turner has
been elected Chairman of the Bio-
logical Sciences section of the
American Association of the
Advancement of Science. She is also
the American chairman of the
upcoming Conference on Marine
Biodeterioration being held in Goa,
India in January. Alfred Newton has
left his position as Curatorial Asso-
ciate in Entomology to become
Assistant Curator of Insects at Chi-
cago’s Field Museum. Scott Shaw,
Visiting Curatorial Associate in
Entomology for the past year, has
been appointed as the new Curato-
rial Associate.

How Do Ants Recognize Each Other

and Other Questions

Students of sociobiology know that
one of the basic tenets is that altru-
ism, which would appear to be con-
trary to an individual’s interests if
reproductive success is the operative
for natural selection, works to the
individual's self-interest if aid is lav-
ished on closely-related kin. Thus
“helpers at the nest’ in many bird
species, for example, turn out to be
siblings who have a compelling
genetic investment in the survival of
the offspring.

In the highly-developed social
structure of an ant colony the ability
to recognize kin is not only crucial
but also a complicated behavior. It
has long been known that chemistry
governs the mechanism of recogni-
tion between sisters. Norman Car-
lin, a sixth-year graduate student

working with Professor Bert Holl-
dobler, is attempting to find out the

= NG :

Norman Carlin

source of the chemical substance
within the social unit of the colony.

In a paper published in Science
entitled ‘“Nestmate and Kin Recog-
nition in Interspecific Mixed Colo-
nies of Ants’’ Carlin reports on the
results of experiments in the labo-
ratory in which he manipulated col-
onies in various ways to assess the
role of the queen in chemical com-
munication. That chemical cue rec-
ognition is a learned behavior is a fact

Two unrelated workers, adopted into a
mixed colony, exchange food.

that ants themselves exploit; slave-
makers raid other colonies, killing
the slave adults and capturing the
larvae and pupae who grow up
learning to serve their new masters.
Imitating the ants, Carlin creates
mixed colonies for his experiments.
While mixed colonies can be artifi-
cially created by slave-makers and
graduate students, they also occur
naturally in cases, for instance, when
a queen mates with more than one
male, creating a genetically-mixed
colony. Half-sisters in the same col-
ony would reject each other if they
did not learn to recognize chemical
cues different from their own. Carlin
speculates that instances like this
could explain why learning is
required.

Once he created a mixed colony of
ants of the genus Camponotus, (car-
penter ants), Carlin reintroduced
some of the workers into their orig-
inal colony to see if they would rec-
ognize their own genetic sisters. The
presence of the queen causes
aggression between unfamiliar sis-
ters leading him to believe that the
queens have seized control of the
recognition system by producing
superabundant and/or super-potent

A queen surrounded by her own offspring (brood and dark workers) and an adopted
worker (of another species) who feeds her by regurgitation.

Workers killing their own genetic sister who was adopted into an alien colony and
acquired its odor. i

chemicals which blanket the chem-
ical system. He has found that, if
there is no queen present, unfamiliar
sisters will recognize each other.

Inacomplementary study, Robin
Stuart, a postdoctoral student
working with Professor Edward O.
Wilson, has found that in acorn ant
colonies, which have multiple
queens, the queen’s influence is less
overpowering.

In another study on learned
behavior, Carlin trained soldier ants
to fight introduced ants that are not
their natural enemy. His findings,

Photos by Bert Holldobler

reported in a joint article ““Learned
Enemy Specification in the Defense
Recruitment System of an Ant” with
Ardis B. Johnston of the MCZ’s
Invertebrate Department published
in Naturwissenschaften, confirm that
ants will learn to recognize and
recruit soldiers to attack any other ant
species that is repeatedly introduced
into the colony. Carlin will attempt
to isolate which ants in the colony are
doing the learning by marking indi-
viduals, and to analyze the system
to understand exactly what mecha-
nism in the ant controls behavior.

Administration In New Location

Over the past two years, several
of the MCZ’s administrative func-
tions have been merged with those
of the Department of Organismic
and Evolutionary Biology, the Gray
and Farlow Herbaria, the Botanical
Museum, the Bussey Institute, and
the Atkins Garden endowment
resulting in increased efficiency and
significant savings in personnel and
space. Last fall the administrative
offices of the combined administra-
tions moved into newly renovated
space on the ground level and first

c

floor space previously occupied by
the Botanical Museum.

According to Jay Taft, Director of
Administration: ‘‘We are now very
close to the administrative structure
which was envisioned four years
ago.

The Departments of Public Pro-
grams and Education also moved to
offices adjacent to the main public
entrance to the museum, giving
immediate access to the visiting
public.

bai a

ew quarters for the Financial Office. Staff includes (I. to r.) Donna McDermott,

Mack Davidson, Diane Cox, and Cathy Fico.

Naked Mole Rats

a

AE SRR LIDS hee
Naked mole rats collected by Rodney
Honeycutt and Kimberlyn Nelson of the
Mammal Department on recent Kenya
expedition. These rats are the only ver-
tebrates known to have a eusocial system
similar to ants. A complete report on the
study will appear ina future issue of the
MCZ Newsletter.

The MCZ Newsletter is published two
or three times a year by the Museum of
Comparative Zoology, Harvard Univer-
sity, Oxford Street, Cambridge, Mas-

sachusetts 02138; James J. McCarthy,
Director.

Editor: Gabrielle Dundon
Photographer: A. H. Coleman