Erin Southerland

May 1, 2026 by Erin Southerland

2025 Rector Christmas Bird Count Results

by Annie Lindsay

Since 1974, intrepid birders in southwestern Pennsylvania have been gathering to count birds during the Rector Christmas Bird Count (CBC). The Rector count is part of a much larger, 126-year-and-counting initiative hosted by the National Audubon Society to count birds in a specified 15-mile diameter count circle on a single day between December 14 and January 5 each year. Count circles are scattered throughout the western hemisphere and even on some Pacific Islands!

Christmas Bird Counters can look for birds for the 24-hour period from 12:00am to 11:59pm, although most opt for counting during daylight hours. At exactly midnight, Grace, always ready for a good birding opportunity, went outside and listened for owls, and was joined several hours later by a handful of other owlers who searched in other sectors of the circle. As the sun rose on a bluebird sky morning with a dusting of snow, one of our youngest participants, Drake, arrived bundled up against the cold with bright eyes, a big smile, and his binoculars all ready to get started. One of the great things about the CBC is that anyone can participate regardless of age or birding skill level. This year, we had a few counters under the age of 10 and representatives from almost every decade!

group of people taking a selfie outdoors in winter — *Drake, age 7, with his dad David and two fellow counters, Grace and Alyssa. Photo by David Yeany II.*

As the day progressed, one group spotted two Bald Eagles taking off from a mature tree near a mostly frozen pond, another group had a whirlwind of Dark-eyed Juncos on their property, and the count’s usual kettle of Turkey and Black Vultures made an appearance. The woodpecker count was impressive with all seven possible species spotted this year.

At the end of the day, the tally dinner was bustling with birders catching up with friends and welcoming new counters. As everyone settled in with their dinner, the tallying began – working through the species list taxonomically, each group sounded off with their count for each species. Waterfowl are first and the general expectation was that the numbers for this group of birds would be somewhat low due to the recent below freezing temperatures that iced over most bodies of water. We started with Snow Goose, an uncommon species in the Rector count: none were spotted this year, no surprises there. Then we moved on to Canada Goose, an expected species despite frozen water, a voice said, “wait, we had a Ross’s Goose.” Ross’s Geese look like smaller, cuter versions of Snow Geese, and had never been spotted during a Rector CBC before. Sue, Mark, and Keith for the win!

ross goose — *Ross’s Goose at Trout Run Reservoir. Photo by Sue Miller.*

Three species were recorded in record high numbers: Red-shouldered Hawk, Red-headed Woodpecker, and Red-bellied Woodpecker. These species seem to be increasing in numbers in southwestern Pennsylvania, a northward range expansion trend that we’re seeing in other species that historically had ranges a bit to the south of Pennsylvania. Other notable species from this year’s count that are rarely encountered in the winter include a Ruby-crowned Kinglet and a Gray Catbird. Owls are not always guaranteed on a CBC, but with some pre-dawn effort, three species were encountered this year: Eastern Screech-Owl, Barred Owl, and Great Horned Owl. All three species are year-round residents locally, but hearing them in the dark and cold can be tricky.

The day’s perfect weather and the excellent turnout of counters was mirrored by the lively atmosphere at the tally dinner that clearly showed how exciting and productive the day was. In total, there were 45 counters who tallied 4,375 individuals of 64 species. Thank you to all participants for their commitment to the birds. I look forward to seeing you all again at next year’s count!

For more information about the Christmas Bird Count and to see how the data are used, please visit: https://www.audubon.org/conservation/science/christmas-bird-count

black vulture in a tree — *Black Vulture. Photo by David Yeany II.*

northern mockingbird — *Northern Mockingbird. Photo by Grace Muench.*

Total 2025 Tally

Ross’s Goose – 1

Canada Goose – 493

American Black Duck – 8

Mallard – 38

Hooded Merganser – 3

Ring-necked Pheasant – 18

Wild Turkey – 24

Great Blue Heron – 2

Black Vulture – 37

Turkey Vulture – 49

Sharp-shinned Hawk – 2

Cooper’s Hawk – 7

Bald Eagle – 3

Red-shouldered Hawk – 11 *

Red-tailed Hawk – 58

Ring-billed Gull – 2

Rock Pigeon – 70

Mourning Dove – 121

Eastern Screech-Owl – 7

Great Horned Owl – 1

Barred Owl – 1

Belted Kingfisher – 1

Red-headed Woodpecker – 9 *

Red-bellied Woodpecker – 113 *

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker – 11

Downy Woodpecker – 77

Hairy Woodpecker – 25

Northern Flicker – 31

Pileated Woodpecker – 29

American Kestrel – 2

Blue Jay – 312

American Crow – 306

Common Raven – 18

Carolina Chickadee – 4

Black-capped Chickadee – 203

Tufted Titmouse – 133

Red-breasted Nuthatch – 4

White-breasted Nuthatch – 167

Brown Creeper – 11

Winter Wren – 2

Carolina Wren – 24

Golden-crowned Kinglet – 35

Ruby-crowned Kinglet – 1

Eastern Bluebird – 133

Hermit Thrush – 2

American Robin – 11

Gray Catbird – 1

Northern Mockingbird – 16

European Starling – 610

Cedar Waxwing – 10

Yellow-rumped Warbler – 7

American Tree Sparrow – 22

Field Sparrow – 4

Dark-eyed Junco – 401

White-throated Sparrow – 82

Song Sparrow – 92

Swamp Sparrow – 10

Eastern Towhee – 3

Northern Cardinal – 173

Brown-headed Cowbird – 3

House Finch – 59

Purple Finch – 2

American Goldfinch – 113

House Sparrow – 141

Total Individuals: 4,375

Total Species: 64

Annie Lindsay is Bird Banding Program Manager at Powdermill Nature Reserve.

A New Exhibition Endorses Old Advice

by Pat McShea

jars of amphibians and reptiles preserved in fluid on shelves in the Alcohol House — *Credit: Mason Williams, The Warhol Academy*

In The Stories we Keep: Bringing the World to Pittsburgh, visually rich displays of authentic materials emphasize the depth, breadth, and importance of scientific collections at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. As an introductory panel in the temporary exhibition summarizes, “Every fossil, every animal, every object has a story to tell about our planet, the universe, and our place in it.”

The message flanks a wall section on which the life-sized projection of behind-the-scenes imagery from four of the Museum’s scientific sections plays continuously on a 4.5-minute loop. Titled Footage from Collections, this colorful assemblage invites viewers into collection storage areas holding birds, amphibians and reptiles, insects, and invertebrate fossils. Extraordinary scientific specimens are the rightful stars of the show, but the brief video also includes cameo appearances by some of the people responsible for the care and study of these mission critical materials.

When I first watched the video, scenes in the amphibian and reptile collection awakened a memory from the early 1990s of a curator’s impassioned defense of active collecting. Remarkably, the scientist’s verbal argument was presented to a single student. I was fortunate to be a sideline observer.

Thirty-three years ago, in fulfilling the request of a fellow educator at the Pittsburgh District of the US Army Corps of Engineers, I introduced an undergraduate student who had just completed a summer internship with that federal agency to Dr. C.J. McCoy, then CMNH Curator of Herpetology. The student’s culminating internship project was a survey of amphibian diversity on the Corps of Engineers property surrounding Loyalhanna Dam and Reservoir in Westmoreland County, and following weeks of solo fieldwork, she hoped to share her findings with appropriate Museum staff.

We met in Dr. McCoy’s office, standing around a table that allowed the student to open the thick binder of her survey report and provide a five-minute orientation to the document’s photographs, maps, data tables, and charts. Dr. McCoy then carefully paged through the work, praising the thoroughness of the student’s investigation, admiring many of her frog and salamander photos, and explaining that he was personally familiar with the rugged wooded and wet terrain she had obviously repeatedly traversed. Then he asked if she had collected any voucher specimens, the term for permanently preserved biological samples that serve to verify an organism’s presence at a particular place during a particular time.

A ten-minute discussion ensued, with the student explaining her belief that exacting field techniques and meticulous record keeping made the collection of voucher specimens optional. She maintained that the presence of the species under study could be fully documented without having to kill any of them. By way of example, she flipped her report’s pages to a section where full-color amphibian photographs included scale bars as a check against the recorded figures in measurement tables.

measuring a herpetology specimen — *As this image implies, specimens in museum collections may be re-examined to help answer scientific questions.* *Credit: Mason Williams, The Warhol Academy*

Dr. McCoy’s rebuttal began with a theoretical but sincere offer. He explained to the student that if she had collected voucher specimens, be they bull frogs, spring peepers, redback salamanders, or red efts, he would have been eager to add them to the Museum’s scientific collection, especially with the associated information in the survey report. With properly labelled voucher specimens in a repository such as the CMNH herpetology collection, he continued, the hard-earned findings of her summer fieldwork might well inform future scientific investigations such as studies of a particular species or groups of species, or even studies of changes in landscapes. Under circumstances where land use decisions are made, he argued, the deaths of individual animals in the service of creating a scientific record of their presence, could serve long-term to safeguard the population they represent.

The curator’s closing argument addressed the limits of the photographs he had praised only moments earlier. He spoke of vantage point limits in photography, and the likelihood of any future identification disputes remaining unresolved in the absence of verifying voucher specimens. Finally, he reminded the student that her name would be associated with any vouchers as the collector, and that the preserved remains would undoubtedly increase the survey’s impact.

The meeting ended amicably, but without any concessions from the student. In the decades since, I’ve had occasion to present some of Dr. McCoy’s arguments dozens of times during various educator workshops. Recently, in a Science Story on this site, I came across an encouraging current endorsement for the importance of voucher specimens.

At the conclusion of an account titled, Hopping Into the Bornean Rainforest, Rohan Mandayam, who served as Research Assistant to CMNH Curator Dr. Jennifer Sheridan during fieldwork in 2025, clearly explains his thoughts and actions related to collecting representative samples of the creatures he spent weeks studying:

The record of the voucher specimens, he concludes, “has the potential to be used to answer future biological questions that we don’t even know to ask yet!”

Pat McShea is Educator Emeritus at Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Ronald A. Sloto Wins 2025 Carnegie Mineralogical Award

by Travis Olds, Curator of Minerals

I am pleased to announce Ronald A. Sloto as the winner of the 2025 Carnegie Mineralogical Award. The award honors outstanding contributions in mineralogical preservation, conservation, and education.

He is Curator and Director of the Geology Museum at West Chester University, Pennsylvania, where he also holds the title of Honorary Professor. Over the course of a distinguished career that includes 41 years with the U.S. Geological Survey, he has become the definitive historian of Pennsylvania mineralogy, authoring a landmark series of reference books that document the region’s mineral heritage.

Carnegie Mineralogical Award Winner Ronald A. Sloto with Travis Olds from Carnegie Museum of Natural History and others — Ronald A. Sloto holding the 2025 Carnegie Mineralogical Award.

Ron is the bridge between professional geology and the collecting community, ensuring that our mineral history is not lost to time. He has exhaustively documented over 1,400 mineral localities and revitalized the collections at West Chester University. This award recognizes his lifetime of service to preserving mineralogical history in the library, the laboratory, and the museum.

Additionally, he has authored the “Mines and Minerals” book series, covering Chester, Berks, Montgomery, Bucks, and Delaware counties. These works provide exhaustive coverage of historical mines, geological settings, and associated specimens, serving as essential references for researchers and collectors alike. His work has ensured that the rich mineralogical legacy of the Mid-Atlantic region is preserved and accessible for future generations. As a hydrogeologist, Ron also developed the HYSEP program, a fundamental tool in hydrologic research whose algorithms are still used worldwide. His leadership with the Friends of Mineralogy Pennsylvania Chapter and his contributions to The Mineralogical Record have further enriched the mineralogical community.

“My interest in minerals was piqued during my early childhood years collecting quartz crystals and fern fossils in northeastern Pennsylvania,” said Ron. “To be able to turn that fascination into a lifelong career with the USGS, and now to help preserve our mineral heritage at West Chester University, has been a wonderful privilege.”

I had the privilege of presenting the award on February 14, 2026, at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show. Congratulations, Ron.

2026 Mineralogical Award

The Carnegie Museum of Natural History established the Carnegie Mineralogical Award, funded by the Hillman Foundation, in 1987. Nominations are now being accepted for the 2026 Carnegie Mineralogical Award and the deadline is November 15, 2026. Eligible candidates include educators, private mineral enthusiasts and collectors, curators, museums, mineral clubs and societies, mineral symposia, universities, and publications. For information, contact Travis Olds, Curator, Section of Minerals & Earth Sciences, at 412-622-6568 or oldst@carnegiemnh.org.

Previous Award Winners

2024 Michael J. Bainbridge
2023 Robert T. Downs, PhD.
2022 Willliam B. “Skip” Simmons, Jr., PhD.
2021 Barbara L. Dutrow, PhD.
2020 John C. Medici, PhD.
2019 John F. Rakovan, PhD.
2018 Dudley P. Blauwet
2017 W. Lesley Presmyk
2016 Anthony R. Kampf, PhD.
2015 George Harlow, PhD.
2014 Bryon N. Brookmyer
2013 Gloria A. Staebler
2012 George W. Robinson, PhD.
2011 Jeffrey E. Post, PhD.
2010 The Rochester Mineralogical Symposium
2009 Peter K.M. Megaw, PhD.
2008 Frank C. Hawthorne, PhD.
2007 Jeffrey A Scovil
2006 Richard C. Whiteman
2005 June Culp Zeitner
2004 Joel A. Bartsch, PhD.
2003 Eugene S. Meieran, ScD.
2002 Terry C. Wallace, Jr., PhD.
2001 Wendell E. Wilson, PhD.
2000 F. John Barlow, ScD.
1999 Sterling Hill Mining Museum
1998 Robert W. Jones
1997 Bryan K. Lees
1996 Cornelis (Kase) Klein, PhD.
1995 Marie E. Huizing
1994 The Mineralogical Record
1993 Cornelius S. Hurlbut, Jr., PhD.
1992 Carl A. Francis, PhD.
1991 Miguel A. Romero Sanchez, PhD.
1990 Paul E. Desautels
1989 Frederick H. Pough, PhD.
1988 John Sinkankas, DHL.
1987 The Tucson Gem & Mineral Society

Travis Olds is Curator of Minerals at Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Published March 6, 2026

November 26, 2025 by Erin Southerland

Remembering Bob Davidson

Bob Davidson shared what he loved. The long time Invertebrate Zoology Collection Manager at Carnegie Museum of Natural History died in his sleep on November 6, at the age of 77, five years after his formal retirement. For all those who knew him, news of his passing triggered a mental review of the subjects he shared with us through conversation, rant, written account, and mutual experience. In day-to-day life, Bob valued family, friends, classical music, theatre, literature, films, comedy, fine food, junk food, travel, the entire state of Vermont, a variety of fermented beverages, and, owing to his own service in Nepal, all fellow Peace Corps alumni.

Bob Davidson with the Invertebrate Zoology collection

As a scientist, and more specifically as an entomologist, Bob valued colleagues, well-curated museum collections, field work, written accounts of early field naturalists, anatomical information only accessible through high powered microscopes, functional headlamps, and the enormous family of ground dwelling beetles known collectively as carabids.

Some forty years ago, during a summer evening in the mountains of North Carolina, Bob demonstrated the connection between those last two categories. Along with Amy Henrici, then a Fossil Preparator for the Museum’s Section of Vertebrate Paleontology, and later section’s Collection Manager, I had accepted Bob’s invitation to assist him with beetle collecting in the Nantahala National Forest. The experience revealed how Bob’s passion for the tiny creatures he studied overrode consideration for decent meals. His dinner before our headlamp illuminated collecting foray in a forest understory of rhododendron consisted of two hamburgers, purchased many hours earlier in a lower elevation town, and re-heated on the dashboard of his aged Datsun by the windshield magnified rays of the setting sun.

In the dark woods Bob shared information beyond the need-to-know basics of how to distinguish our quarry, carabid beetles of the genus Scaphinotus, from any other nocturnal invertebrates we might encounter. Theoretically, according to his informal briefing, on any tree trunk we passed, the beam of our headlamps might reveal an example of the ongoing predator/prey interactions that have long shaped life on our planet. The dark, inch-long beetles we hoped to collect were snail eaters who frequently tracked their prey in trees by circling trunks to detect, and then resolutely follow, slime trails.

In the decades since, at science-promoting public events such as bioblitz surveys at city parks or behind-the-scenes programs at the Museum, I’ve often seen Bob take the same approach with people he’d just met, presenting the lives of overlooked creatures as endlessly interesting. In September 2019, Bob wrote an entertaining account about snail-eating beetles for the Museum’s blog. In re-reading this brief essay I can hear his voice and conjure the sounds and scents of a dark Appalachian mountain forest.

During Bob’s 40-year career at the Museum much of his fieldwork was conducted in locations far more exotic than North Carolina. For weeks, and on a few occasions months at a time, Bob was part of museum field crews in Cameroon, Ecuador, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Tiawan. In considering the commonality among such far-flung collecting locations, Bob had a ready answer. “Most of the sites were chosen for salvage collecting: places out of the way, not collected much by other institutions, often difficult to access, and already on the chopping block for habitat destruction.” These out-of-country collecting efforts added hundreds of thousands of specimens to the Museum’s invertebrate zoology collection, each an authentic information unit to inform future conservation decisions, as well as ecology, genetics, and population studies.

After his retirement Bob continued to make scientific contributions by identifying carabid beetles for the National Ecological Observatory Network, a National Science Foundation funded project. Another particularly noteworthy retirement contribution involved Bob’s writing skills. Following the death in 2021 of Dr. John E. Rawlins, Curator Emeritus of the Museum’s Section of Invertebrate Zoology, Bob collaborated with Assistant Curator James Fetzner to create an Annals of Carnegie Museum volume honoring the 33-year museum career of the scientist many people knew simply as Moth Man.

John was leader for many of the Museum’s insect collecting expeditions to foreign lands, and in recounting some of the harrowing experiences of those adventures, Bob shares his thoughts, excitement, amusement, and sometimes pure terror. Through this memorial publication, adventure stories first shared in Pittsburgh around pitchers of beer in Oakland barrooms are now accessible to curious digitally savvy readers via a few keyboard clicks. In recounting a long 1984 expedition to Cameroon, Bob describes how, in John’s company he frequently found himself in situations where it wasn’t clear how to react, closing this observation with a particularly powerful example. “Or arriving in Paris on our way home, and finding that while we were ensconced on the southwest face of the volcano that June, a deadly gas cloud escaped on the northeast face and flowed down over one of the villages, killing everyone.”

For Bob’s friends and colleagues his passing has left us without a clear reaction pattern. In this situation, reading some of what he wrote to honor a friend and colleague is a positive step.

Pat McShea is Educator Emeritus at Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Published November 26, 2025.

November 12, 2025 by Erin Southerland

Making Sense of Fossils from a Maryland Cave: A Carnegie Contribution

by Pat McShea

cave bear skeleton mount — In Cenozoic Hall the mounted skeleton of a Cave Bear from France lends perspective to a backing mural of large Ice Age mammals. Many of the museum’s Ice Age fossils were found closer to home, including some from a cave outside Cumberland, Maryland.

For paleontologists who specialize in interpreting fossil evidence from the Pleistocene, deposits in some Appalachian caves offer windows into the period of the past commonly referred to as the Ice Age. A recent Smithsonian Scholarly Press publication summarizing the discovery, collection, preparation, and interpretation of fossils from a cave in western Maryland strongly supports the window-into-the-past metaphor. The 305-page volume, a product of eleven co-authors, bears the long descriptive title, Middle Pleistocene Cumberland Bone Cave Local Fauna, Allegeny County, Maryland: A Systematic Revision and Paleoecological Interpretation of the Irvingtonian, Middle Appalachians, USA. Remarkably, this chronicle of fossil collecting expeditions mounted by five different organizations over more than a century is dedicated to John Edward Guilday, a Curator at Carnegie Museum of Natural History from 1951 until 1982, and the field crew of museum staff and volunteers who for decades assisted his research efforts.

The collective nature of knowledge presented in the publication makes the dedication particularly appropriate. The fauna list for the site’s vertebrate fossils alone includes 109 creatures ranging in size from mole to mastodon, and the deposition of these remains, over a period of several thousand years, happened more than 700,000 years ago. Deciphering information from such a rich fossil assemblage requires a detailed understanding of other fossil-rich caves, and Guilday’s deep knowledge of findings from sinkholes in Pennsylvania and caves in Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia, enabled him to recognize and interpret evidence for such past regional events as range extensions and contractions for various species and repeated changes in climate.

black and white photo of John Guilday — *John Edward Guilday in an undated photograph by his wife Alice Guilday.*

The inclusion of the Carnegie Museum field crew in the dedication is particularly apt because Guilday never visited Cumberland Bone Cave or many other sites he studied. His life and career, which included serving in a battle-tested US Army infantry unit during World War II, were immeasurably altered in 1952 when at the age of twenty-seven he contracted polio. The virus tremendously reduced his strength, necessitating the periodic use of an iron lung in his home for the rest of his life. Guilday’s visits to the halls and offices of his established workplace were rare during the next three decades, but with the ceaseless assistance of his wife Alice, the creation of a functional paleo lab in the basement of the couple’s home, and the physical and intellectual contributions of a tireless field crew, he earned a reputation as one of the research strengths of Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

In making a thorough case for the importance of Cumberland Bone Cave to our understanding of past mid-Appalachian environments, the new publication also realistically presents much of the paleontological work at the site as a salvage operation. Little is known with certainty about how the cave, a multi-chambered cavity within a limestone ridge a few miles northwest of Cumberland, was discovered or explored. The story of its recognition as a fossil site is, however, well documented. Beginning in 1910, the Western Maryland Railroad cut a passage for a new line of tracks through the cave-bearing limestone ridge, destroying a significant portion of the subterranean feature. In 1912, when fossilized bone found among excavated rubble was presented to a paleontologist in Washington, D.C. at what is now the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, professional fossil collecting efforts were quickly organized.

black and white photo of cave entrance — *View of cave entrance on the south side of the railroad cut from the north side. Source: 1913 photograph by Raymond William Armbruster, Smithsonian Institution Archives.*

A well-illustrated 15-page chapter chronologically profiles the subsequent paleontological investigations of still intact cave chambers, including the intermittent work by a Carnegie Museum of Natural History team between 1964 and 2006. The summary hints at the physical challenges of work in the cave’s tight quarters, notes the cooperation of the railroad company on several occasions when heavy equipment was required for excavation, and emphasizes the current importance of determining exactly where, within this railroad bisected site, particular crews collected fossils. This tally of organized human efforts, along with later chapters listings the fossils collected from the site, raises the very same question that puzzled dozens of investigating paleontologists: How did the remains of such a varied set of ancient creatures come to be deposited in Cumberland Bone Cave?

The author team presents three scenarios. 1) For creatures such as bats, bears, wolves, and peccaries, who used portions of the cave for dens or hibernation chambers, a natural death within their shelter could have eventually led to fossilization. 2) Vertical fissures connecting cave chambers to the ground surface above them functioned as pit traps, occasionally capturing creatures unlikely to otherwise visit the cave. 3) In actions ranging from roosting owls coughing-up pellets of vole bones to wolves bringing larger prey to waiting pups, predators who relied upon the cave for shelter repeatedly brought prey remains into the system. A fourth scenario, involving bones washed into the cave, was rejected because recovered fossils lack evidence of water wear and sand and gravel are absent in cave matrix.

The publication’s clarity in explaining ancient deposition and other complex puzzles related to Cumberland Bone Cave will hopefully serve an audience outside Pleistocene Paleontology. The physical labor, disciplined thought, and wide sharing of information outlined in the narrative and referenced in a 23-page biography, make the work a landmark example for any teacher or student interested in the methods of science. Fortunately, the publication is widely available. Copies can be electronically downloaded for free from Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press.

cover of a book about Cumberland Bone Cave

Cumberland Bone Cave is no longer an active research site, but the fenced entrance of its main entrance draws the attention of bicyclists passing near the four-mile mark of the 150-mile Great Allegheny Passage trail.

Pat McShea is Educator Emeritus at Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Hopping Into the Bornean Rainforest

by Rohan Mandayam

As an aspiring field biologist, I long harbored several dreams that I hoped would come to fruition sometime in my post-undergraduate career. Among those goals was conducting research on frogs, which have fascinated me since a young age. I also dreamt of working in the field and studying tropical ecosystems, as the biodiversity found in the tropics is rivaled by no other region on Earth. Imagine my delight when I discovered that I would be spending two months in Borneo as a research assistant to Dr. Jennifer Sheridan, Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Curator of Amphibians and Reptiles, studying frogs in tropical rainforest streams. June couldn’t arrive fast enough.

lush, rocky stream — *One of our primary forest study streams, located in Ranau, Sabah, Malaysia.*

The rainforests of Borneo are among the oldest in the world, known for their staggering concentration of biodiversity across species groups. With dipterocarp trees stretching over 80 meters into the canopy, orangutans rustling through the foliage, and crystal-clear streams rushing through the understory, my “office” for the summer was quite a sight to behold. Inhabiting those pristine streams and the forests surrounding them are Borneo’s nearly 200 species of frogs. In a region home to hornbills, clouded leopards, and one of the world’s most recognizable great apes, the choice to study small amphibians may not seem intuitive. However, frogs are an excellent study system for answering a wide breadth of biological questions, partly due to their high sensitivity to fluctuations in environmental conditions. Due to that sensitivity, studying frogs provides scientists with insights into the impacts of human-caused climate change and other anthropogenic factors on global ecosystems. Furthermore, amphibians remain the vertebrate group most threatened with extinction, and understanding amphibian ecology is critical to ensuring the conservation of those species into the future.

Our research this summer had two main focal areas. The first involved surveying frog populations in streams in different land-use types: primary forest, secondary forest, and agricultural land. We conducted visual encounter surveys of streams in each of those land-use types, noting each individual frog we saw and capturing it if possible. Carefully capturing the individuals allowed us to mark the frog (to establish whether we were recapturing individuals in subsequent surveys) and determine the sex, snout-vent length, and mass before releasing them. Repeated surveys on each of our study streams provided us with insight into the species richness and abundance of each frog community and enabled us to compare potential differences in our study variables across land-use types.

The surveys presented several enjoyable learning curves. We identified all frog species we found using their scientific names, so I had to learn taxonomy for the first time, butchering many Latin pronunciations along the way. I also learned to use specific features of an individual frog, including toe pads, hand and foot webbing, and parotid gland shape, to distinguish between easily confused species. Through experience, I began to recognize where certain species preferred to sit or perch, which ranged from the rocky shoreline to branches several meters above the water. And, through many ill-fated attempts to capture the more jumpy members of the anuran (frog) community, I realized which frogs merited a more slow and cautious approach before diving in to grab them.

small orange frog on a large green leaf — *The cinnamon tree frog (*Nyctixalus pictus) is one of the most strikingly colored frogs in Borneo.

Our second research focus for this summer was to record as many frog calls as we could from each of our study streams. While we hope to use these recordings to analyze potential differences in frog calling behaviors across land-use types, this work also contributed to the larger purpose of growing the existing library of frog calls that exists for the island of Borneo. An eventual goal of Dr. Sheridan’s is to use call recordings to train AI models to identify which frogs are calling in a given “soundscape,” or audio recording, taken from a natural space. This would allow researchers to gauge the diversity of frog populations in a given region without having to perform intensive survey work, saving time and resources in the urgent quest to quantify amphibian biodiversity.

Call recording nights also provided numerous opportunities for me to practice the virtue of patience. There are few better lessons in biding your time than staring directly into the eyes of a frog that immediately ceased to call when the recorder was switched on but had been chirping away mere seconds before. On one memorable night, I sat next to a giant river toad (Phrynoidis juxtasper) for over half an hour as we enjoyed a peaceful and resolutely call-free silence. Fortunately, I managed to record numerous more cooperative individuals during my time in the field.

The final facet of our field work involved collecting a limited number of the frogs we encountered at our study streams. These frogs were anesthetized and prepared as specimens to be taken to either the Carnegie Museum of Natural History or to Sabah Parks, one of our local collaborators. Removing animals from the wild and putting them down definitely weighed on me, and I never took that work lightly. However, there are several reasons for collecting frogs in this manner. Collections-based research on frog body size (one of the most important features of a biological organism), specifically regarding whether the body size of a given species has changed over time, is only possible via analysis of preserved specimens of that species spanning a long time scale. Dr. Sheridan recently collaborated on a study that used museum specimens of the Fowler’s toad (Anaxyrus fowleri) to demonstrate that increases in precipitation and temperature between 1931 and 1998 were associated with decreased A. fowleri body size, an important finding given the drastic climatic changes that continue to occur globally today. In addition to its research value, collection allows scientists to document, for posterity, a small portion of the life on Earth from a given spatial and temporal location. This record has the potential to be used to answer future biological questions that we don’t even know to ask yet!

horned frog in a lush green environment — *A juvenile Bornean horned frog (*Megophrys nasuta). Horned frogs are easily recognizable by the flaps of skin (“horns”) protruding above their eyes.

My time working with our amazing team has sadly ended, but the field season will continue for several more weeks as my colleagues wrap up surveys and call recording in our third study region. It is impossible for me to reflect on those months without feeling incredibly grateful for the opportunity to participate in this project. There were so many small moments of joy: my teammate capturing a frog perched on an out-of-reach branch using only a five-meter bamboo stick and gentle coaxing; negotiating stream access with a village leader for two days, only to humorously realize we had a miscommunication about which body of water we actually wished to study; realizing that I had crossed the threshold of seeing over 50 species of frogs in my time in Borneo. Even after two months in the field, I continued to observe fauna I hadn’t seen previously, from river otters to trogons to enormous stick insects. The sheer wonder of experiencing such incredible natural spaces has reaffirmed my goal of ensuring their protection into the future. With Southeast Asia possessing the highest deforestation rates of anywhere in the world, it is more critical than ever to understand the biodiversity that we as conservationists seek to protect. This field season may be coming to a close, but the work is far from over.

Rohan Mandayam was a research assistant on Dr. Jennifer Sheridan‘s field team in Borneo, Malaysia.

2025 Rector Christmas Bird Count Results

by Annie Lindsay

Total 2025 Tally

Total Individuals: 4,375

Total Species: 64

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Ronald A. Sloto Wins 2025 Carnegie Mineralogical Award

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