LSUS Museum of Life Sciences:

Snakes and spiders and insects, Oh, My!

(LSUS to mark Freeman & Custis Red River Expedition bicentennial)

Julianna Petchak
The average person would likely go bonkers living around some 60,000 snakes, spiders, insects, birds and other creepy-crawlies. The average person doesn’t consciously realize that all those and more are lurking around out there every time he or she steps outside.

All those wonders are the stuff the LSUS Museum of Life Sciences is made of: more than 60,000 specimens of plants and animals indigenous to northwestern Louisiana. The museum, an LSUS nonprofit outreach, is a scientific research and teaching unit comprising extensive research collections of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, insects, spiders, crayfish, mollusks and vascular plants. Most of the specimens are cataloged in the museum’s computer database.

Dr. Laurence M. “Mac” Hardy, professor of biology emeritus and director of the museum, says that a scientific collection such as this is much less expensive to put together and maintain than a display museum and “provides information and data that can be used in scientific research in publications and journals and can eventually reach the textbook level education.”

The museum’s mission is to build and maintain research collections for scientific study by any research scientist, worldwide. “Within a week,” Hardy said, “we will have two ladies coming from Canada that will be studying turtles.”

The museum documents the regional diversity of plants and animals and makes its holdings, which are in excellent condition, available to students, faculty and visiting scientists and to other museums and institutions through an exchange system. The Bulletin of the Museum of Life Sciences is distributed worldwide.

The museum and the Department of Biological Sciences include facilities for study and research of virtually any aspect of biology. Several community groups, such as the Bird Study Group, the Macintosh user group and the Red River Wetlands Coalition, use the museum, where programs are also presented to school groups. Hardy says groups can be shown examples of the specimens and how they are used. “In doing so, we reach a much deeper educational level with the public than you would just with an ‘Ooh, gosh look at that’ setup,” he said.

Several classes in the biology department at LSUS also use the museum. Hardy says sometimes specimens are taken to a classroom, but most often they will have a class meeting in the museum. Some lab classes are also held in the museum.

Museum researchers regularly collaborate with the broad regional efforts of the Red River Watershed Management Institute headquartered at LSUS. University researchers also work with federal and state agencies on site-specific projects such as research on particular species in the Kisatchie National Forest.

Grants and contracts have been secured to conduct research for agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the Loui-siana Department of Environmental Quality and many other organizations interested in documenting the flora and fauna of northwestern Louisiana. Regular relationships and linkages with other regional resource centers enable sharing of expertise and data. The museum is a major repository of scientific specimens in the region and data from the specimen collections will form the baseline database for future decisions relating to biotic changes in the region.

The museum not only supports scientific research projects, but also is an asset to educate the public about biodiversity and resource management. Museum researchers are active in community outreach through organizations such as the Bird Study Group, Native Plant Society, Sierra Club, Ozark Society, Audubon Society and the Red River Wetlands Coalition.

The museum offers special opportunities to enhance the integration of research and education by providing research training for students participating in field and lab work with museum-associated faculty. Students in the fields of biology, ecology and environmental science can benefit from demonstrations of advanced field collection techniques used by museum researchers. Upper-level undergraduates and graduate students can receive payment to participate in specific research projects.