National Museums Liverpool Blog - zoology

Have you been catching the latest tweets?

Our Public Lecture Series on Thursday afternoons at World Museum got off to a flying start last week. It continues today, with two great topics: at 2pm - The Recovery of a Fragment of an Egyptian Pyramid; and 2.30pm - Raywatch: Angling for Data. The talks will take place in the Treasure House Theatre and admission is free. See you later!

Have we ever had a 'frog blog' story on our blog before? I don't think we have! To continue our series of blogs celebrating the World Museum's 150th anniversary, we've got some news from our resident frog fanatic and Aquarist, Phil Lewis. Read on to find out what he's currently working on at the museum...

Save the Frogs is an international team of scientists, educators, policymakers and naturalists dedicated to protecting the worlds amphibian species: the frogs, toads, newts, salamanders and ceacilians.  It is the first and only public charity dedicated exclusively to amphibian conservation.

Phil with one of his froggy friends in Honduras.

Worldwide frogs and other amphibians have been declining at an alarming rate with nearly one third of amphibian species threatened with extinction.  This means that out of the 6,485 species of amphibian on our planet up to 2000 of them may go extinct before the end of the 21st century.

Save The Frogs Day (30 April 2010) is now an internationally recognised day aimed at raising awareness about the global amphibian extinction crisis.  I think it's great that events and activities are being held around the globe to highlight this problem and make it common knowledge as soon as possible! 

To join in, I will be organising and coordinating lots of Save The Frogs events at World Museum from Friday 30 April – Monday 3 May. Activities will include three talks featuring live tropical frogs and a chance to take part in a quiz, with prizes to win, at the end.  There will be an amphibian trail around the museum with more prizes to win, along with badge making, face painting, colouring and drawing activities. You can also enter an art contest with the best frog picture winning a prize.  All prizes were purchased from savethefrogs.com where the proceeds will go towards amphibian conservation projects.

My aim is to give people a better understanding of why it so important to conserve the worlds amphibians both for humans and for the planet's eco-systems.

Thursday afternoons are never going to be the same again…

I am really excited about our new Spring 2010 Public Lecture Series, which kicks off tomorrow (April 22). It’s being held at the Treasure House Theatre, World Museum, and features a selection of subjects from our museums and galleries’ collections and exhibitions, from archaeology to contemporary slavery.

For the next four Thursdays, our curators will be talking about some of the fascinating things they have researched.

Tomorrow’s topics are Researching 10th to 16th-century Caribbean wood sculpture; Collecting contemporary slavery objects for the International Slavery Museum; and The Huxley Hoard of Viking Silver. Each talk lasts about 25 minutes.

Future highlights include Toxteth Deer Park; Liverpool's court housing and the history of World Museum Liverpool, as part of the venue's 150th anniversary celebrations.

The public lecture series is admission free and runs on Thursdays 22 April - 13 May from 2pm-3.15pm. Hope to see you there!

Here is Curator of Vertebrate Zoology, Clem Fisher, to tell us about the World Museum's latest live video link up with down under...

I presented a talk at the Museum & Art Gallery Northern Territory, Australia recently and still got home to Liverpool in time for tea! New Media Manager, Phil Phillips, had set up a video link for me as part of the Australian launch of my 360 page monograph on vertebrate zoology specimens collected at Port Essington, Cobourg Peninsula, on the north coast of Australia. The monograph is based on manuscripts written by the English collector John Gilbert. He visited Port Essington from 1840-1841 and collected hundreds of specimens there, many which were new to science. A good number of these are now in World Museum, along with specimens collected at Port Essington by the 13th Earl of Derby's collector, John MacGillivray.
 
Port Essington, founded in 1838, was the first base of the British Navy in north Australia, from where the British were able to annex the whole continent. It was nearer Singapore than Sydney. The site is also important from the natural history point of view, as more than 8% of all forms of Australian birds and mammals were first collected there.

I have been working on the life of John Gilbert for 35 years, which is two years longer than he was alive. About 50 people attended the talk in Australia, including Hugo Leschen, the Director of Museums, Arts and Culture in the Northern Territory. I was pleased to hear many voices of support for the ongoing work on this project.

Below you can see me onscreen in Liverpool (with a type specimen of the Gouldian Finch from our collections) and the editor of the monograph, MAGNT curator Richard Willan in Darwin, Australia.

Live video link up between the two museums