Dr. Bronwyn W. Williams @BWWilliamsLab@qoto.org

Sure, sure, here's a cool mollusk for #MolluskMonday, but look 👀at all the amazing organisms growing on it! Tunicates, barnacles, worm(?) tubes? Oh my!

Formerly in the Duke Marine Lab Collection as DUML 4420, collected 12 Aug. 1981 by the crew of the R/V Dan Moore off North Carolina via trawl.

#macrophotography #museum #museumspecimen #molluscmonday

I dropped a photo of a decorator crab from the Collection into PowerPoint and was NOT expecting the suggested Alt Text.

I can’t argue with it, though…

#crabs #crustacean #photography #museum #museums #collection

This is one of my favorite #crayfish species in North Carolina, not because of how beautiful it is, but because of its etymology. This is the Broad River Stream Crayfish, Cambarus lenati, named after David Lenat, who worked with the NC Division of Water Quality before shifting to consulting. I had the good fortune of meeting and scheming projects with Dave before he passed - way too soon - in 2016. He was one of the most genuinely kind and curious people I have ever met. #crustmas

This is the crayfish I dug that day. It’s a gorgeous form of Cambarus reduncus, the Sickle Crayfish. Using an integrated approach, we have discovered a lot of “hidden” diversity in North Carolina and South Carolina in this group of crayfishes (Depressicambarus), which includes both secondary and primary burrowing species. Finding the animals can be the most challenging aspect of this work! 📸 Michael A. Perkins, NCWRC. #crustmas #crayfish #crustacea

Last summer, Dr. Adrian Smith joined me in the field to capture video of the excavation of an undescribed species of burrowing crayfish. Three hours of digging (we were in the middle of a dry spell), untold numbers of mosquito bites, and a wee bit of caked on mud later I got one. And Adrian’s footage of it was magical; check out the video on his AntLab YouTube channel here:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rBnRKcpK8Rs&feature=youtu.be

#crustmas #crayfish #crustacea #fieldwork #curatorlife

Here’s a photo that Mike took that will always have a special place in my crayfish and worm-riddled noggin: Cambarus franklini, the South Mountains Crayfish. This was the first species that Mike, me, and our colleague TR Russ (NCWRC) teamed up to describe in 2019 (Zootaxa 4568 (3): 520-532). It’s a NC narrow endemic. This was our first description together, but will certainly not be the last! #crayfish #crustmas #25DaysofCrustmas #crustacea

Several years ago, my colleague and collaborator, Michael A. Perkins (North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission) put together a slick specimen photo setup that we have been using to capture publication-quality images of the crayfishes of North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and beyond. The imaging “torch” is now being passed to me; I can only hope to do a fraction as well as Mike! 😬
Regardless, I just want to show off some of Mike’s photos.
#25DaysofCrustmas #crayfish #crustmas

If you are interested in our holdings, please reach out to me and/or Megan McCuller. What questions can be addressed using these collections? Where to even begin? WE begin by getting the word out that we exist. We are but one collection. Think of the power of networks of natural history collections (e.g., NCMNS+Virginia Museum of Natural History+Florida Museum+Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History+etc! #museum #museumcollections #scicomm #crustacea #curation

Although the collections at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences are housed behind the scenes, out of the public eye, they are NOT top secret! The NCMNS Non-molluscan Invertebrates Collection contains one of the largest & most historically important collections of marine invertebrates in - and of - the Mid-Atlantic & Southeastern U.S. Our online presence (e.g., on GBIF) is minimal at present for 🤯 *reasons*, but that WILL change.

Recently, Megan McCuller (NCMNS Collections Manager of Non-molluscan Invertebrates, aka my partner in ‘crime’) and I spoke with Trista Talton, staff writer for Coastal Review. What came from it was a wonderful article that just dropped today.
https://coastalreview.org/2022/12/spineless-specimens-may-hold-clues-for-coastal-researchers/
TL;DR - Museum collections are an invaluable and powerful resource.

Here’s the reported “fiddler crab on steroids.” Now, although not a fiddler - it’s a blue land crab, Cardisoma guanhumi - I will admit that I would be startled hearing scratching at my office door, opening it to find this not-small asymmetrically-clawed crustacean. A museum curator’s job is never dull. #crustmas #crustacea #crustaceans #crabs #collection #CollectionsCare #digitization #25daysofcrustmas #malacostraca #museumspecimen #decapoda

Every so often we stumble across a specimen record that makes us laugh for days. This is one of them. We recently acquired the South Carolina DNR’s Southeast Regional Taxonomic Center marine collection, and are working to integrate the metadata into our database. #crabs #crustacea #crustaceans #MuseumCollections #museum #CollectionsCare #curation #crustmas #25daysofcrustmas #malacostraca

My lab is interested in sharing what we do behind the scenes, research and collections. We are stewards of a wonderful biological resource and are looking for ways to make it accessible. Here are some of the things we are doing - some far more slowly than others - to this end: #photography #3dmodeling #3dprinting #animation (and ultimately #gamedesign ) all in addition to digitizing data, and finding ways to tell the stories that underlie each and every specimen. #museum

I am Research Curator of Non-molluscan Invertebrates at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA. That’s a mouthful, I know, but by way of explanation, I oversee a large hyper-diverse (>25 phyla) natural history/research collection AND have my own research program, focusing mainly on crayfishes and two groups of obligate crayfish symbionts (branchiobdellidans aka crayfish worms and entocytherid ostracods).