Transcript
Jennifer Berglund 00:04
Welcome to HMSC Connects!, where we go behind the scenes of four Harvard museums to explore the connections between us, our big, beautiful world, and even what lies beyond. My name is Jennifer Berglund, part of the exhibits team here at the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture, and I’ll be your host. Today, I’m speaking with Adam Baldinger, the Curatorial Associate and Collections Manager of Invertebrate Zoology here at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. I was curious how he became interested in invertebrates in the first place and the meandering path that brought him into the museum collections. Here he is. Adam Baldinger, welcome to the show.
Adam Baldinger 01:01
Good to be here.
Jennifer Berglund 01:07
Your adventures in science began with a small handheld microscope. Tell me that story.
Adam Baldinger 01:15
When I was quite young, my parents had given me things such as binoculars or even a handheld microscope, and I remember carrying that handheld microscope and a case on my belt around with me everywhere I went. And we lived out in a more foresty area in central Connecticut, so I was oftentimes playing around little ponds or streams or in the woods around my house, and at every opportunity, I had to look at something under that microscope, I took advantage of that. Most of the time, I had no idea what I was looking at, and I realized that the really small things, were interesting to me – but I also quickly realized that larger things like garter snakes, certainly, were something that I was not too fond of. So it was a lot of fun — I remember looking at things, even drops of water or little animals that may have been in that water, or even at the surface of a penny or something might get under that microscope, so I remember doing that as much as I could.
Jennifer Berglund 02:12
What was it about the little things?
Adam Baldinger 02:14
There were things that I couldn’t see with my eye. I knew they were there, and there was something about them that interested me and I remember just wanting to learn more about them. Obviously, seeing birds and other animals around me that you could study without using microscopes or other pieces of equipment, and I just was curious as to what was in those areas, and that water and leaf litter that was around my house and things like that.
Jennifer Berglund 02:39
Later on, you went to school to study biology. Do you think that was really the thing that inspired you to go into the field?
Adam Baldinger 02:47
I think it was just the natural world around me that intrigued me and I wanted to learn more about the things that were living around me. I think, be it a little puffball fungi or things that were growing on leaves, they were just of interest to me. I think it kind of led me in that direction. I’m not sure if there were – ultimately those really young days of exploring the forest and woods around my house.
Jennifer Berglund 03:13
Eventually, you became interested in invertebrates. What was it about them that originally intrigued you?
Adam Baldinger 03:22
Invertebrates are a group of animals that one would call that lack of backbone and it’s essentially the lack of vertebral column. So many invertebrates like insects or crabs or lobsters or sponges or corals – these are all different types of invertebrates — basically, animals that lack a backbone. I decided to go to college. I ended up at Eastern Connecticut State University where I thought I would pursue a degree in Medical Technology. The spring semester of my freshman year, I had to take a course called Organismal Biology that was taught by Dr. Michael Gable, and in that course, we covered everything from bacteria to humans, and we talked about different organisms in lecture but also saw them in lab. We observed these specimens in jars or in petri dishes. In those days, we didn’t have videos, or we didn’t have YouTube videos of all these different animals that we can see today. They weren’t very common. I realized that I was kind of interested in those particular animals in those jars, but after the class ended, and a few days later, we left for Bermuda where I took another course, an Island Biology course also taught by Mike Gable, and we would collect live in vertebrates bring them back to the lab. Then I began to see some of the animals that were living compared to the animals that I saw just a few weeks ago in lab and ultimately, I think it was these animals called Caprellids or skeleton shrimp. They’re actually a type of amphipod. Seeing them alive and doing what they do – it just intrigued me and I was like, “Wow, I would need to really look more into, study more about these different types of invertebrates.” Jumping ahead a few semesters, also at Eastern Connecticut State University, I ended up working in Mike Gable’s lab, and my first role in that lab was to transfer specimens that were preserved in methanol into ethanol. And I had to pick up every animal, every piece of animal, and put them in one jar to the next. I started asking questions, “So what are these things?” It turns out, they were amphipods that Mike Gable had been studying. Sooner or later, I realized I was involved in a research project with him, where we were looking to describe the females of an amphipod species from Bermuda in which only the males were known. In order to do this type of work, we had to travel to the Peabody Museum of Natural History where I met my colleague, Eric Lazo-Wasem, who actually is the Collections Manager of Invertebrate Zoology there. So, the Peabody Museum of Natural History is a sister institution, if you will, to the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and while there, Eric was showing me specimens in their collection so we could compare to the animals that we had that I was studying and Mike Gable’s lab. And sooner or later, when I began to see other invertebrates in the department, and all the different types of animals that were on the shelves, and the things that he would tell me about interesting stories about those particular animals, I remember thinking specifically to myself, “Maybe I’m going to have Eric’s job someday.” And I think that’s kind of the beginning for me in invertebrate zoology. It turns out that Mike, Eric, and I are still colleagues today. You know, what kind of intrigued me about the invertebrates is what made them unique. How are they different from each other? And I quickly realized that I had a keen eye for being able to tell the minute differences between different species of, let’s say, amphipods, or other invertebrates, and so that was the intriguing part to me, is being able to differentiate different species based upon these minute characters that would define these different taxa or different groups of invertebrates.
Jennifer Berglund 06:55
What kinds of features are we talking about?
Adam Baldinger 06:57
Oftentimes, when you’re distinguishing or determining differences between, let’s say, two sister species of amphipod, it oftentimes is the positioning of spines, or the positioning of certain cilia (these are hair-like structures that are found in different parts of the animal), sometimes the general morphology of the body itself, sometimes pigmentation patterns, differences, of course, between males and females. These are some of the differences that we’re investigating to determine these different species.
Jennifer Berglund 07:30
Eventually, you decide to go to grad school, and what were you originally going to grad school for?
Adam Baldinger 07:34
Marine Biology.
Jennifer Berglund 07:35
And so in the fall of 1989, you’re just starting grad school in San Francisco, and you might say, an earthquake changed your life or shook your world? What happened, and how did it set you on the course that you’re on currently?
Adam Baldinger 07:50
It sure did. This earthquake did affect my life dramatically. I just drove across the country to start grad school at San Francisco State University. Just within a few weeks or so in mid-October, we experienced the Loma Prieta earthquake, which affected the entire Bay Area. I was in my dorm, beginning to get ready to watch the World Series between the Oakland A’s and San Francisco Giants, and suddenly, I got knocked down onto the floor. I had no idea what was going on. My roommates came to me and said we gotta get out. So I grabbed my keys and my wallet, and next thing you know, we’re outside of my dorm. Turns out, my dorm was ultimately condemned, and I was essentially homeless, essentially homeless for a week or so, and it turns out that during that week, there were a lot of people that were obviously affected by this earthquake, and so not having to go to classes or whatever, I found myself at a building next door to my dorm that housed many senior citizens, and I spent a few days here and there helping some of these people clean up their apartments in which virtually all of their life has fallen onto the floor. So that was pretty traumatic to me, and I wasn’t overly concerned about getting back to that physics class, for example. And so ultimately, what I decided to do was take a semester off so I went back to Connecticut, and then in June of that year, I married my wonderful wife, Sandra. And then together, that following fall, we headed back to San Francisco, where not only I was able to continue with my graduate degree – she was also working towards her Pharmacology degree, as well. Being there, I had to work, and so naturally, I reached out to my colleague, Eric, and he put me in contact with a colleague – a herpetologist in fact, at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco – and lo and behold, I arrived in the Department of Invertebrate Zoology and Geology at the California Academy of Sciences, and they had a full-time job opening. I applied for that position, and within weeks, I was working under an NSF grant to digitize their nudibranch mollusk collection. Nudibranchs – oftentimes they’re referred to as sea slugs, but they’re a type of mollusk. Many of them are shell-less mollusks. They live in the marine environment, mostly intertidal, and some really beautiful coloration associated with all these different types of nudibranchs. Ultimately, this earthquake, a really horrible situation dramatically affected my course and life, and ultimately my career in a museum setting.
Jennifer Berglund 10:21
How did you end up back on the East Coast?
Adam Baldinger 10:24
I completed my Master’s Degree at San Francisco State University, continuing to work at the California Academy of Sciences. And that was about five years, and when my wife finished her degree, we had decided to move back to Connecticut, so we left San Francisco, right back in Connecticut. And for a period of time, while she was working on her fellowship, I was bartending, and I was an adjunct faculty member teaching various labs at various universities. But after two years or so, my wife applied for a job up here in Boston, at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, and so, having the opportunity to travel to Boston, she said, “Well, come with me.” And I asked, “Well, what am I going to do?” And she says, “Get a job.” So I arrived at the MCZ, the Museum of Comparative Zoology, to meet a colleague whom I’d known via email, Ardis Johnston, actually my predecessor here at the MCZ. She wasn’t here, but the curator was, Dr. Damhnait McHugh, and I spoke with her for a few minutes, told her about my situation, and told her a little bit about my past history working at the California Academy of Sciences. This was a Friday, and then the following Monday, I received a call from Ardis, if I recall, who offered me a part-time position in IZ or Invertebrate Zoology at the MCZ. That was April, or so, and I was still teaching, so I had another few weeks left to finish the semester, and in that period of time, I got a call from HR here in OEB, and Mary Reynolds asked me to apply for a Curatorial Associate position in Malacology. I came up back to the MCZ, interviewed with Ken Boss, and was ultimately offered a full-time position as the Curatorial Associate in malacology, and June of 1997 is when I started here at the MCZ. Malacology is the study of mollusks, so snails, octopus, squid, scallops – things like that. So here at the MCZ, the malacology department is separate – its own department – as opposed to, say, the entomology collection and the rest of the invertebrates and vertebrate zoology. At some point down the line, you ended up managing both the invertebrate zoology collections and the malacology collections. How in the world did that come about? When I arrived at the MCZ, I had a part-time position offered to me in Invertebrate Zoology, but I also had a full-time position offered to me as Collections Manager or Curatorial Associate of Malacology. I had a hard time deciding which position to take, but naturally the full-time position was something that I needed to do, but I felt like I was obligated to work in IZ, considering they were the first department to offer me the position. So for two years, I worked one day a week in Invertebrate Zoology and four days a week as the Collections Manager of Malacology. Eventually, it got to be a little much, and so I just stayed as the Collections Manager of Malacology. And then in 2008, Artdis retired, and I applied for the Curatorial Associate position in Invertebrate Zoology. Fortunately, I was offered that position, and so since 2008 till just last year, I was managing both departments as a Curatorial Associate. So, it turns out, it was actually good timing, but after 25 years of managing malacology, there was a decision to actually replace my role as the Collections Manager of Malacology, and so today – now I’m just the Collections Manager or Curatorial Associate of Invertebrate Zoology.
Jennifer Berglund 13:54
How did you juggle both of those things for that amount of time? That seems like a lot.
Adam Baldinger 13:58
Yeah, it was a lot, but you know, I managed and I was involved in many, many projects, but unfortunately, I was only able to touch the surface of many of these projects. So now I’m not managing both departments, I’m able to get into some of the deeper aspects of these various projects that I’ve been working on. It wasn’t easy to manage both departments, but it really was the people working in the departments that helped me do what we needed to do and get the job done.
Jennifer Berglund 14:26
What are these projects that you’re able to get involved in now that you’re just with Invertebrate Zoology?
Adam Baldinger 14:33
One of my bucket list things to do as a collections manager or a museum professional was to get an NSF grant to digitize or do something with our collections. So, the first thing I was able to do was get involved in writing an NSF grant, and turns out, it was funded. And these grants that we applied for, jointly with other institutions, were to digitize or catalog or computerize our database – however you want to call it – specific aspects of our various collections that haven’t been recorded in our database or the data has been captured in our database. So one of the major projects was to, first of all, for me, is to get a grant, and turns out, I got three of them, and we had concurrent grants going on. These are some of the deeper projects that I should say are projects that are going on in the MCZ over and above the typical responsibilities and things that we do on a daily basis. What’s the importance of digitizing a collection? Can you talk about that a little bit? Specimens that we have in our collections have been around, in some cases for 100-120-130 years, and they’re on a shelf, and today, myself or others may just realize that specimen is on the shelf, but no one else knows it’s there until we actually digitize it. And I say digitize, what we do is we take the collection data – who collected it, when it was collected, where it was collected – and we add that information to our database, and then that data can be shared by people at Harvard, but actually from people all over the world who are interested in studying biodiversity, ecology, or need to have data of particular species of specimens that they’re researching. So it’s important to get this data into a database so that it can be used by other people and other researchers. Of course, you know, sitting on a shelf, and here at Harvard, at the MCZ, this is great, but it’s actually the other information, the data associated with it that we want to share with other researchers so they can continue and use our specimens for their research.
Jennifer Berglund 16:34
There are a number of uncataloged specimens in the collection. Can you explain why that is?
Adam Baldinger 16:40
Cataloging is a situation where we assign a unique number to a specimen or a specimen lot. That is a record of where that animal was collected, when it was collected, and what the taxonomic name is, and so there are many specimens in our collection that haven’t been identified yet. So there’s a missing piece of information, so therefore, it may not be cataloged. There’s many specimens in our collection, where we have hundreds and hundreds of these, and it just takes time to capture the data associated with this particular specimen, and either catalog it in the old days by handwriting ledger, or nowadays, putting the information into a data spreadsheet. So capturing historical data, where we have to take information from a label that’s inside a jar takes much longer than if we were to get specimens today from a researcher that’s going to provide us a spreadsheet with data identifications, coordinate data, and we can, basically, upload that to our database much easier than trying to read a label from someone who wrote this label 100 years ago, and their handwriting is bad, or the labels deteriorated a little bit.
Jennifer Berglund 17:50
And also the names, the species names, change as we get more information about relationships between different animals. Sometimes the cataloged name does not match the actual name, it’ll be in a completely different genus or a different family. You can’t count on the labels from 100 years ago.
Adam Baldinger 18:09
Absolutely. But there’s information on that label that is usable, and we could take that taxonomic name that, in fact, may be outdated, or has been a synonym of something else. But the truth is, we have other databases and other resources where someone who’s actually recorded that information. This species that is written on the label from 100 years ago, is actually a synonym of this current species, and that’s put into a database and this database that I’m referring to the acronym is WoRMS, but it’s actually the World Registry of Marine Species. So we can look up that old name in this database, and it will give us the current name, and we can use that database to upload data to our existing database. Everyone studying zoology, and not everyone but people studying zoology, are reliant on other databases like ours for distribution information about a species, or we can utilize other databases like WoRMS to get information about the taxonomy associated with different species.
Jennifer Berglund 19:14
Over the years, you’ve had the opportunity to name a number of organisms. How did those opportunities come about, and how did you choose the names?
Adam Baldinger 19:24
I’ve had the ability and have been fortunate to be able to study groups of amphipods with my colleagues, Mike Gable and Eric Lazo-Wasem, over the past 20, 25, 30 years, and, as part of our research program, we have identified places where amphipods are not very well known, like Bermuda or the British Virgin Islands. And so we have the opportunity to travel to those places to specifically collect amphipods, to bring that back to our lab so we can study them further. This is a way to acquire animals so we can then continue our research to describe the biodiversity of the particular areas. I’ve had park rangers, let’s say from Death Valley National Park, write to me asking me, “Hey, can you take a look at this amphipod that I found, and if you could identify them, or tell me a little bit more about them?” And by looking at these animals that my colleagues and I collect from, say, Bermuda or those from this park ranger, you start to look at them and begin to realize, “Wow, there’s something unique about them. There’s something different about them.” And then suddenly, something goes off in your head, you’re like, “Ah, this is a new species.” It’s just a super exciting feeling knowing that you have something unique based upon the animals that you’ve collected, but also comparing it to other animals, let’s say in collections and literature and things like that. So those are the opportunities to get the animals and so from there, we then will continue to do what we need to do to formally describe these specimens as new species. Sometimes the light goes off in your head and say, “Yeah, this is a new species.” Immediately, I began to think well, what are we going to call it? What’s the name going to be? And oftentimes will determine what a species name is based upon where it’s found, for example, or maybe a certain characteristic of the animal itself. For example, we found a species in Bermuda where it’s living in an area that has a high current, a lot of water flow, and so we decided to name the species tachyrheo, so Podocerus tachyrheo referring to swift-moving water. I described a species from Death Valley National Park, and I named it Hyalella muerta – however you want to say that – but in reference to “death” from the Death Valley National Park. I named another species, called Hyalella meraspinosa, and this is referring to the spines on this segment, this leg segment called the merus, the fourth segment, so their spines on this particular segment that is only found in this species, but not in any others. So I decided to call it meraspinosa. Truthfully, the ones that I liked the most are the ones where you name species after people, people who have affected me, and my career. For example, I named a species with a colleague called Podocerus jareckii, and this is named after Henry Jarecki, which is the owner of this small island in the British Virgin Islands, so I named it in honor of him because he allowed us to go to his island to collect these animals to study, the amphipods of that particular region. I named another species Podocerus lazowasemi. That’s a tongue twister, but that’s named after my colleague, Eric Lazo-Wasem, in honor of him for all the support and work that we’ve been able to do as colleagues. But probably the most significant for me was a species that I named after my wife, Hyalella sandra, and that species is actually to thank her for all the work and support she has put up with over the years as the work that I do. It’s not the prettiest-looking animal, but I think it’s a nice scenario to have it specially named after you.
Jennifer Berglund 22:51
What does it look like?
Adam Baldinger 22:53
It looks like a little shrimp, if you will. And we’re talking about something that’s only about less than 10 millimeters in size. Very, very small, about the width of a penny.
Jennifer Berglund 23:03
About the width of a penny, okay.
Adam Baldinger 23:05
They’re called amphipods, and they’re often referred to as shrimp-like, but they’re not really shrimp. Many of the amphipods that I work on are from the marine intertidal area. A lot of people think of these as beach fleas or sand fleas. They’re really not fleas at all. They’re beach-hoppers or what we call the amphipods.
Jennifer Berglund 23:23
So, how does your wife feel about being named after a small little flea-like organism?
Adam Baldinger 23:31
I would like to believe that she thinks it’s a high honor, but certainly a taxonomy or people who work in systematics recognize that when a species is named after somebody, there is an honor there, usually thanking someone for their work and support. Like I said, it’s not a beautiful bird with beautiful colored feathers and things. It’s an amphipod, and it has no coloration. To me, it’s a beautiful animal. Don’t think that she thinks it’s particularly good looking either.
Jennifer Berglund 23:58
But as a woman of science, I’m sure she appreciates it.
Adam Baldinger 24:01
I would hope so.
Jennifer Berglund 24:07
Don’t you acquire the specimens that come from the Nautilus from the Ocean Exploration Trust, so the Nautilus is a research vessel, and the Ocean Exploration Trust was founded by the oceanographer, Bob Ballard, whom we’ve talked about in this podcast a couple of times, but they have a submarine that is constantly going down to deep parts of the ocean and bringing things back up to the surface and the things they bring up, right, many of them end up in our collections at the MCZ.
Adam Baldinger 24:36
Yes, you’re absolutely right. We have been fortunate to work and partner with OET and the EV Nautilus Group to have voucher material that they collect to be deposited here in the Invertebrate Zoology department, but also malacology and fishes as well. We’ve had this relationship or this partnership for 10 years now, so starting in 2013, we were beginning to receive voucher material from various expeditions that took place. Specimens were either invertebrates – various invertebrates – mollusks, sometimes fishes. They were collected by the Nautilus and then sent to us here at the MCZ, and I think we’ve cataloged close to 5000 specimen lots from them over the past 10 years. Many people are aware of the Nautilus because they do live feeds, and people can see the live animals in the field. And then they end up here at the MCZ, and we’ll upload pictures of those animals that were taken aboard ship or here at our labs, for example. And those pictures are available on our database. We’ve been very fortunate to have that partnership with OET and EV Nautilus, and it’s continuing. Just this year, we’ve already received samples from three different expeditions, and we try our best when we receive them to get them database cataloged as soon as we can. I’m talking within months. So those specimens that people saw on a live video feed just a few weeks ago, for example, are now available for researchers and others to view in our database and so forth.
Jennifer Berglund 26:03
Wow, that’s fast.
Adam Baldinger 26:05
Yeah, we don’t want the specimens on our shelves for 100 years before they become digitized.
Jennifer Berglund 26:10
What’s your favorite part of the job?
Adam Baldinger 26:12
I have the opportunity daily, almost daily, to see some really cool specimens sitting on the shelves, hiding in cabinets or even on display in the public museum, for example. I really enjoy that, and don’t get me wrong but the truth is, it’s the people that I’ve been able to work with over the past 26 years here at the MCZ that I find my most favorite part of the job. I’ve had the opportunity to have lunch with past directors of the MCZ like Ernst Mayr, and Jim McCarthy, Jim Hanken, and, of course, Gonzalo Giribet. I’ve met hundreds and hundreds of researchers who have come to the MCZ to use our collections for their research, so I very much enjoy hearing about their research projects and how they’re using our specimens that we’re helping them with. I’ve given hundreds of tours to small children and their parents, students, and classes. I’ve given tours to virtually anyone who wants to come to the MCZ to see what we’re doing. And I really enjoy hearing things like “Oh, so cool,” or “I want to work at the MCZ” just because of the opportunity that I’ve provided them on a tour. I’ve had the opportunity to work with hundreds of interns, hourly employees, part-time staff members, full-time staff members, curatorial assistants in the department, and I realized that all of us people that I’ve worked with – over the years – they have this passion for museum work. They’re here, some of them have been here only a few months, I work with other curatorial assistants who have been here for over 30 years. And we all have that same passion, it’s the museum environment, first of all, but it’s also the specimens that we are working with on a daily basis. And the truth is, is these curatorial assistants that keep this department going and doing what we can do to support the overall mission of the MCZ, and to sit alongside a curatorial assistant and looking at a specimen in a jar, and I think I know what it is, but I’ll turn it back on them. And I’ll say, “Well, let’s talk about that. What do you think it is?” And they nail it, and it’s so exciting to me to see them with this glow in their eye – “Hey, I was able to identify something in our collection, to put my thumbprint on that particular jar.” One of my favorite things, again, of course, is I hope that I can influence other people to continue in museum work, and then someday, they could be doing research on specimens and things like that. So we really do have a support team, a really strong team here in Invertebrate Zoology, and of course, a close relationship with the staff and malacology. But I have to say, I guess, daily, one of my most favorite things about coming to work every day is when I arrive at the parking garage, and I see above me, “Welcome to Harvard.” And I drive under that and I realize, “Hey, I’m here. Who would have thought that I would have ever ended up as a Collections Manager of Invertebrate Zoology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology?” I am very thankful for the opportunity to be able to do this job. It’s always been such a pleasure to work with you. Thanks, Jennie. I appreciate it. It’s been a pleasure working with you. Do you have a favorite specimen? No, I don’t really have a favorite specimen. It really changes daily. Honestly, I’ve had favorite specimens this week and favorite specimens last week, but I think they’re all cool, one way or another and they all seem to have a story behind them. And so a lot of times, if it’s something that was discussed in a news article, I’ll take a look at it or something along those lines. And that could become my favorite specimen that day. I have to say I’m biased towards the amphipods, those are kind of the animals that I’m most interested in, but it’s really hard to…
Jennifer Berglund 29:47
And skeleton shrimp. I have to say skeleton shrimp are super cool. I feel like they kind of look like those inflatable creatures that people use to advertise tires, like the dancing creatures. I feel like they kind of look like them.
Adam Baldinger 30:00
It’s true. I mean, when I was in college, we didn’t have video of these things. You know, you had them in a jar, and you had a picture, but there was a still picture. Very few movies, very few videos, and so to see them in the wild has just blown me away, and they’re cool. They’re fun, and especially now, you see videos of them, hanging out together in colonies, doing their thing, you know, and it’s just pretty cool.
Jennifer Berglund 30:22
Do you have specimens that are popular, specimens that everybody wants to see?
Adam Baldinger 30:28
We have specimens that I always pull out on tours and one specimen I – in fact, I gave a tour earlier today that people tend to like and want to see more of our coconut crabs. And you know, we have some pretty sizable ones in our collection, but we also have coconut crabs in our collection that were collected from the 1870s, so there’s a historical…
Jennifer Berglund 30:47
And they’re huge, like gigantic hermit crabs.
Adam Baldinger 30:51
Correct. The ones we have are not as big as they seem to be in the pictures I’ve seen, but when you can pull out a three-gallon bucket and inside is a coconut crab, it’s pretty impressive. I like showing the coconut crabs in invertebrate zoology. Obviously, the Bathynomus, the giant isopods. The deep-water isopods – those are big animals, too. People have a tendency to move towards seeing the larger animals, so large crabs, and certainly the giant isopods that we have in our collection. Some of them are almost a foot in length.
Jennifer Berglund 31:03
Crazy. They’re like giant roly-polies.
Adam Baldinger 31:26
Yeah, I always have fun with the kids. They know it’s a roly-poly, and they always think roly-polies are in their backyard, so I joke with them, “Hey, dig deep enough, you might find a few of these larger ones.” Because we’re in Invertebrate Zoology, I sometimes will show our medicine leech, for example, and talk a little bit about what a medicine leeches and it’s not overly impressive when you look at leeches in a jar. But it’s always a fun story to tell behind it. If I had the time – especially on tours – to be able to pull out a couple of Caprellids, and put them under a microscope. I’m sure some people would be interested, but they would be more interested in seeing a video of these, I think. In malacology, there were always things to show like the carrier shells. I don’t know if you know what these are, but they’re in this group called Xenophoridae, and they glue pieces of other organic material, or inorganic material for that matter, pieces of rock, on the surface of their shell to act as what we think as camouflage or maybe even strengthen the shell to give them some support. So there’s always fun stories to tell, and there’s always these animals that we’ll pull out as part of our tours. But really, it’s a matter of what they’re interested in. If they want to see some corals, let’s go look at some corals. They want to see some marine worms, like today, I pulled out a sea mouse. I don’t know if you know what that is, but it’s a type of polychaete, a worm thing. Pretty cool. I wanted just to comment as part of my job, have any opportunity to send specimens out on loan, and by doing such, some researchers have felt as though that just by receiving specimens on loan, these turned out to be new species or something along those lines, and one time I was basically added as a co-author on a paper, because I simply sent this researcher specimens on loan, and that was part of my job. But I’m so grateful that he included me as a co-author, or another scenario where I sent specimens on loan to a researcher and it turns out it was a new species, and he named that species after me just because I sent him a loan. This was a small, small marine snail from Martinique, but anyhow, people are grateful for what we do when they’re unable to actually visit the museum. And we do spend a lot of time gathering specimens, sending them to various places around the world, which requires, oftentimes, tremendous amounts of paperwork permits and all this, but once they’re able to study them, and they do the same thing I did. “What am I going to call it?” And so in this case, I was pretty honored to have a species named after me, probably more than my wife.
Jennifer Berglund 34:01
Adam Baldinger, thank you so much for being here. This has been really fun.
Adam Baldinger 34:04
Absolutely. Thank you, Jennie. It was a pleasure.
Jennifer Berglund 34:10
Today’s HMSC Connects! podcast was edited by Eden Piacitelli, and produced by me, Jennifer Berglund, and the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture. Special thanks to the Museum of Comparative Zoology and to Adam Baldinger for his wisdom and expertise. And thank you so much for listening. If you like today’s podcast, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podbean, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you in a few weeks.