Collections | Mysteries of the Museum

Smoky Signal

From hellbenders to Smoky madtoms to rusty patched bumble bees, Antoine explores the natural history collections of the Smokies. Where do these collections come from? What can we learn from them? And how can studying decades-old specimens inform how we manage the park?

Featuring: Baird Todd, Mike Aday, Arthur Stupka (archival), Paul Super, Becky Nichols, and Janie Bitner.

For more information, visit go.nps.gov/smokysignal

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Antoine 00:00 The alcohol is slightly discolored as I peer into the glass jar that holds a mystery. Its reddish brown skin is full of wrinkles. Its eyes tell the stories of past ancestors and its fingers seem to reach out and touch us. Some call these creatures mud cats, Devil Dogs, snout otters, or the most well-known name, Hellbenders. No matter what you call them, this Hellbender specimen was collected by Park scientists over 90 years ago and falls in a long line of collected specimens in our natural history collections that are helping preserve and protect the park in the present and the future.

Alix 00:45 Wait a second. So you're telling me that the park has a Hellbender specimen dating back to the 1930s?

Antoine 00:52 Cue the scary music please (speaker clears throat). Yes, but that is just the tip of the iceberg, my friend.

Alix 01:02 Okay... and by tip you mean?

Antoine 01:04 Well, although intriguing this Hellbender is not the only specimen in the park's museum collections. There are 1000s of specimens and I mean, 1000s that have been collected since the park opened in the 1930s.

Alix 01:18 Wow. Well, I guess that makes sense. But, walk me through why it's so important to keep abundant or extinct specimens in our natural history collections. Or maybe an even better question is, why is it important to collect specimens at all?

Antoine 01:34 You know, that is a good question. And I think I have a couple of people in mind that can help us answer these questions. Welcome to Smoky Signal, a show about the science behind the Smokies, brought to you by Great Smoky Mountains National Park and produced in the depths of our natural and cultural museum collections.

Alix 01:54 This season, we'll be exploring three stories on the theme of collections. We'll be talking about renewing traditional plant gathering practices, a natural history museum that has collected 1000s of species, and even the collection of something pretty stinky in the name of science. I'm Antoine and I'm Alix stay with us.

Antoine 02:28 Although intriguing, this Hellbender is not the only specimen in the park's museum collections. Since the 1930s, researchers and scientists have dedicated countless hours throughout the depths of the park in the effort to understand the biodiversity of this living laboratory, leading our imaginations down to inquisitory, yet exploratory path to Smokies science from the Tennessee Madtom catfish that was thought to be extinct to the recovery plan of the Rusty Patch Bumblebee, the park has a myriad of specimens that continue to help us understand the past to protect the future. But why is it important to collect specimens in the first place? You know, Alix I think I have someone in mind that can help us jump start this adventure.

Baird Todd 03:16 My name is Baird Todd and I am the park curator. As the curator for the National Park Service, I am the custodial office.....(voice volume is lowered).

Antoine 03:24 Baird Todd defines himself as the custodial officer for the museum collections of the Smokies. His work is different from a curator, the formal art museum, where he would be known as an expert on a particular museum collection. But here's the kicker, Baird does not consider himself an expert. I know I know, you may be saying to yourself, that makes no sense. Well, let me let you in on a secret. It's kind of difficult to be an expert when you manage nearly 2 million objects.

Baird Todd 04:01 But what I do do is make sure that the collections are managed in accordance with federal law and NPS policy that they're preserved as well as can be with the conditions available and make them as accessible to the public as much as possible. And we interpret the public pretty broadly here. That could be researchers, it could be park staff, it could be the general public, all to make sure that the collections are available to that party in public for as long as possible because we do manage these collections, as we say in perpetuity.

Antoine 04:36 So Baird's work is definitely driven by policy and preservation. But what is the difference between natural and cultural collections?

Baird Todd 04:47 The cultural collections are the tangible evidence of human activity and the natural history collections of the tangible evidence of non human activity.

Antoine 04:57 And that to run the gamut between vascular or nonvascular plants, insects, microbiota, and even those famous Great Smoky Mountain bears people come to see each year, the park has been able to have a diverse collection of specimens due to the research efforts dating back to the 1930s. But even the park the size of the Smokies can be limited on space. So where does all these specimens go? If they are not kept in the park for research?

Baird Todd 05:28 We have collections scattered across the country, what you see now is a much more sort of controlled and prioritized decision making about where those collections wind up, we may get one, we may send one off to the University of Tennessee, we may send another one off to a University in Chicago. And that way, specimens collected the same time as that original documented specimen can be scattered across the country, made more available for researchers. And the evidence of that original documentation can be preserved. If something happens to the collection of the Smithsonian, or my specimen here, they're still one in Knoxville, they're still one in Chicago. A lot of the collections go back to the universities where the researcher originally was. So we have a huge amount of material at the University of Tennessee in particular at the TENN herbarium. We're close by they've been doing research here for decades. We have a large number of collections at the New York Botanical Garden.

Antoine 06:33 So think of it this way. Rather you're in New York City to see a Broadway play, or you're in Chicago catching, a famous Cubs game, Smokies science is always around you. So, natural history collections in the park are not just for show. They are a vital collection of learning. Helping park rangers, scientists, and researchers keep updated data on factors such as species distribution and abundance throughout the park. But who started this important in-depth work? So my next question leads me to no one other than Park archivists, Mike Aday, he's going to be a tour guide to the Collections Preservation Center, located in Townsend, Tennessee, a facility that hosts a wealth of knowledge for the park.

Mike Aday 07:30 I am the parks librarian and archivist. I'm basically like the the memory for the park. As the librarian, I manage the library locations for the park. There's one at the collections preservation center in Townsend. There's one for Ranger and volunteer use and Oconaluftee and there's also one at Cades Cove. I also manage the parks collection of historic documents, all of the maps, plans, drawings, historic photographs, all of the oral history collections. Basically it's all of the historic records that the park has generated and collected over the years

Antoine 08:11 After introductions Mike takes me into the archives. There's hundreds of boxes, that are slightly lit by fluorescent lighting. But it's not the number of boxes that are important here. It's the stories within them and that really has thinking. So Mike, what are we looking for?

Mike Aday 08:34 Well, I wanted to show you the collection from Arthur Stupka, who was the parks first naturalist he was hired in 1934 When the park was just being established, and he was the parks naturalist until his retirement in the 1960s. And he was just he was a fascinating individual and I just wanted to share with you some of the collection items that we have from him.

Antoine 08:59 According to Mike, if we could stroll down memory mountain, we may discover that today's collections started with good old fashioned collecting, going out in the twilight of the spruce fir forests, the corners of Cades Cove or the Firefly fury of Elkmont and retrieving anything that will be helpful to understanding the biodiversity of the park. And a person that we would stroll alongside would have been no one other than Arthur Stupka. Like many park rangers, Arthur spent the beginning of his career working in exploring in parks such as Yosemite and Acadia, but it's mostly known for his work in the Smokies as the first naturalist of the park. According to the Webster Dictionary, a naturalist is an expert or student of Natural History. Well Arthur excelled it being a naturalist, do to his astute love for being a student of nature, which ultimately turned him into an expert of the park.

Arthur Stupka 10:07 For one thing, I was always a journal keeper from the time I was, in my early teens, I kept an nature journal when birds arrived, and when flowers bloomed and things of that sort, I kept that up right through my park service career, at least up to about 10 years before I retired, so that for all the years I was in Acadia, plus the first 15 or 16 years I was here, I kept up a nature journal in which these things were notified. In other words, I always had an altimeter with me in my knapsack, and if things were blooming at a certain date, a certain elevation why I would record it. And over the years, at the end of the year would index it.

Antoine 11:03 in the early 1930s, Arthur imagined what could he discover if he explored the back country of the park. Little did he know, he would have a group of civilian conservation corps members that will help him gain access to a treasure trove of new species.

Arthur Stupka 11:21 And the CCC means the park much more available not only to the ordinary visitor, but to the scientists, because you cannot get off the trails very well. Unless you're risking being lost.

Antoine 11:38 And this access to the back country play it to a trail of legacy.

Arthur Stupka 11:43 As I say, I was honored by having eight critters named for me. Six were insects. One was a sub glider. And one was a mite which is related to spiders. People who had found them came to the Smokies and collected that group of animals. And among those that they found that were new and had never been described before. Some of them honored me by putting my name on them.

Antoine 12:28 Deep in a southern part of Appalachia, the weather is cool and sunny with a slight breeze that moves across the native goldenrod. It's fall, but not just any fall. It's fallen the Appalachian Highlands Science Learning Center, one of 17 research learning centers that is helping science become possible by supporting researchers who study our national parks at 4900 feet of elevation. I meet Paul Super.

Paul Super 12:58 My name is Paul Super. I'm the Research Coordinator for the Appalachian Highlands Science Learning Center and for Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Anyone who wants to conduct research in the park on biological or geological processes needs to apply for a research permit.

Antoine 13:19 As much as we enjoy having researchers help us learn more about the park, there's always a process before they start to canvass the mountains for new information. This is where the permitting process comes into play. For instance, if you are interested in collecting specimens within park boundaries, you will consult with Paul and then Paul will consult with a curator to ensure that we can take care of the specimens that you collected. Also, it is important that Paul reviews the applications with our subject matter experts.

Paul Super 13:52 And then most permit applications we find a way to, to permit the work to go forward because we learn a whole lot from research even if it may not be research that we started off thinking was going to be useful, it may end up being very useful in the long term.

Antoine 14:12 So can you explain how current researchers are helping us learn about the parks present and future, especially when it comes to you know new species in the park?

Paul Super 14:26 Well, right now we still have a number of researchers working in the park who are helping us with biological diversity inventory. We have a researcher staying in our field station right now who's studying lichen diversity, and has discovered all sorts of previously undescribed species of likened in the park is also giving us an idea of distribution through the park and what species might be rare. What's species might be suffering from decline and air quality or other sorts of stressors. So all of that's very useful for protecting the whole park. The the ecosystem out there is not just the bears and the salamanders and the elk. But also, a lot of these little things help keep the environment of the Smokies beautiful and healthy.

Antoine 15:27 So what about, we've heard stories about, you know, new species such as the Smoky Mad Tom, can you tell us a little bit about, you know, discovery of that species and you know, where it was discovered and how that really changed? You know, I wouldn't say changed, but it definitely is important to the research of the park.

Paul Super 15:51 Certainly, the Park Service has a mission to protect the natural resources and the wildlife they're in and to provide for the general public to enjoy these resources as long as they do not damage them do not impair them. Sometimes in the past, we have had one part of that be more important than another. A long time ago, the park had this idea that we would create a world class trout fishery rainbow trout fishery in lower Abrams Creek. And to do that we would remove all the non sport fish, the trash fish, and then be a great place for the introduced rainbow trout. Well, the Park went through with this and killed off poisoned out the fish below Abrams Falls. And thankfully for us, some folks from the University of Tennessee, were looking through the dead fish that washed along the shore and found these little catfish that turned out to be a previously undescribed species the Smoky Mad Tom. And, you know, we were in a position where we might have indeed been the cause of the extinction of a species that was under our care. Thankfully, there was one other stream outside the park that was found to have the same species of catfish and we've been able to work with people who know how to breed fish in captivity. And they've helped us to reintroduce the Smokey Mad Tom back to Abrams Creek and the populations recovering but if we had not had somebody looking through what washed up, we wouldn't have known that we had come so close to causing the extinction of a species.

Antoine 18:06 So this is one incredible instance of identifying an important species that was not discovered in the park before that this instance ignite a conscious effort with the park and community to start a program dedicated to find any species.

Paul Super 18:23 Oh it certainly contributed. The park is now over 20 years into a program called the all taxa biodiversity inventory. And basically what this is, is an effort to figure out what we have in the park if you are running a store a business you want to know what supplies you have, what stock you have in the back in the warehouse. So we're trying to protect this national park and we can't protect what we don't know is there. It's the all taxa biodiversity inventory is an effort to document all of the plants and the animals and not just the the fish and mammals and birds but all kinds of things that most people have never even heard of tardigrades which are water bears these wonderful eight legged things that are living on moss or, or slime molds or gastrotrichs or all kinds of things that you know you really ought to look these up and figure out what they are because they've got great stories. But we have more than doubled the number of species that are known to be in Great Smoky Mountains National Park in these 20 years plus. And we have found over 1000 species that scientists did not realize were there. And some of them have been named after all sorts of people, senator from Tennessee, Dolly Parton. A lot of them are named after the Smokies in one way or another. And some of these new species are named using Cherokee language, since they're from the hills that are important for the Cherokee.

Antoine 20:24 So I have to agree with Paul. Not only does research permits help us collect important information about water bears, Smokey Man Toms, or even species that have cultural ties and native peoples. They also help us collect stories, stories that will inspire our next-gen scientists. Reflecting on my conversations where Paul really has me thinking, or really has me thinking about a particular question. How does the constant collecting of specimens help us manage the park? Or simply put, so what? Why do we do this? I think I know two people that can help us with this question.

Becky Nichols 21:10 My name is Becky Nichols. I'm an entomologist in the park. And I've worked here for 24 years, and work primarily on aquatic insect monitoring, and biodiversity studies.

Janie Bitner 21:22 My name is Janie Bitner, and I am a curatorial assistant here at the park in the Natural History Collection.

Antoine 21:29 Alright, so Becky, we've been learning about the importance of the park's natural history collections. But how does collecting specimens help us manage the park? Or simply put, so what?

Becky Nichols 21:44 The Natural History Collection documents are biodiversity so that we can utilize it for various research topics and learn more about species distributions, how environmental factors might impact their distributions. Various types of research questions that we can answer by looking at the data associated with specimens that we have in the collection.

Antoine 22:13 Now, the thing is, you talked about data a little bit. And so you know, my question for you is, you know, can we utilize the data from collecting specimens to help us with preservation or recovery of a certain species?

Becky Nichols 22:31 Well, I think a great example of that would be the newly federally endangered. Rusty Patch Bumblebee...

Antoine 22:39 Rusty Patch Bumblebee. I've never heard of it.

Becky Nichols 22:43 Bombus affinis is its scientific name. And it was just listed in 2017. And the data that we have from the park, it used to be very common in the park from low elevation to high elevation in various types of habitat. And we don't find it anymore. It the last specimens we have is from 2001.

Antoine 23:08 Right. So all of a sudden, this is like the whodunit mystery of the century. Like what happened to the Rusty Patch Bumblebee, right, like what's going on? So how can we figure this out? Right,

Becky Nichols 23:19 Well, it's declined throughout its range, it used to range throughout the Eastern US. And it is only in just a few locations now. Probably numerous factors are involved with its decline, including climate change, habitat loss, pesticide use outside of the park, of course. And, and various other factors could be contributing to his decline. But we still go out and search for it. Hopefully, we'll find a little population tucked away somewhere. But we utilize the data that we have from specimens in the collection, to figure out where to target our efforts to look for it. So we know where specimens from 1939 were collected, and we can go back to that spot and see if potentially, there's still habitat there that it would likely be in.

Antoine 24:13 So you know, you get this coalition together to look for the rest of the Rusty Patch Bumble Bee, you know, in Becky's mind or because of the data. Where do you go? Where do you start? What elevation? You know, tell us a little bit about that.

Becky Nichols 24:29 Well, for example, the summer we had a collecting expedition, I shouldn't say collecting because we're not going to collect it if we find it. But we did go out to Andrews Bald, high elevation site where once used to be common. We went out there deliberately when lots of things were blooming so that bumblebees would be more likely to be found. And so we had about six people up there with nets looking around at all the blooming azaleas. And unfortunately didn't find it. But we did find five other species of bumble bees. So that was a good, a good find for that day.

Antoine 25:07 And of course, this is where Becky's sidekick Janie comes into the story. While Becky's story led us down the wonderful world of pollinators in their recovery. Janie's story leads us to the soil where the lifecycle and recovery of ginseng is under a microscope.

Janie Bitner 25:26 I fell in love with ginseng when I first discovered that it needed a great deal of protection here in the Smokies. It's a slow grower. It mainly propagates by dropping berries which the plant doesn't put on typically, until it's four years old. Wow. And at the rate it's being harvested, and the rate of survival. When we do get it back in the ground. If it has been poached. There's a 50% survival rate. It's a beautiful plant. When you come up on mature ginseng which can grow and age to be 50 plus years. It's a beautiful thing.

Antoine 26:14 Earlier in the episode, I asked a simple question. So what why do we do this? And I believe I have my answer. Imagine what we would lose if we did not have museum collections. We would lose the voices of past naturalists, cultures with history ingrained in old growth forests. And one should never leave out the wonderous variety of life that has been discovered and yet to be discovered I'm Antoine and this is Smoky Signal.