American Museum Natural History

NSF Awards · FY 2026 · 2026-07

Understanding how new biological traits arise is a fundamental question in evolutionary biology, with broad implications for explaining the origins of biodiversity, predicting how organisms respond to environmental change, and advancing biotechnology innovation. Most research into evolutionary novelty has focused on traits that arise through the gain of new genes or pathways; far less is known about how the loss or modification of existing pathways can generate novelty. This project investigates the process of kleptocnidy, which is the theft and storage of microscopic stinging structures (nematocysts) from cnidarian prey, a striking natural example of biological innovation that has evolved independently multiple times. The research will determine whether this unique process evolved in nudibranch sea slugs through specialization of phagocytosis, an ancient cellular process used across animals for immune defense and intracellular digestion. By generating high-quality genomic, transcriptomic, and single-cell data resources for marine invertebrates, the project produces strategic biological data assets useful to the broader scientific community for biotechnology applications and the development of fundamental knowledge across evolutionary biology, comparative immunology, and cell biology. This project will also support the training of graduate and undergraduate students and postdoctoral researchers in genomics and computational analysis through research experiences and will broaden participation in science through public engagement activities. Overall, these efforts will contribute substantially to the training of a competitive STEM workforce in molecular tools and biotechnology. This collaborative project tests whether kleptocnidy evolved primarily through specialization (loss of function) of conserved phagocytosis pathways or through the origin of new molecular machinery. Three objectives integrate complementary approaches across two laboratory-tractable nudibranch species, Berghia stephanieae and Hermissenda opalescens. Objective 1 characterizes the molecular processes underlying kleptocnidy in adult Hermissenda using RNA-sequencing of cerata tissues under cnidarian and non-cnidarian feeding regimes, paired with pharmacological inhibition assays targeting candidate phagocytosis pathways. Objective 2 reconstructs the regulatory networks involved in the development of the cnidophage, which is the specialized cell type that captures and stores nematocysts, using single-cell RNA-sequencing across early juvenile Berghia development, with in situ hybridization chain reaction validation, to test whether cnidophages develop through pathways conserved with generalist phagocytic cells. Objective 3 evaluates the role of lineage-specific (“novel”) genes through comparative differential expression and orthology analyses across approximately 20 cladobranch nudibranch species, including independent origins of nematocyst sequestration, collected from California and French Polynesia. Outputs will include a new reference genome, single-cell atlases, gene co-expression and regulatory networks, and a phylogenetically informed catalog of conserved versus lineage-specific genes underlying a charismatic case of evolutionary innovation, while providing foundational genomic resources for an emerging marine invertebrate model system. The results of this work will improve our understanding of the evolution of novelty. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2026 · 2026-06

Natural history collections provide strategic biological data assets that document biodiversity across space and time, underpinning discovery and innovation. However, their scientific value depends on making specimen data accessible to researchers, decision-makers, industry, educators and the public. The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) Malacology collection is one of seven largest mollusk collections in the United States and holds an estimated 188,000 specimens from the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts of the United States, spanning 150 years of collecting. However, only 18–20% of the collection has been digitized. This project will integrate AMNH's Eastern Seaboard mollusk holdings into the Eastern Seaboard (ESB) Thematic Collections Network (TCN), bringing the total proportion of digitized U.S. ESB mollusk records to over 90%. Making these standardized and structured data publicly available will directly support research on marine and coastal biological systems, while advancing biotechnology innovation by enabling bioinformatic analyses, genomic resource development and data-driven discovery relevant to U.S. coastal communities and economies. The project will also build partnerships between academia, industry and others to develop a competitive STEM workforce. This project will engage broad public audiences through web content and social media outreach tied to AMNH's existing exhibits. This project is aligned with the NSF priorities in Biotechnology. Over a three-year period, AMNH will database approximately 40,000 uncatalogued lots (~160,000 specimens) of mollusks from the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, georeference associated collecting localities, and produce high-resolution images of 93 type lots representing 50 significant Eastern Seaboard species. Digitization will combine Optical Character Recognition (OCR)-assisted label transcription with direct data entry into AMNH's Axiell EMu collection management system, following the established ESB TCN workflow. Specimen records will be enriched with taxonomic, temporal, locality, and trait data, including live- vs. dead-collected status and the presence of epibionts where recorded, and disseminated freely through the AMNH Invertebrate Zoology Web Portal, the InvertEBase Symbiota Portal, iDigBio, GBIF, and OBIS. The addition of AMNH's holdings will substantially increase the density and taxonomic breadth of occurrence data available for species distribution modeling and historical baseline analyses, filling outstanding geographic, temporal, and taxonomic gaps in the ESB TCN dataset, including underrepresented habitat types such as estuaries. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2026 · 2026-05

The Neotropical region of the Americas is among the most biodiverse places on Earth, but much of this biodiversity is still poorly described and understudied. Data on the region’s biota is essential to protect ecosystems and human health. Most research in the Neotropics has focused on plants and vertebrate animals. However, most animal species are invertebrates, many of which play critical roles in ecosystems. Scorpions are among the oldest lineages of terrestrial animals, and some produce potent toxins that are potentially valuable for medical uses. The genus Tityus, a group of scorpions that occurs throughout the Neotropics, comprises more than 10% of the world’s scorpion species and includes half the scorpion species responsible for dangerous venomous stings in humans. The distributions of some medically important Tityus species appear to be expanding as a consequence of environmental change. Despite their medical and ecological importance, the classification of Tityus is unresolved, hindering the ability of specialists and nonspecialists, including public health officials, to identify them. This project will use modern genomic and morphological data to reconstruct the evolution of Tityus and revise their classification, providing a framework for their identification and enhancing understanding of how they evolved and diversified. Trainees contributing to the project will gain expertise in data collection and analysis. Public outreach efforts from this project will enhance knowledge of scorpions, their medical importance, and their role in terrestrial ecosystems. The project will sequence ultraconserved elements (UCEs) from all major lineages of Tityus across their range and assemble corresponding morphological datasets to reconstruct a comprehensive, time-calibrated phylogenetic tree for Tityus. The phylogeny and morphological characters will then be used, together with data on geographical distributions, to propose a predictive classification for Tityus, including updated diagnoses and identification keys for both public and scientific use. The phylogenetic tree also will provide the framework for testing hypotheses about scorpion evolution and diversification. Specifically, the project will test for differences in diversification rates at different altitudes and assess whether similar morphologies arose through convergent evolution. Finally, the project will reconstruct ancestral ranges and test biogeographical patterns to evaluate how and when Tityus lineages attained their present distribution and evaluate how future climate scenarios may cause the distributions of medically important Tityus species to expand or contract. This project will include a short course on the biology of scorpions and provide training opportunities for high school students, undergraduates, and a post-doc. All datasets and resources generated by this project will be made publicly available. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-09

The early Paleogene (~66-48 million years ago) was an important time in Earth’s history: It immediately followed the mass extinction of all dinosaurs (except birds), many modern groups of mammals first appeared, and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (a significant climate event) occurred. Knowledge of these events is mostly based on a well-dated and characterized North American stratigraphic record; a global perspective on these events is missing. This project will apply modern, high-precision, age-dating techniques to the sedimentological and mammal fossil records of Mongolia. These methods will allow the building of a critical framework for comparing the North American and Asian fossil records across this important time interval. New physical and digital collections of fossils and a pop-up traveling exhibition on Paleogene mammal evolution and climate will be created. Developing a modern chronostratigraphy and paleoenvironment reconstruction for the highly fossiliferous Naran Bulak and Gashato Formations in Mongolia is the goal of this project. Four geochronological methods will be used, including magneto- and chemo-stratigraphy and Ar/Ar and U-Pb geochronology. Age and correlation data will be combined with careful sedimentological and paleoenvironmental analysis. These methods will be used to precisely constrain this important fauna and permit precise correlations with other parts of Asia and with the North America record. This geochronologic focus will be coupled with detailed sedimentologic analysis and stable isotope analysis of ancient soil and lake deposits to identify the PETM boundary by its signature global negative carbon isotope excursion. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-09

Volatile cycles between Earth’s atmosphere, lithosphere, cryosphere and hydrosphere play a critical role in planet evolution. Carbon, oxygen and hydrogen are the dominant volatile elements, and Earth’s mantle is the largest reservoir of these elements. One of the most important volatiles on Earth is water. Water exerts key controls over the properties of magma, mantle convection, the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere, and the evolution of life. This project will investigate water in the mantle transition zone (410–660 km depth) and deeper. A small proportion of diamonds, carried to the surface by rare and rapid volcanic processes, encapsulate minerals during their growth. These minerals are among the deepest direct samples available of the Earth's mantle. The project will use a collection of diamonds hosting such minerals to determine the water concentrations of the mantle where the diamonds formed. The project will also expand a large interactive exhibit in the Minerals Hall of the American Museum of Natural History into a web-based version on a platform for children and youth, called OLogy, and hosted by the museum. The new web version will be tested in upper elementary and middle school classrooms. Water is one of the most important volatiles on Earth. This project will investigate water in the deep regions of the planet, such as the mantle transition zone (410–660 km) and the lower mantle (660–2900 km), by studying mineral inclusions in diamonds. A small proportion of diamonds, carried to the surface by kimberlite pipes, contain inclusions of minerals that were encapsulated by the diamond during its growth. The main goals of this project are: 1) to identify the flux of water transported by subducted slabs into the deep subcontinental mantle; 2) to estimate the water budget in the mantle transition zone and the transition zone–lower mantle boundary, and to assess water concentrations in deep mantle minerals such as majoritic garnet and ferropericlase; 3) to investigate whether water is responsible for major redox (reduction–oxidation) reactions in the deep mantle. The project will investigate majoritic garnet and ferropericlase inclusions in diamonds from ultra-deep sources, such as the Amazonian craton in Brazil. Specifically, the research will identify and characterize mineral inclusions in a set of diamonds from Juina, Brazil, using optical microscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared and Raman spectroscopy, as well as cutting-edge computed tomography. Some majoritic garnets will also be studied by synchrotron Mössbauer spectroscopy, and phases that are difficult to identify will be examined by synchrotron X-ray diffraction. Some of the majoritic garnet and ferropericlase inclusions will be used for water analysis. The largest inclusions and those covering a wide range of compositions will be selected for water analysis by nanoSIMS. While sufficient standards exist for the analysis of majoritic garnets, there are currently no standards for ferropericlase. Therefore, this project will also experimentally synthesize standards for water analysis in ferropericlase. Given the unique nature of the studied diamonds, there is strong potential for side projects arising from newly discovered and exposed mineral inclusions in Juina diamonds. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-09

A research collaboration between the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the American Museum of Natural History has been operating the Condor Array Telescope at a very dark astronomical site in the southwest corner of New Mexico since 2021. With renewed NSF support, the team will add two new telescopes to the instrument, significantly enhancing its capabilities. They will continue to operate Condor to obtain, analyze, and interpret a variety of observations spanning the entire northern sky, focusing on several important science topics to which the instruments can make particularly significant contributions. In addition, the team will produce a one-hour-long video documentary featuring Condor New Mexico and the rich cultural history of the North American civilizations in the region. This film will explore the interaction between scientific inquiry and cultural history, with a particular emphasis on the Apache people, whose ancestors have lived in the region for centuries. The team will also incorporate their survey images into a Hayden Planetarium space show tentatively titled “Multi-Messenger Astrophysics.” Condor combines six off-the-shelf refracting telescopes with six off-the-shelf CMOS cameras. It is optimized for low-surface-brightness sensitivity, wide field of view, and rapid time resolution. The instruments will detect and study large portions of the extremely faint and extremely distant filaments of the “cosmic web” of intergalactic gas that stretches between the galaxies, seeking to understand how the largest-scale structures of the Universe form and evolve over time; image the sky in eight of the most important emission lines of astrophysics, making the resulting survey immediately available as a community resource; observe the rapidly-evolving afterglows of gamma-ray bursts within the first seconds following their discovery, providing a direct window into the mechanisms driving the most energetic explosions known; and monitor the entire stellar bulge of the Milky Way at a rapid 20-second cadence, searching for low-mass planets, moons, asteroids, and more toward the center of our Galaxy. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-08

This award will enable the development of advanced cyberinfrastructure to digitize and integrate over one million dragonfly and damselfly (Odonata) specimens from major natural history collections across the United States. The project, called Di-ODE (Digital Integration of Odonata), will create a unified, publicly accessible digital platform through Odonata Central, linking high-resolution specimen images with critical data such as collection localities and species identifications. This initiative will expand access to these important biological resources for scientists, educators, students, and the public. Di-ODE includes robust training programs to build skills in biodiversity data science and collections digitization. The project will enhance STEM education, promote data literacy, and engage community scientists, contributing to environmental awareness and scientific literacy. Through outreach and digital accessibility, Di-ODE will strengthen efforts to monitor environmental change and inform freshwater conservation across the globe. The project will transform how Odonata biodiversity data are accessed and analyzed by the research community. Dragonflies and damselflies are ecologically sensitive indicators of freshwater health and have been the focus of major studies in evolutionary biology, systematics, and biogeography. However, much of the valuable specimen data remains locked in poorly accessible physical collections. Di-ODE addresses this gap by creating efficient, scalable digitization workflows, using customized optical character recognition (OCR), advanced georeferencing, and data management tools. The resulting infrastructure will enable novel research in global change biology, comparative ecology, and phylogenetics. By improving data quality and access, Di-ODE will foster cross-disciplinary collaboration and provide a model for digitizing and mobilizing data from other invertebrate groups. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-06

The tree of life is a powerful tool for understanding evolution that can also be used for research on medicine, wildlife management, and agriculture. However, recent studies indicate that genes transferred between species can make it difficult for scientists to build an accurate evolutionary tree or understand the relationships between species. This project will use parrots, one of the most endangered and illegally trafficked groups of animals, to better understand how often species transfer genes and how that impacts scientists’ ability to accurately build an evolutionary tree. The researchers will collect genetic data, including sequencing genomes, for all parrots. These data will be used to build an evolutionary tree of parrots and answer questions about gene transfer between parrot species. This data will also be used to aid conservation efforts by developing forensic DNA barcodes that will help law enforcement correctly identify illegal products made from endangered parrot species. The project will build collaborations between forensic scientists and natural history museums, provide training and mentoring for students through early-career researchers, and share findings with the public and scientific communities. To estimate accurate phylogenetic trees in the genomic era, the effect of genomic architecture (the structure, organization, and content of a genome) on phylogenetic signal must be understood. Large-scale phylogenetic methods often do not account for gene flow, nor do they address the interaction between genomic architecture and phylogenetic signal, which can lead to well-supported but inaccurate evolutionary relationships. This project will reconstruct a nearly complete time-calibrated phylogeny of the clade to assess gene flow across an entire radiation and predict genomic regions prone to biasing phylogenetic estimates. The researchers will generate new genomic resources, including five chromosome-level reference genomes and genomic-scale markers for over 400 previously unsampled taxa. The project aims to test the following hypotheses to make general predictions about the factors causing gene tree discordance and to inform a species-level taxonomic revision: 1) non-monophyletic species are a common feature across the parrot evolutionary tree; 2) non-monophyletic species and weakly supported relationships are associated with a higher prevalence of gene flow that spans millions of years; and 3) genomic architecture is relatively conserved across the parrot radiation and can be used to mitigate the effects of gene flow in phylogenetic inference across temporal scales. This work will offer a high-resolution view of the interaction between phylogenetic signal, gene flow, and genomic architecture in parrots, and demonstrate how this framework can be used for improved taxonomic classification and wildlife management. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-12

The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) has progressed steadily to advance research and education (R&E) by removing barriers facing scientists, researchers, and educators at AMNH through support from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Since the initial investments in a network science DMZ, institutional high-performance computing, and large-scale research data storage, the over 170 scientists across five scientific divisions at AMNH have collaborated more effectively with colleagues across the nation and globe, shared data with multiple communities of interest, and published computationally intense research. Under this award, AMNH addresses key limitations that surfaced at the networking layer as collaborations scaled and deepened. The initial implementation of the Science DMZ with a 10 Gbps connection was successful, and eventually outpaced capacity externally. Internally, the science network DMZ did not include every campus lab or every computational resource for research. This award allows AMNH to connect all labs and all computational resources through a shared backbone and provides 100 Gbps for collaboration, enabling greater institutional access to national services such as the National Research Platform and Open Science Pool. In addition, the improved Data Transfer Nodes in the network now operate at 100 Gbps along with the perfSONAR nodes that monitor network performance. The DMZ-based science network is a key building block for innovation at the Museum and will positively affect education and exhibitions, which educate the public about science and inspire young minds to pursue scientific inquiry. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-11

The American Museum of Natural History will host the Science Research Mentoring Program Conference (SRMPCon) designed as an opportunity to exchange ideas and strategies centered on evidence-based, inclusive, research-focused mentorship for underrepresented minority youth. Particularly for youth who have been historically underrepresented in STEM, effective mentorship can lead to the development of a STEM identity, confidence in STEM learning, and a sense of belonging in STEM fields. Many education programs across the U.S. offer mentored research experiences to underrepresented minority high school youth, but they often operate in isolation, limiting the exchange of strategies for fostering inclusive mentorship environments. Through this conference, participants will have the opportunity to increase their knowledge about ways of improving their mentorship programs. Over three meetings (two virtual sessions and one in-person three-day conference held at the American Museum of Natural History) participants will explore the institutional drivers that shape mentorship in their programs and will design concrete strategies that build on collective assets to address institutional barriers. Conference participants will include program administrators, scientist mentors, and science educators working within structured research mentorship programs for high school students who are historically underrepresented in STEM. SRMPCon will produce reports on the proceedings from an external evaluator and will compile the initiatives and strategies created by participants. These results will be disseminated widely in collaboration with the Partners for Network Improvement team at STEM PUSH, an NSF INCLUDES Alliance (NSF #1930990). This conference aims to shift institutional priorities to recognize the value of mentorship and cultivate environments that encourage evidence-based, inclusive mentorship, serving to diversify the workforce and bring valuable perspectives to STEM fields. This award has been made in response to solicitation NSF 22-622. This conference is supported by the NSF Eddie Bernice Johnson INCLUDES Initiative (NSF INCLUDES), which motivates and accelerates collaboration for systems change to broaden participation in STEM and the Advancing Informal STEM Learning program, which supports projects that: (a) contribute to research and practice that considers informal STEM learning's role in equity and belonging in STEM; (b) promote personal and educational success in STEM; (c) advance public engagement in scientific discovery; (d) foster interest in STEM careers; (e) create and enhance the theoretical and empirical foundations for effective informal STEM learning; (f) improve community vibrancy; and/or (g) enhance science communication and the public's engagement in and understanding of STEM and STEM processes. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-11

The Department of Ornithology at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City houses one of the world’s most important collections of type and rare bird specimens. Type specimens are globally unique and are used by taxonomists to describe species. The AMNH collection is also used more broadly by researchers, naturalists, and artists for a range of research and educational purposes. However, the type and rare bird collection is currently stored in nearly century-old cabinetry, which threatens the physical integrity of the specimens due to soot accumulation and jostling during the opening and closing of drawers. This award will safeguard a globally significant collection by providing new cabinetry and an opportunity to record specimen data, including imaging a select subset of specimens. The enhanced specimen data will be made publicly available and retrievable on open-access online databases. This project will ensure the long-term protection of the specimens and improve access for both on-site and online users. To maintain the AMNH type and rare bird collection at the highest curation standards and expand its accessibility, the project will achieve the following objectives: 1) replace century-old cabinetry with 54 new cabinets on compactors; 2) add 3,037 additional rare bird specimens, representing a 36% increase in the collection; 3) image the non-passerine primary-type collection and make it available online; and 4) improve metadata and georeference all 11,898 specimens housed in the type and rare bird room. Digitizing these collections is crucial as type specimens are not loaned out, which will allow remote researchers access for their investigations. The project will utilize an educational and outreach platform involving high school students and social media to fulfill these objectives. Collectively, this proposal will broaden the utility of the collection through improved access via digitization, online resources, onsite facilities, and workforce training, ensuring the collections viability into the future. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-09

This project studies 6-million-year-old paleontological sites to retrieve fossil, paleoenvironmental, and geological data relevant for understanding human origins. The age of the fossil sites coincides with the emergence of the human lineage, and the paleontological assemblages provide novel information regarding the ecological contexts and evolutionary histories of related fauna. The project supports field work, analytical analyses, graduate and undergraduate student training opportunities, and public science outreach. Paleontological sites sampling the critical period when human ancestors first evolved (6 million years ago) are exceptionally rare. The investigators conduct intensive (i) paleontological recovery, (ii) paleoenvironmental reconstruction through multiple proxies, and (iii) refinement and expansion of the regional geological framework in a key region for understanding hominin origins. Local paleoclimate, vegetation structure, and herbivore community ecology are investigated using phytolith analyses and stable isotope analyses of paleosol carbonates, leaf waxes, and fossil mammalian tooth enamel. Geologic work includes tephra analysis, stratigraphic measurements, and high-resolution mapping to constrain the age and environmental context and enable local correlations and linkages to other paleontological sites. The multi-proxy approach used in this project provides robust dietary niche and environmental reconstructions to better contextualize the fossil assemblages during the emergence of the human lineage. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-09

This is a project to acquire a multi-purpose X-ray diffractometer for microdiffraction at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). The instrument is critical to curation and research dissemination of specimens in the collections of the AMNH, because only the smallest fragment or surface of a small artifact is needed to characterize the specimen. As the collections serve the scientific community, accurate characterization is a service to society. The new XRmD system will be used by scientists and conservators, and by students at all levels, at the American Museum of Natural History, City University of New York, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory/Columbia University, and other potential users in the region. Numerous projects by more than eight investigators are planned initially for a new microdiffraction instrument. Targets of study include diverse micas and serpentines metamorphic rocks and ophiolites, weathering of and carbon behavior in peridotites exposed in the aerial and subaerial environment, minerals as standards for spectroscopic techniques from Raman to astronomical spectra, a variety of minerals in different meteorites, and calcium carbonate polymorphs in marine organisms. To advance the science of the preservation and conservation of art and natural history objects, microdiffraction studies will be carried out on chemical pesticide residues, pigments, and mineralization in fossils. XRmD will be used routinely to identify samples from the mineral, rock, and meteorite collections to improve their characterization and value to the scientific community and the public. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-09

Why are some organisms more diverse than others, both in numbers and in their lifestyles? With more than 1,700 known species in rivers and lakes of the Americas, Africa, the Levant, Madagascar and India, cichlid fishes –one of the largest families of freshwater fishes– can help answer these questions. Although their evolutionary timescale is poorly understood, cichlids boast an extensive fossil record. These poorly-studied fossils could provide a window into the group’s ancient past. This project will study living and fossil cichlids to provide a better picture of when major events in cichlid evolution occurred. The project will also explore how cichlid ecology changed through time by comparing fossils with today’s living species, with the goal of understanding the life history of ancient cichlids. The project will support a postdoctoral researcher, two PhD students, a Master’s student, a technician, and undergraduate students, emphasizing development of transferable skills across STEM and non-STEM fields. The researchers will engage public audiences through university and public museums in the US, and in collaborating museums in Kenya, Brazil and the Dominican Republic. Museum-based activities and associated materials will be produced in English, Portuguese, and Spanish and shared with all participant institutions. Undergraduate teaching modules will be developed and made available as online resources for educators. Cichlid fishes represent a textbook model system for studying adaptive radiation, sexual selection, speciation, and the interplay between ecology and evolution. Despite their importance in biological research, our understanding of cichlid evolution is limited by the lack of an accurate timescale for the group’s evolutionary history. While fossils represent the principal source of temporal data in macroevolutionary studies, a barrier their incorporation is a lack of phenotypic character sets that include both extant and fossil species. Additionally, the surprisingly rich cichlid fossil record, a direct source of temporal information, remains incompletely integrated with the growing body of data available for living species. This work will produce phylogenomic data along with the first comprehensive morphological character set for cichlids, and new phenotypic data extracted from well-preserved fossil specimens. The project will: (i) leverage computed tomographic (CT) examination of modern and fossil specimens to create a morphological framework for explicitly including fossil cichlids in a phylogenetic context with living species; (ii) combine these phenotypic data for extinct and living cichlids with existing phylogenomic resources to infer a comprehensive, dated genus-level phylogeny for cichlids; and (iii) test the impact of fossils on inferred patterns of cichlid ecomorphology and macroevolution on timescales of tens of millions of years. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-09

The Condor Array Telescope has been operating in southwest New Mexico since 2021. This observatory combines six off-the-shelf refracting telescopes with six off-the-shelf CMOS cameras and is optimized for very high sensitivity, very rapid time resolution, and a very wide field of view. Continued operations of this telescope in a collaboration between the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the American Museum of Natural History will focus on three specific science topics: imaging the “cosmic web” of intergalactic gas, searching for shells from ancient stellar novae, and making deep images of our nearest galactic neighbors. Under this award, the collaboration will replace the current cameras, which will increase the field of view of the array by 70%. A portion of the observing time on Condor will be allocated to provide astronomical telescope access to under-represented students at Stony Brook University, and the telescope will provide faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students at the respective institutions with access to a world-class astronomical observing facility with unique observational capabilities. The research team will use Condor to obtain, analyze, and interpret a variety of observations of the Northern Hemisphere sky, focusing on several important science topics: (1) Condor will image huge portions of the extremely faint and distant filaments of the “cosmic web” of intergalactic gas that stretches between the galaxies, seeking to determine its structure on very large spatial scales. (2) The team will explore extended regions surrounding 25 cataclysmic variable stars of a variety of different types, searching for ancient nova shells that may provide clues as to how the types are related to one another. (3) Condor will monitor wide regions of the sky toward two nearby groups of galaxies minute by minute and night by night, gradually building up deep images of our nearest galaxy neighbors while searching for flaring novae and other evidence of stars that have been expelled from the galaxies and are now floating freely in intergalactic space. These same observations are also likely to find Earth-like planets orbiting in the habitable zones of white dwarf stars and tenuous dusty clouds of interstellar gas that obscure our view of the distant Universe. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-08

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) is a highly competitive, federal fellowship program. GRFP helps ensure the vitality and diversity of the scientific and engineering workforce of the United States. The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and in STEM education. The GRFP provides three years of financial support for the graduate education of individuals who have demonstrated their potential for significant research achievements in STEM and STEM education. This award supports the NSF Graduate Fellows pursuing graduate education at this GRFP institution. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-08

The Florida Current represents the origins of the Gulf Stream that flows northward into the high latitude North Atlantic, eventually becoming the North Atlantic Current. The flow of this water mass warms the atmosphere above it, redistributing heat from the tropics to higher latitudes. As the North Atlantic Current cools near the Arctic, it becomes dense and sinks to the deep ocean then flows southward and in part drives the large-scale Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, which moderates climate in the Northern Hemisphere and beyond. Much attention has been focused on the possible slowdown of this circulation. Although researchers have some understanding of how the Florida Current has behaved in modern times, based on direct measurements, its past behavior is poorly constrained. Further, observations of the Florida Current are limited to recent decades and it has been suggested that the Florida Current has weakened over the last 40 years due to human caused climate change. However, longer-term (multidecadal to centennial) annual resolution data on the Florida Current are currently too scarce to confirm this. Because the period of direct instrumental observation is relatively short, to understand the natural variability of the system, the Florida Current must be studied by natural climate archives and proxy records. This investigation will utilize previously collected corals that are strategically located to address the questions: 1) What is the natural variability in annual changes to the Florida Current over the past several centuries? 2) How do those changes relate to climate drivers in the region, including decadal scale trends to regional and local conditions? The broader impact activities of this proposal include support for several underrepresented researchers, training and mentoring of undergraduate and graduate students, and two postdoctoral researchers. The investigators will create a museum display in the Hall of Planet Earth at the American Museum of Natural History. Direct observations of the components of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) are limited to the last couple of decades. Measurements of the Florida Current, a critical component of AMOC, have only existed for the last 40 years with recent work suggesting a modest decline in the Florida Current over the past century; however, annual resolution and long-term (> 50 to 100 years) data on the Florida Current and AMOC are necessary to further evaluate this. The proposed research will contribute much needed information on the rates and processes of the Florida Current over the past 200-300 years. Using previously collected Siderastrea and Colpophyllia corals from Tobago and the Florida Straits that faithfully record oceanographic and climate signals within the geochemistry of their skeletons, this work will reconstruct Florida Current flow from water mass properties. Annual-resolution measurements of radiocarbon content will resolve water mass source variations between several inflow routes into and through the Caribbean Sea that contribute to the velocity of the Florida Current. Sea surface temperature (SST) and salinity (SSS) obtained at monthly resolution from ratios of strontium to calcium (Sr/Ca) and oxygen isotopes (δ18O) respectively will add higher resolution information on water mass properties due to specific hydroclimates in water source regions. The corals are strategically located: one is in the heart of the Florida Current, the second is at the southern end-member of the Caribbean in-flow. Together, these sites will “close the loop” on interactions between the Florida Current and the relative contribution of northern and southern water to the Caribbean current. By integrating data from several locations, this work will better constrain multidecadal variability in the rate of the Florida Current flow before the onset of anthropogenic changes. Box models utilizing the water mass signals of radiocarbon, SST and SSS will be combined with reanalysis of regional Lagrangian output Ocean General Circulation Models to reconstruct decadal resolved changes to the Florida Current source water over the last several centuries. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-08

Extinction has played a fundamental role in shaping biodiversity throughout the history of life, especially during mass extinction events that resulted in geologically rapid, catastrophic species loss. Studies of the fossil record can reveal the mechanisms and long-term impacts of extinction events and are critical for understanding the context of the current biodiversity crisis threatening many living species. The research team will investigate the first mass extinction event in the history of life, which drove around 85% of species extinct at the end of the Ordovician period and resulted in radical changes in the morphology, abundance, and dominance of surviving species. By combining field-based geological research with global datasets of fossil occurrences and morphology, the team will document patterns of extinction, biogeographic change, and morphological evolution across the mass extinction event at local and global scales. Students will be trained in the research and public outreach aspects of this international project. Focusing on the diverse and abundant fossil records of crinoids and trilobites, fieldwork on Anticosti Island, Quebec, Canada will document patterns of body size evolution and the timing of extinction versus migration within regional, high-resolution stratigraphic sections. Field investigations will be complemented by global, phylogeny-based studies of biogeography and body size evolution to identify migration pathways, refugia, and mechanisms of body size change across the Ordovician mass extinction. This research will be the first to leverage phylogenetic approaches for these investigations and will fill critical gaps in our understanding of local versus global patterns surrounding the event. The team will also train multiple students in analytical and field methods and will work with international collaborators to develop a fossil identification guide, geological walking tour, and annual public talks on Anticosti Island that will contribute to local tourism and education. Research outcomes will further public education through public talks and development of an exhibit at the Sam Noble Museum and will benefit the research community through dissemination of phylogenetic, morphologic, and biogeographic datasets. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.