Rocky Mountain Herbarium Ranks Highly in Nation, World

Source: UW Institutional Communications

The University of Wyoming’s Rocky Mountain Herbarium (RM) ranks in the top 2 percent of herbaria in the U.S. and in the world, according to a recent report.  Founded in 1893, the RM, housed within the Department of Botany, contains 1.3 million specimens from around the world.

Friends of the RM was formed in October 2015 to raise awareness of the RM through public events and activities, and to establish a volunteer program to increase the rate of specimen processing.

Since the volunteer program’s start in January 2016, volunteers have logged more than 5,000 hours to help process a backlog of more than 300,000 specimens, says Charmaine Delmatier, volunteer program director. She says more help would be welcomed. “You don’t have to be a botanist to volunteer,” she says. “We train you, and you get to pick your own hours.”

To volunteer, go to the RM on the third floor of the Aven Nelson Building, or call Delmatier or Curator Ernie Nelson at (307) 766-2236.

Entire press release can be access from: UW Herbarium Ranks Highly in Nation, World | News | University of Wyoming

Botany Professor Katie Wagner's work on fish evolution highlighted by UW

Dr. Katie Wagner "and fellow researchers from Switzerland’s University of Bern and the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology have demonstrated for the first time that the rapid evolution of Lake Victoria cichlids -- brightly colored, perch-like fish -- was facilitated by earlier hybridization between two distantly related cichlid species from the Upper Nile and Congo drainage systems."

Different species of fish, called cichlids, swim in East Africa’s Lake Victoria.
More than 700 cichlid species have evolved in the Lake Victoria region
over the past 150,000 years. (Florian Moser Photo)

This research was published in the journal Nature Communications
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms14363

Read the complete story at:

UW Researcher Helps Solve Fish Evolution Mystery | News | University of Wyoming