OUP accepted manuscript

Zoos and natural history museums are both collections-based institutions with important missions in biodiversity research and education. Animals in zoos are a repository and living record of the world's biodiversity, whereas natural history museums are a permanent historical record of snapshots of biodiversity in time. Surprisingly, despite significant overlap in institutional missions, formal partnerships between these institution types are infrequent. Life history information, pedigrees, and medical records maintained at zoos should be seen as complementary to historical records of morphology, genetics, and distribution kept at museums. Through examining both institution types, we synthesize the benefits and challenges of cross-institutional exchanges and propose actions to increase the dialog between zoos and museums. With a growing recognition of the importance of collections to the advancement of scientific research and discovery, a transformational impact could be made with long-term investments in connecting the institutions that are caretakers of living and preserved animals.

"The dead shall be raised": Multidisciplinary analysis of human skeletons reveals complexity in 19th century immigrant socioeconomic history and identity in New Haven, Connecticut

In July 2011, renovations to Yale-New Haven Hospital inadvertently exposed the cemetery of Christ Church, New Haven, Connecticut’s first Catholic cemetery. While this cemetery was active between 1833 and 1851, both the church and its cemetery disappeared from public records, making the discovery serendipitous. Four relatively well-preserved adult skeletons were recovered with few artifacts. All four individuals show indicators of manual labor, health and disease stressors, and dental health issues. Two show indicators of trauma, with the possibility of judicial hanging in one individual. Musculoskeletal markings are consistent with physical stress, and two individuals have arthritic indicators of repetitive movement/specialized activities. Radiographic analyses show osteopenia, healed trauma, and other pathologies in several individuals. Dental calculus analysis did not identify any tuberculosis indicators, despite osteological markers. Isotopic analyses of teeth indicate that all four were likely recent immigrants to the Northeastern United States. Nuclear and mitochondrial DNA were recovered from three individuals, and these analyses identified ancestry, hair/eye color, and relatedness. Genetic and isotopic results upended our initial ancestry assessment based on burial context alone. These individuals provide biocultural evidence of New Haven’s Industrial Revolution and the plasticity of ethnic and religious identity in the immigrant experience. Their recovery and the multifaceted analyses described here illuminate a previously undescribed part of the city’s rich history. The collective expertise of biological, geochemical, archaeological, and historical researchers interprets socioeconomic and cultural identity better than any one could alone. Our combined efforts changed our initial assumptions of a poor urban Catholic cemetery’s membership, and provide a template for future discoveries and analyses.

Redtail and red colobus monkeys show intersite urinary cortisol concentration variation in Kibale National Park, Uganda

Non-invasive measurement of urinary cortisol is a proven method of evaluating the impact of environmental stressors on wild primates. Variation in cortisol concentrations can reflect physiological stress, and prolonged elevation of circulating cortisol can significantly affect individual and population-level health. In a previous study, we found that urinary cortisol concentrations in grey-cheeked mangabeys (Lophocebus albigena) were higher at a highly disturbed site (Mainaro) in Kibale National Park, Uganda compared with a minimally disturbed site (Ngogo) in the same habitat. Here, we expand on this research, reporting on cortisol concentrations in two other cercopithecid monkeys (Cercopithecus ascanius and Piliocolobus rufomitratus) at the same two sites. We hypothesized that C. ascanius would show no difference between sites, given its preference for secondary forests, while P. rufomitratus would have higher cortisol concentrations at the disturbed site. Contrary to expectations, both species exhibited significantly higher cortisol concentrations at Ngogo (minimally disturbed) compared with Mainaro (disturbed). We suggest that these results may be caused by inter- or intragroup social dynamics, intersite differences in predation rate, fruit/food availability and chemistry, or a combination of these factors. These initial evaluations of urinary cortisol concentrations provide testable hypotheses on habitat disturbance and Kibale primate ecophysiology.