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Training Program
Coursework: Our doctoral student, Edmundo Gonzalez, is enrolled in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the City University of New York, where his coursework includes Invertebrate Zoology, Entomology, Biosystematics, and Phylogenetics. As need arises, he will enroll in courses (e.g. on GIS techniques) offered at the AMNH and affiliated institutions, e.g. the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation at Columbia University. Fieldwork: Trainees accompany PIs and collaborators on summer fieldtrips to the southwestern USA and Mexico. They learn methods for collecting and preserving scorpions for morphological and molecular analysis and to the ecology and natural history of scorpions in the wild. Collections: In addition to collecting and preserving new material, our trainees make use of existing collections in the US and Mexico, through personal visits and loaning material. They learn how to sort, store, catalog and identify preserved material and to interpret morphological characters on specimens, thereby acquiring a sense of the importance of documenting and archiving biodiversity in natural history collections. Laboratory and Computational: Trainees obtain skills in the latest methods for digital imaging, SEM, GIS, interactive mapping and identification keys, and the acquisition and analysis of molecular data, using state-of-the-art facilities, e.g. the Microscopy and Imaging Facility, Remote Sensing and GIS Facility, Molecular Systematics laboratory, Ambrose Monell Cryocollection, parallel supercomputer cluster, and Microptics digital photomicrography system at the AMNH. Individualised Mentoring: The most important aspect of training is individualized mentoring. PIs teach trainees the specific methods, techniques and character systems used in scorpion systematics, including examination, interpretation and illustration of pedipalpal trichobothrial patterns, cheliceral dentition, pedipalpal and metasomal carinae, hemispermatophores, and tarsal setation. Training in the use of computer databases, eliminative keys and computational phylogenetic analysis also occurs on an individualized basis. Meetings and Oral Presentations: Trainees receive further mentoring from collaborators during fieldtrips and the annual meetings of participants. Trainees will obtain more exposure when they deliver oral presentations on their work at scientific meetings, e.g. at the International Congress of Arachnology and the annual meetings of the American Arachnological Society and the Society of Systematic Biologists. Publications: Edmundo González will prepare and publish a monograph on the taxonomy, phylogeny and biogeography of a major monophyletic group of vaejovids. Additional short papers (e.g. descriptions of new taxa) will be published by undergraduate trainees on an ad hoc basis. Trainees shall co-author two comprehensive papers on vaejovid phylogeny with PIs and collaborators.
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