Greg Schneider, research museum collections manager for the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology's division of reptiles and amphibians, holds a jar containing snake specimens Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023, in Ann Arbor, Mich. They are part of a donation from Oregon State University that could make Michigan's collection of snake specimens the largest held by any research institution in the U.S.
“Amphibians, unlike people, breathe at least partly through their skin, which is constantly exposed to everything in their environment,” he said, adding that “the worldwide occurrences of amphibian declines and deformities could be an early warning that some of our ecosystems, even seemingly pristine ones, are seriously out of balance.”
The"largest snake collection" title would be nice, but Schneider said the true promise of a big collection is new research opportunities. A number of the newly acquired jars contain both snakes and litters of their newborns, which Michigan professor Dan Rabosky said “is very, very rare for museum collections and is incredibly powerful for research, because it lets researchers ask questions about genetics that would otherwise not be possible.”
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