Greg Watkins-Colwell
I was probably destined to work in a natural history collection. In fact, I may well have been born this way. I remember as a child my father was an amateur taxidermist, and the garage was always filled with deer head forms and trash cans filled with hides being tanned. I’d spend hours staring at the taxidermy supply catalogs and learning to identify many animals by the eyes (or at least by the glass version of their eyes). I also always had some sort of captive scaly or slimy friend. I learned the word “herpetology” in a kids’ nature magazine and from that point on I knew what I would be. In my teens, I was competing in the science fair at school. That is how I found my undergraduate university (Ohio Wesleyan University), as that is where the state competition was held. Every year I competed in some aspect of lizard or frog biology, and always, ALWAYS, had specimens to show, including living specimens. It’s also important to note that my undergraduate university is where I met a person who eventually became my wife. I like to think that’s all because of lizards on my science fair table.
Throughout my life, I’ve worked in multiple museum collections, mostly in academic settings. I’ve also worked in a zoo and with museum living exhibits. In my time as a zookeeper, I cared for a wide array of animals including tarantulas, snakes, alligators, marmosets, and many exotic birds (note that my home life is similar but with kids instead of marmosets). In the museum realm, I’ve worked with some bird and entomology collections, but mostly herpetology and ichthyology. Scaly and slimy species have always held a special place in my heart.
Perhaps because of my connection with living and preserved collections, I am increasingly fascinated by the way these two types of collections overlap in goals, but do not necessarily interact much. Both zoo and museum collections aim to shed light on biodiversity in the same way that botanical gardens and herbaria do. Zoos (including aquaria) and museums house some of Earth’s diversity and provide sources for biodiversity data that, for many species, would otherwise be completely unavailable. Recently a group of zoo and museum people, including me, joined forces and started the ZooMu initiative. ZooMu received funding from the United States National Science Foundation in 2024 to spend the next five years building networks between living and preserved animal collections. This, coupled with some recent changes to the way zoos and aquaria view their own collections, along with changes to how SPNHC defines “natural history collections,” allowing for living collections to be part, is promising for increased interaction between the two types of collections. This can only improve our overall understanding of biodiversity and our ability to be of service to those studying animal life on Earth.
In addition, SPNHC is currently at the beginning of an updated Strategic Plan, which will rely heavily on the Society’s committees and members to help bring the plan’s goals to fruition. My hope is that this will ultimately bring more people into the SPNHC community, including people from the living collections world, and to help move us all forward with new ideas built up on the strength of increased diversity. Over the next two years, while I am President, I plan to work closely with the committee chairs to help foster cross-committee activities and improve communication between the committees.
If you are interested in serving on a committee or just want to talk about an idea, please contact me. I’m especially interested in ways we can connect SPNHC activities and goals with allied organizations.
Thank you,
Greg Watkins-Colwell president@spnhc.org
Greg Watkins-Colwell is the Senior Collections Manager for Vertebrate Zoology, Herpetology, Ichthyology at the Yale Peabody Museum