Grant for Collaborative Research: Shaping Evolutionary Biology in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

这是伯克利脊椎动物学博物馆的一个关于生态和进化生物学形成的合作研究项目。该项目研究了组织结构和理论承诺，指导MVZ的发展跨越20世纪。它旨在展示MVZ的连续性如何为技术和制度变革提供了广泛的平台。由其第一任主任约瑟夫·格林内尔（Joseph Grinnell）发起，并在对本土动物群及其环境持续变化的关注的指导下，MVZ对脊椎动物的研究从一开始就与收集具有各种相关数据的标本的做法相结合。MVZ建立在Grinnell的愿景基础上，在生物多样性信息学和长期比较生物地理学，生态学和进化研究方面取得了特殊优势，同时带来了新的关注和技术。因此，博物馆提供了一个窗口，让人们了解世纪以来自然历史的深刻变化。该项目记录、分析并公开了MVZ从格林内尔时代开始的历史。它将博物馆描述为一个最初围绕单一研究项目建立的组织。然后，它展示了它的理论、描述和程序如何随着环境的变化而变得既强大又灵活。该项目将博物馆视为研究种群空间分布变化、物种和亚种水平的进化以及物种与其不同环境的关系的系统安排。该项目涉及历史、哲学和科学社会学以及当代生物学的前沿主题，将组织考虑与理论建设与大规模历史变化相结合。MVZ为20世纪美国生物学中同时发生的智力、组织和物质变革提供了一个窗口，这些变革很难用单一学科来把握。它提供了一种以可管理的规模跟踪进化和生态科学的一些复杂性的方法。研究团队的核心由一位历史学家、一位哲学家、一位生物学家和一位社会学家组成，他们都在生物科学的各个研究领域拥有公认的专业知识。该团队还包括一名研究助理，MVZ档案管理员，以及研究生和本科生，其中许多人都参与了该项目的早期阶段。主要方法是MVZ和其他收藏品的档案研究，MVZ的董事和策展人构成了该帐户的支柱。还将整合其他来源。该项目将出版一本书，多篇学术文章和一个网络展览。该团队将通过印刷品和网络出版物以及会议演示来传播其研究成果。它还将通过有效利用MVZ的百年庆典来做到这一点。除了为项目的研究做出贡献外，团队成员还将促进研究生和本科生的教学，培训和学习。最后，该项目的成果将使MVZ成为一个无与伦比的网站，反思过去对大学自然历史博物馆的现在和未来的意义。它将通过展示MVZ是一个专业人士和业余爱好者，研究人员和学生，学术科学家和保护主义者互动的地方来实现这一目标。它将揭示博物馆科学人员的愿景与MVZ学生和工作人员的实践之间的联系，进化生物学的新思维方式，以及科学家，保护主义者，业余爱好者，政策制定者和其他参与者对消失的本土动物的担忧。该项目的资金由BIO和SBE董事会的合资企业提供，称为“生物学对社会的影响，“这是通过STS计划管理的。

This is a collaborative research project on the shaping of ecological and evolutionary biology at Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. The project examines the organizational structures and theoretical commitments guiding MVZ's development across the 20th century. It aims to show how MVZ's continuity in program provided a broad platform for technical and institutional change. Initiated by its first director, Joseph Grinnell, and guided by concerns about ongoing changes in native fauna and their environment, MVZ's research on vertebrates was integrated from the start with the practice of collecting specimens with diverse associated data. MVZ built on Grinnell's vision to achieve special strengths in biodiversity informatics and long-term comparative bio-geographical, ecological, and evolutionary studies, while bringing new concerns and techniques on board. The museum thus provides a window into the reconfiguration of natural history over a century of profound change. The project documents, analyzes, and makes public MVZ's history from the Grinnell era forward. It characterizes the museum as an organization initially built around a single research program. It then shows how its theories, descriptions, and procedures proved both robust and flexible as circumstances changed. The project treats the museum as a system of arrangements for studying the changing spatial distributions of populations, evolution at the species and subspecies level, and the relation of species to their varying environments.The project addresses cutting-edge themes in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science, as well as contemporary biology, integrating organizational considerations with theory construction with large-scale historical change. MVZ offers a window onto the simultaneous intellectual, organizational, and material transformations in twentieth-century American biology that are hard to grasp in the terms of a single discipline. It provides a way to track some of the complexities of evolutionary and ecological science with a high level of detail at a manageable scale. The research team's core consists of an historian, a philosopher, a biologist, and a sociologist with each having recognized expertise in the respective area of study of the biological sciences. The team also includes a research associate, the MVZ archivist, and graduate and undergraduate students, many of whom have worked on early stages of the project. The primary methodology is archival research in MVZ and other collections, with the MVZ's directors and curators forming the backbone of the account. Other sources will also be integrated. The project will produce a book, multiple scholarly articles, and a web exhibit.The team will disseminate its research results through print and web publication, and through conference presentations. It will also do so by effectively leveraging MVZ's centennial celebration. In addition to contributing to the research element of the project, the team members will promotes teaching, training, and learning at the graduate and undergraduate levels. Finally, the results of this project will serve to make MVZ into an unmatched site for reflection on the significance of the past for the present and future of university-based natural history museums. It will do so by showing MVZ to be a place where professionals and amateurs, researchers and students, and academic scientists and conservationists interacted. It will reveal connections among the vision of the museum's scientific personnel and the practices of MVZ students and staff, new ways of thinking in evolutionary biology, and concerns about disappearing native fauna shared among scientists, conservationists, hobbyists, policymakers, and other actors.Funds for this project were provided by a joint venture of the BIO and SBE directorates known as "Impacts of Biology on Society," which is administered via the STS program.