In conjunction with the new season of intertidal walks, we also had six new button designs for our participants! The participants were firstly being introduced to Singapore’s first offshore landfill via video presentation and a tour. Though it had been raining quite frequently before the trip, we were very fortunate to have just overcast skies for the most part of the intertidal walk. Quite a number of interesting fauna were seen at the intertidal area. Among the animals seen our familiar Knobbly Sea Star, Synaptid Sea Cucumber as well as an intriguing translucent flatworm!

It was a wonderful public walk to mark the beginning of 2012. And hopefully it will be the same, if not more exciting, for the ones to come!

Participants have always been fascinated by the charismatic Knobbly Sea Star.

Our six new button designs depicting (from left to right) a Big-finned Reef Squid, a Collared Kingfisher, a Mosaic Crab, a Sea Hibiscus, Synaptid Sea Cucumbers, and a Sea Snake.

Five questions with… Dr Tan Swee Hee

Biologist Tan Swee Hee is in charge of setting up Singapore’s first dedicated natural history museum in four decades.

Dr Tan, 40, a crab taxonomist by training, is based at the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

How did you get interested in what you do?

My earliest memory is of observing ornamental fist in aquariums. At university, I realised there was a lot more out there than what I had read about in ornamental fish magazines. That was when I started studying other groups of animals, especially crabs.

Can you tell us a bit about the museum?

Singapore has not seen the likes of a natural history museum for more than 40 years. This is a very exciting time for the local biodiversity education and research scene.

What’s the greatest misconception people have of your work?

That we sit in the office or laboratory all day long.

We do field work to obtain data for research and to interptret information for exhibitions at the museum. Local field trips are typically one-day or half-day affairs.

We also have to be in the field when the animals are active. For example, to observe intertidal animals, we have to go out at low tide – sometimes 3am.

It is hard work, and clocking 18-hour days is the norm, but we get to see some of the most remote and pristine habitats in this part of the world, and to discover new species.

The best thing about my job is…

Visiting natural history museum while on holiday. Fortunately, my family shares my interest.

Our last such visit was to the National Museum of Nature and Science at Ueno in Tokyo. It is probably one of the most comprehensive natural history museums in Asia, and has lots of specimens on display, including dinosaurs.

What are your hopes for your field of work?

That we can be more aware of our environment and the pressures we impose on it as a result of our activities.

Mr Giam Xingli

Mr Giam Xingli is an honorary research affiliate with the museum and has broad research interests in tropical conservation ecology and biogeography.

Abstract:
Giam, Xingli, B. R. Scheffers, N. S. Sodhi, D. S. Wilcove, G. Ceballos, P. R. Ehrlich (2011) Reservoirs of richness: least disturbed tropical forests are centres of undescribed species diversity. Proceedings of the Royal Society, 279: 67-76.

Reference:
In the last few decades, there has been a remarkable discovery of new species of plants, invertebrates and vertebrates, in what have been called the new age of discovery. However, owing to anthropogenic impacts such as habitat conversion, many of the still unknown species may go extinct before being scientifically documented (i.e. ‘crypto-extinctions’). Here, by applying a mathematical model of species descriptions which accounts for taxonomic effort, we show that even after 250 years of taxonomic classification, about 3050 amphibians and at least 160 land mammal species remain to be discovered and described. These values represent, respectively, 33 and 3 per cent of the current species total for amphibians and land mammals. We found that tropical moist forests of the Neotropics, Afrotropics and Indomalaya probably harbor the greatest numbers of undescribed species. Tropical forests with minimal anthropogenic disturbance are predicted to have larger proportions of undescribed species. However, the protected area coverage is low in many of these key biomes. Moreover, undescribed species are likely to be at a greater risk of extinction compared with known species because of small geographical ranges among other factors. By highlighting the key areas of undescribed species diversity, our study provides a starting template to rapidly document these species and protect them through better habitat management.