Research & Collections at the Florida Museum of Natural History

05/29/2026

Scientists have discovered that one of the ocean’s most recognizable corals, the iconic “organ pipe coral” — long believed to be a single widespread species — includes at least 15 genetically distinct lineages.

"From their skeleton, these corals can look very similar, which is why their diversity remained hidden for so long,” said Laura Macrina, a post-doctoral fellow at the King Abdullah University Of Science And Technology - KAUST, who led the study. “Genomic tools now allow us to look in much more detail into their evolutionary history and understand how coral species are connected – or separated – across different regions.”

The discovery is particularly significant for the Red Sea, where researchers identified two coral lineages that appear unique to the region, adding to growing evidence that this sea is one of the planet’s great cradles of marine biodiversity.

All of the corals collected and analyzed for this study are now stored in natural history museums, where scientists around the world will have access to them for future studies.

“Museum collections are libraries of life that hold a huge number of unread books,” wrote study co-author Gustav Paulay, curator of invertebrate zoology here at the Florida Museum. “Unfortunately, there is limited support for studying specimens, thus much undiscovered diversity lurks in collections.”

🪸 Story: https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/hidden-in-plain-sight-dna-reveals-15-overlooked-coral-lineages-in-the-indo-pacific/

Study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1055790326000928

05/28/2026

The Turtle Death Layer coughed up a fossil with teeth marks, revealing a conflict between turtle and gar! 🐢

Paleontologist Jason Bourque recently described a new, extinct species of musk turtle that lived in Florida during the late Miocene roughly five-and-a-half million years ago. While preparing one of the many turtle shells, Jason noticed a miniscule tooth fragment embedded in a tiny pit in the shell. And then another one in another pit nearby the first.

“I immediately thought of gar. Their teeth fall out pretty regularly, and we find hundreds and hundreds of their scales and teeth at Montbrook. But that was almost too easy.”

He briefly considered actual alligators, but the teeth looked like fish, and modern Alligator gars are known to eat crabs and small turtles.

Jason named the new species Sternotherus pugnatus, the epithet being a Latin variation of the word pugnacious. It’s not the first time this adjective has been used to describe the behavior of musk turtles once their slow anger has been sufficiently roused, but it seemed especially fitting for a scrappy species that went up against a predator several times bigger than itself and came out with only a few minor bite marks.

Story: https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/ancient-altercations-between-musk-turtles-and-alligator-gars-recorded-in-floridas-fossil-record/

Paper: https://doi.org/10.1080/08912963.2025.2602686

05/27/2026

Museum Collections 🪶 Extinct stork
This loooong fossil is from the leg of an extinct species of stork. Asphalt storks were large--over 4 feet tall--and they appear in the fossil record across North America. This Florida fossil is from nearby Ichetucknee River.

While many large mammals became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene in North America, Ciconia maltha is one of the few large birds to suffer the same fate.

Common name: Asphalt stork or La Brea stork
Species: Ciconia maltha
Specimen: # UF/PB 8067
Age: Late Pleistocene
More: https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/florida-vertebrate-fossils/species/ciconia-maltha/

05/26/2026

Museum Resource 🐍 Florida Snake ID Guide
Easy visual ID and searchable tool for learning about our state's snakes including habitat, range, diet and look-alike species.

Featured: Rough Greensnake (Opheodrys aestivus)
NON-VENOMOUS

Other common names: Florida Rough Greensnake, Northern Rough Greensnake, Green Snake

Most adult Rough Greensnakes are about 14-33 inches (35-82 cm) in total length. This is a long and slender bright green snake with a cream to yellow belly. The belly color extends onto the chin and lips. Juvenile coloration is similar to adults but not as vivid.

Rough Greensnakes are found throughout mainland Florida in every county, as well as the Florida Keys.

👉 Superb camouflage involving both coloration and behavior renders Rough Greensnakes extremely difficult to spot among the vegetation in which they live. When approached, they will typically freeze and sway as if perhaps mimicking a branch blowing in the wind.

Full info and browse more:
https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/florida-snake-id/snake/rough-greensnake/

Photo courtesy of Noah Mueller

05/25/2026

Exhibit 🎨 Florida Miocene
Paintings in our Florida Fossils exhibit help to illustrate Florida's evolving ecosystems, bringing life to the fossils we display in exhibits.

Many of the fossil sites our paleontologists have excavated were once a pond or lake that formed within a sinkhole, which offers a snapshot of the plants and animals that inhabited this place and time. Art helps visitors imagine what that might have looked like at the time these plants and animals were alive.

🔗 Check out the art + key, plus shovel-tusker, giant otter and rhino fossils from our collections:
https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/exhibits/blog/florida-miocene-painting-by-michael-rothman/

🗝️Painting key:
1. Borophagus pugnator (pugnacious hyena-dog)
2. Pediomeryx hemphillensis (Hemphill’s dear-like dromo)
3. Indarctos oregonensis (short-faced bear)
4. Amebelodon britti (Britt’s shovel-tusker)
5. Dinohippus leardi (Leard’s horse)
6. Hesperotestudo species (extinct tortoise)
7. Enhydritherium terraenovae (extinct marine otter)
8. Aphelops mutilus (giant hornless rhinoceros)
9. Alligator species
10. Egretta subfluvia (heron)
11. Trachemys species (slider turtle)
12. Thinobadistes wetzeli (Wetzel’s ground sloth)
13. Acer negundo (box elder)
14. Palmetto species (palmetto)
15. Buteo species (hawk)
16. Floridameryx species (musk deer)

Florida Miocene painting by Michael Rothman

05/24/2026

When TED-Ed invited him to talk about some of his favorite plants, our biologist Lucas Majure was excited to be a part of this fun and elegantly illustrated educational video.

🌵 The Real Reason Cacti are Prickly:
https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/museum-blog/cactus-adaptations-video/
🌵🌵🌵

Lucas Majure is assistant curator here at the Florida Museum, keeper of the University of Florida Herbarium (FLAS) and co-chair of the IUCN Cactus and Succulents Specialist Group.

You might think those fierce cactus spines are just to protect them from being eaten. But our biologist, Lucas Majure, knows a lot about cacti and can tell us much more about these unusual plants. He studies succulent plants and has been fascinated by how a variety of cactus species thrive in challe

05/23/2026

🐢 The Florida mouse uses the gopher tortoise’s burrow as shelter from the heat, but the tortoise gains nothing. In fact, research showed that these two species have been linked for at least 1.35 million years.

Story + study:

The Florida mouse and gopher tortoise have been in a serious relationship for thousands of years. Theirs is a commensal one: The Florida mouse uses the gopher tortoise's burrow as shelter from the heat, but the tortoise gains nothing. While the mouse also makes its way into other animals’

05/22/2026

Hawkmoths hold the record for having the world's longest proboscis, the specialized feeding tubes insects use to drink. A new study shows how this structure evolved in hawkmoths over the last 44 million years.

While some species of hawkmoths have long proboscises they use to drink nectar from specialized flowers, others have short ones that give them access to a wider variety of floral food sources. Some have no proboscises and rely entirely on energy stored during their larval stage.

Christian Couch and team sequenced DNA and measured the proboscises of 310 hawkmoth species to better understand the complex relationship over time.

“There is a co-evolutionary arms race with the hawkmoth and the flower that has persisted for millions of years. The tongue of the moth becomes longer and longer, and the flower, too, becomes longer and longer,” said co-author Akito Kawahara.

Story: https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/evolutionary-arms-race-stretches-hawkmoths-and-flowers-to-extremes/

Study: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.251697

Authors: Christian D. Couch, Paul Masonick, David Plotkin; Xuankun Li, Jesse W. Breinholt, Rodolphe Rougerie, Jesse R. Barber, Ian Kitching, and Akito Y. Kawahara

05/21/2026

Museum Resource 🐟 Fishes in the Fresh Waters of Florida

Explore our state's freshwater fish species, including collection records, photos and map.
Shown: Flier (Centrarchus macropterus), indigenous to Florida's freshwaters
🔗 More info & browse gallery:
https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/discover-fish/florida-fishes-gallery/flier/

05/20/2026

May 20 🐝 ! Buzz over and learn a little bit about the 300+ species of bees that live in our state, including the 29 species endemic to Florida!

Five Facts: Bees in Florida:
https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/five-facts-bees-in-florida/
🐝🐝🐝

While we often think of bees as fuzzy, black and yellow-striped buzzy insects that live in hives like the honey bee, the truth is more gorgeous and diverse than that! Honey bees do a lot of agricultural labor for humans and are very important to farming, but here in North America most of these domes

05/19/2026

The evolutionary path that brought us to butterflies is intriguing. Moths originated 300 million years ago and diversified with a little help from a fungus and bacterium. Then...

“Even though moths and butterflies are a well-studied group, we’re just now beginning to understand some of the most basic facts about their evolution and conservation needs,” said Akito Kawahara, a curator at the Florida Museum’s McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity. “There’s still so much more to do.”

Scientists lay out what we do and don’t yet know about moths and butterflies: https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/scientists-lay-out-what-we-do-and-dont-yet-know-about-moths-and-butterflies/