Raffles Museum News

Children’s Season 2012: Open House at the Raffles Museum

jangancemas — Fri, 25 May 2012 07:48:34 +0000

In collaboration with the National Heritage Board’s Children Season and to commemorate International Museum day, the Raffles Museum held an Open House last Saturday. It is to be our last public event at the museum until the completion of the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum. This calls for a celebration and yes, we went out with a blast, thanks to our hardworking volunteers and enthusiastic visitors.

All in all, more than 700 people thronged the two floors of the museum and its surrounding area from 9 am to 5 pm last saturday. Did you join in the fun, or did you miss it? Here is a photo entry documenting our Open House!

Click to view slideshow.

We have more pictures and they will be uploaded soon. Stay tuned!

Raffles Museum in weekend media blitz (The Straits Times and 联合早报, 19 May; Sunday Times, 20 May)

jangancemas — Mon, 21 May 2012 05:35:29 +0000

The past weekend has been a busy one for us at the museum! We held a very successful Open House, visited by more then 700 people, and were featured in both the English and Chinese Press when we finally unveiled the design of our new home in 2014, the Lee Khong Chian Natural History Museum.

Straits Times, 19 May 2012.

Straits Times, 19 May 2012 (PDF)

联合早报 19 May 2012

联合早报 19 May 2012 (PDF).

To top it off, Jose Hong from the Sunday Times called on us on Saturday and wrote an article about what happened on Open House Day!

We don’t have the scanned article yet; but Wild Singapore News has the text up on their website. Ria from WildSingapore put up an entry about the open house yesterday, with lots of pictures documenting our activities and participants. Thanks, Ria!

Notice: Entrance of Science Drive 2 to be closed from 5-25 May

jangancemas — Mon, 07 May 2012 03:00:28 +0000

Dear visitors, please note the following:

Due to construction works between blocks S14 and S15 from the 5th to 25th of May, the entrance of Science Drive 2 will be closed to traffic.

This closure will affect vehicles turning in from Lower Kent Ridge Road into Science Drive 2. An alternative route through Science Drive 1 will be provided and traffic controllers will be deployed during this period to ensure proper and safe traffic flow. This alternate route in indicated in the diagram below.

Professor Peter Ng’s featured interview! Why you should care about Singapore’s natural history

dbsnlls — Fri, 04 May 2012 17:25:23 +0000

Orthoptera in the Bukit Timah and Central Catchment Nature Reserves

4rmbr — Fri, 04 May 2012 08:19:13 +0000

A new book by M. K. Tan on Orthoptera in the Bukit Timah and Central Catchment Nature Reserves (Part 1): Suborder Caelifera has been published and is available for download [PDF, 9.06 MB]

New articles on Nature in Singapore website

4rmbr — Fri, 04 May 2012 07:55:42 +0000

The following articles have been uploaded to the Nature in Singapore website (http://rmbr.nus.edu.sg/nis/index.html).

Adult male of Pericnemis stictica. See Ngiam and Leong, 2012.

Low, B. W. & K. K. P. Lim, 2012. Gouramies of the genus Trichopodus in Singapore (Actinopterygii: Perciformes: Osphronemidae). Nature in Singapore, 5: 83–93. [PDF, 1.07 MB]
Ng, T. H. & D. C. J. Yeo, 2012. Non-indigenous frogs in Singapore. Nature in Singapore, 5: 95–102. [PDF, 624 KB]
Ngiam, R. W. J. & T. M. Leong, 2012. Larva of the phytotelm-breeding damselfly, Pericnemis stictica Selys from forests in Singapore (Odonata: Zygoptera: Coenagrionidae). Nature in Singapore, 5: 103–115. [PDF, 2.46 MB]
Ang, W. F., A. F. S. L. Lok, C. K. Yeo, A. Angkasa, P. X. Ng & H. T. W. Tan, 2012. Rediscovery of Freycinetia javanica Blume (Pandanaceae) in Singapore. Nature in Singapore, 5: 117–122. [PDF, 5.61 MB]
Rodda, M. & W. F. Ang, 2012. Hoya caudata Hook. f. (Apocynaceae), a new record for Singapore, and keys to the Hoya species of Singapore. Nature in Singapore, 5: 123–128. [PDF, 700 KB]
Leong, T. M. & Mishak Shunari, 2012. Final instar caterpillar and metamorphosis of Lebeda cognata Grünberg, 1913 in Singapore (Lepidoptera: Lasiocampidae). Nature in Singapore, 5: 129–140. [PDF, 3.83 MB]
Decker, P. & T. Tertilt, 2012. First records of two introduced millipedes Anoplodesmus saussurii and Chondromorpha xanthotricha (Diplopoda: Polydesmida: Paradoxosomatidae) in Singapore. Nature in Singapore, 5: 141–149. [PDF, 1.27 MB]
Leong, T. M., 2012. Final instar caterpillars and metamorphosis of Cyclosia sordidus (Walker) in Singapore (Lepidoptera: Zygaenidae: Chalcosiinae). Nature in Singapore, 5: 151–158. [PDF, 1.55 MB]

We have a bug visitor for a change!

jangancemas — Thu, 03 May 2012 11:10:43 +0000

John with some of our bees

John Ascher from the American Museum of Natural History is visiting the department this week as part of his interview process and swung by the museum this afternoon! Being a bee man, he could not resist checking out our modest collection and shared with us interesting factoids about his favourite animals. For example, did you know some bees species possess night vision? We never knew that! We look forward to sharing what we learnt from John with you at our Open House!

Amongst the many things John has published, he has compiled an interactive checklist of world bee diversity by country. Singapore has 57 entries and you can investigate further here!

I’ll have that, please

Welcome back, Sang-Kyu!

jangancemas — Wed, 02 May 2012 06:36:44 +0000

Korean PhD student, Mr. Lee Sang-kyu, from the Laboratory of Systematics & Molecular Evolution, School of Biological Sciences, Seoul National University, is currently visiting us to continue his research in crab taxonomy & systematics. This is his second time visiting the museum in as many years!

Leptodius exaratus (Photo credit: Robert M. Lasley Jr.).

In what can be called an ‘accidental partnership’, Sang-kyu’s collaboration with the Raffles Museum started when he and research fellow, JC Mendoza, independently noticed, while looking at several specimens during their PhD research, that there was something “weird” about the common and widespread xanthid crab, Leptodius exaratus, which is found in many intertidal locations around the Indo-West Pacific region (including Singapore). They teamed up last year, with the help of RMBR Director Peter Ng, and together they discovered that common and often-overlooked species like L. exaratus aren’t as ‘uniform’ as they initially appear to be, and are actually a complex of cryptic species. For L. exaratus, at least, they’ve recognised two distinct groups which can be considered good or valid species within the Indo-West Pacific. The results of their research will be published soon in the Raffles Bulletin of Zoology. They also plan to proceed on to a systematic revision of the entire genus Leptodius as a logical next step to this exercise. Besides xanthid crabs, Sang-kyu is also here to collaborate with Ng Ngan Kee on the taxonomy varunid crabs.

Sang-kyu (2nd from right) hanging out with Ecolab members.

Sang-kyu (right) at the museum's wet collection with our curator, Siong Kiat.

Purple crab mania!

jangancemas — Wed, 02 May 2012 04:18:06 +0000

The recently published revision of Insulamon from Palawan by Dr Hendrik Freitag in the Raffles Bulletin of Zoology has been garnering quite a fair bit of attention in popular media and the news! Insulamon is endemic to Greater Palawan and the entire region was declared a UNESCO Biosphere in 1991.

We are very happy that the discovery has moved beyond the scientific communication phase and has gone viral! After all, conservation starts with knowing what is out there, and the more people learn about these beautiful crabs from Palawan, the better their chances of surviving development projects that may threaten their habitats.

Here is a selection of articles from new agencies and blogs that have picked up the story.

National Geographic: New Purple crab species found;
Inquirer News: New purple crab species found in Palawan;
Msnbc.com: Bright purple crab discovered in Philippines;
Our amazing planet: Bright purple crab discovered in Philippines;
Huffington Post: Purple crabs, including Insulamon palawanense, discovered in Palawan, Philippines;
Wired.co.uk: Bright purple crab found in the Philippines;
Mongabay.com: Eye-popping purple crabs discovered in the Philippines;

and many more!

Keeping the forest SAFE

dbsnlls — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 08:32:43 +0000

Dr Rob Ewers from the SAFE Project

Dr Rob Ewers, the Science Director of the SAFE (Stability of Altered Forest Ecosystems) Project was here in the Raffles Museum for a short visit on the 20th of April 2012! He is also currently a lecturer in the Imperial College London.

The SAFE Project is one of the world’s largest ecological experiments, taking advantage of a planned conversion of forest to oil palm in Borneo to experimentally design a landscape. Click on the link to read more about his research under the Forest Ecology and Conservation Group.