Art of the Expedition

With diverse, global collections and research in art, culture, and natural history, the Royal Ontario Museum is ideally positioned to help address humanity's urgent, multidimensional environmental challenges, such as climate change and biodiversity loss. ROM contributes, in part, by facilitating transdisciplinary collaborations between artists and scientists. The 'Art of the Expedition' illustrates such a collaboration, in which ROM's Curator of Fishes Dr. Nathan Lujan work's closely with New York-based artist David Brooks to bring their respective expertise to bear on the issues of species discovery, classification, and loss in Peru's western headwaters of the Amazon Basin, Earth's most biodiverse freshwater ecosystem. Throughout Nathan's career, he has discovered and described as new to science over three dozen fish species and has worked to understand the ecological and evolutionary relationships among Amazonian fishes more broadly. David Brooks is a recent Rome Prize recipient whose work explores the interaction between humans and their natural and synthetic environments. Several of his works have been influenced or inspired by his participation in scientific expeditions led by Nathan, this being the sixth that they have conducted together. Environmental Filmmaker Ivy Yin is a third collaborator who has now joined Nathan and David on two expeditions to the Amazon Basin.

This film is based on one expedition to Ecuador in August 2021 and one to Peru in August 2022. The goals of both expeditions were to inventory fish diversity by collecting a representative sample of specimens and tissues from various habitats. This material is needed to clarify the taxonomic boundaries of Amazonian fish species, to describe new species, and to establish an accurately identified, specimen-backed reference library of DNA barcode sequences. The latter is needed to facilitate the use of environmental DNA, or DNA that is present throughout the environment as shed cells, skin, and feces, to survey and inventory biodiversity without needing to collect specimens. The second scientist features in this film is Dr. Emanuel Neuhaus from the Brazilian National Museum in Rio de Janeiro. Emanuel is a specialist in the Neotropical bristlenose catfish genus Ancistrus, which highly diverse and widespread throughout the freshwaters of tropical South America. His research at ROM is being supported by a grant from ROM's Crossman Fund for Visiting Researchers.

Fieldwork in Ecuador was supported by grants to Dr. José Vicente Montoya from the World Wildlife Fund and the Universidad de las Americas, and fieldwork in Peru was supported by grants to Nathan Lujan from the New Orleans-based Coypu Foundation and the National Science and Engineering Research Council. Biodiversity research such as this is not possible without strong in-country partnerships with individuals and institutions. In Ecuador, these include Dr. José Vicente Montoya, Jonathan Valdiviezo-Rivera, the Universidad de las Americas, and the National Institute of Biodiversity (INABIO). In Peru, these include Dr. Dario Faustino, Dr. Junior Chuctaya, Dr. Vanessa Meza, the Natural History Museum of the University of San Marcos, and the Federación de Comunidades Nativas de Ampiyacu (FECONA).

Additional information can be found at the links below:

https://www.loricariidae.org

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/rom-canadas-largest-fish-collection-1.6243259

https://www.rom.on.ca/en/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/rom-appoints-adventurer-scientist-and-catfish-expert-to-curate-one

https://www.rom.on.ca/en/collections-research/magazine/amazonfishes

https://youtu.be/X58HCK3jumE

https://www.rom.on.ca/en/collections-research/magazine/in-search-of-the-river-monster-a-photo-story

https://art21.org/watch/new-york-close-up/david-brooks-is-in-his-element/

http://davidbrooksstudio.com/media/pages/projects/lonely_loricariidae/2354671250-1574177188/lonely-loricariidae.pdf

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