Pictured above are examples of Museum activity, including bird banding, teaching and biological inventories.
Welcome to the Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology homepage!
MWFB News
- MWFB is participating in Biodiversity Museum Day. Saturday Feb. 2, 2013, 1-4PM. Click here for more info.
- NPR stories highlighting Museum research on Salmon and their role in terrestrial food webs here
- UCD Arboretum Bird Checklist now available here.
- Check out the MWFB's online Zazzle giftshop; proceeds benefit the MWFB.
About Us
The MWFB is a vertebrate museum dedicated to education, outreach, conservation, and research. We are in the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology. For more information about the courses of the Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology major visit:
http://registrar.ucdavis.edu/UCDWebCatalog/programs/WFC/WFCcourses.html
Or search this section for information on our mission, history, staff, and location. You may also download a PDF file of the MWFB information pamphlet. Adobe Reader is required to view this file.
- Mission Statement
- History
- Staff
- Location --We are located on the University of California, Davis campus in the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology in the Academic Surge Building, room 1394. Click here for an interactive campus map, or here for a PDF map to the MWFB.
Collections
The Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology houses one of the most significant, modern collections of birds, mammals, and fish in California. With over 40,000 specimens and over 5,000 tissues the MWFB is among the top ten collections in California, and the third largest university-managed collection in the state. The specimens housed in the MWFB serve a unique role in California; in addition to traditional uses, they are used for graduate and undergraduate training, species identification workshops, and educational programs by federal, state, and local agency biologists.
Services and Loans
Specimen determinations, vertebrate inventories, specimen and tissue vouchers, freeze-dry capabilities, and specimen loans are all services provided at the MWFB. Explore the links below for more information or contact our Collections Manager, Irene E. Engilis at mwfb@ucdavis.edu.
- Determinations
- Bioinventory
- Voucher
- Facilities
- Loan Policy
- Destructive Sample and Tissue Grant Policy
- Specimen Donation Policy
Research
Our goal is to continue integrating vertebrate specimen-based research with technical services and education, which establishes the MWFB as a key facility in California addressing environmental issues such as wildlife conservation, endangered species recovery, native fish decline, landscape ecology, systematics, and biodiversity. We will accomplish our goal through increased partnership building, networking, education and training of future and current agency biologists, and supporting cutting edge research and biotic inventories.
- Putah Creek Biomonitoring
- California State Parks
- California: Using stable isotopes to track salmon-dervied nutrients in riparian food webs
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As part of a larger, EPA-funded project investigating climate change effects on California’s spring-run Chinook salmon, the MWFB has been looking at salmon-delivered nutrient subsidies and their role in supporting riparian food webs.
Butte Creek hosts the largest remaining population of wild, naturally-spawned spring-run Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) in California. But these populations are much reduced from historic levels and currently threatened with extinction. Linked watershed and salmon population dynamics models predict that long term survival of this federally-endangered species is unlikely under current climate change scenarios (Thompson et al. 2011). Loss of salmon-derived nutrient subsidies to the Butte Creek ecosystem may have serious implications for the region’s biodiversity and nutrient cycling processes. Our work seeks to document the importance of these nutrient subsidies to riparian flora and fauna, and to predict the possible outcome of losses of these subsidies under climate change.
NPR’s Capital Public Radio recently aired a two-part story highlighting this important research.
Climate Change Threatens California Salmon
http://www.capradio.org/165759Researchers Find Salmon Vital To Biodiversity in California
http://www.capradio.org/166264Please visit our Salmon Project page for more information on this project.
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- Hawaiian Duck Project
- April 18, 2009. See MWFB Curator, Andy Engilis, Jr. in a Mālama Hawai’i short public service announcement titled "Koloa maoli-endangered native Hawaiin Duck" where he discusses the plight and conservation of the endangered Hawaiian Duck, koloa maoli. Click here to watch. All videos in this series on Koloa maoli by Mālama Hawai’i are listed below. Click any of the titles to be connected to You Tube to watch.
- Hawaii Aimakapa Pond Restoration
- Chile
- Indonesia
- Washington
- Heronry in UCD Arboretum Shields Grove
- Freeze Dried Specimen Study
- Publications and Reports
Outreach
Outreach and education is an expanding program of the MWFB. The MWFB has continued outreach to science and non-science students, professionals, primary school groups, and the general public. The strength of our outreach activities is the museum’s internship program designed to recruit and expose UC Davis students to museum science and specimen based field research. For information regarding internships contact our Collections Manager, Irene Engilis. Please visit our Outreach page or contact our Education and Outreach Specialist, Tabatha Yang for information about tours and outreach.
Archives
In addition to storing vertebrate materials, MWFB houses a library of natural history literature and an archive of historic vertebrate records, including the Sacramento Audubon Society historic bird records.
Contributions and Gifts
The MWFB is a charitable organization that accepts gifts and donations in support of museum activities and management. Please contact the Museum Curator, Andrew Engilis, Jr. at 530-752-0364 or mwfb@ucdavis.edu for more information on charitable giving.
Gift Shop -- Clicking here will redirect you to the Museum of WFB's Zazzle gallery / giftshop.
Also available is the first in a series of Museum of WFB t-shirts featuring Californian endemic wildlife. All proceeds are applied to maintenance of the MWFB collections. Click here to view design. E-mail or call in your order today at mwfb@ucdavis.edu or 530-754-8813.