Natural Science Research Laboratory

Voucher Birds from the NSRL Bird Collection

Picture Showing Standard Collecting Supplies

The Natural Science Research Laboratory (NSRL) is a division of the Museum of Texas Tech University committed to the mission of building and preserving a library of our planet's natural heritage for education and research purposes. The NSRL has been recognized as a leader in the development and use of innovative methodologies for biological collections care and data management.

The NSRL maintains four major natural history collections: Mammals, Birds, Invertebrate Zoology, and Genetic Resources. These collections are available to researchers at academic, scientific, and government institutions around the world for scientific investigation, discovery, and problem-solving in the natural sciences. The causes and impacts of animal-borne diseases, parasites, climate change, habitat loss, geographic isolation, and natural evolutionary processes and speciation are just a few examples of the investigations that can be conducted utilizing specimens and tissues archived in the NSRL’s collections. Further, the resources of the NSRL are utilized by the academic and scientific communities to train and educate students at the undergraduate and graduate levels for careers in the natural sciences as well as museum science.

News

April 2025 Students who have been working at the NSRL presented their projects at the 2025 Texas Tech University Undergraduate Research Conference. This year we had three students present: Emmalee Balch, Lily Prescott (both Department of Natural Resources Management), and Alan Ramirez (Department of Biological Sciences). Their posters are available online: Balch | Prescott | Ramirez.

April 2025 The Spring 2025 edition of NSRL News is now available! Check it out for updates on the latest NSRL happenings.

November 2024 Dr. Jennifer Girón (Curator of Invertebrate Zoology), Lee Harris (Graduate student in Museum Sciences), and undergraduate students Lily Prescott (Natural Resources Management), Shelby Hernandez and Jill Forrest (Plant Sciences) attended the annual meeting of the Entomological Collections Network (ECN) and the annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America (EntSoc). Girón presented two talks at ECN, and the undergraduate students presented posters at EntSoc.
Lily and Jill's poster is available here: Teaching the Teachers: Outreach to Promote Entomology Learning Experiences in Texas High Schools.
Shelby's poster is available here: Biodiversity of Sweat Bees (Hymenoptera: Halictidae) Occurring in the Texas High Plains.

October 2024 Dr. Jennifer Girón gave a tour of the Invertebrate Zoology Collection to Samantha Larned and Olivia O'Rand of KTTZ, the Texas Tech radio station for National Public Radio (NPR). A direct link to this great story is available on their website!
https://radio.kttz.org/2024-10-30/creepy-crawly-curation-at-lubbock-lab-provides-valuable-bug-research

June 2024 Have you discovered the NSRL's Facebook page, yet?! Visit here: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61558024030162. Please FOLLOW the NSRL on Facebook for timely posts about events, research updates, wildlife features, and much more! We hope these social media posts will be both informative and entertaining for our research colleagues as well as the general public. SHARE our posts with your Facebook friends to help spread the word about "who we are" and "what we do" at the NSRL!

April 2024 Students who have been working with specimens and samples housed at the NSRL presented their research projects at the 2024 Texas Tech University Undergraduate Research Conference. Representing the Invertebrate Zoology Collection and mentored by Dr. Jennifer Girón (including links to the posters): Rachael Johnston (Department of Plant and Soil Science), Lillian Prescott (Department of Natural Resources Management), Shelby Hernandez (Department of Plant and Soil Science), and Joshua Winsauer (Department of Natural Resources Management). Prescott tied for the First Place for the LEDA Outstanding Presenter Energy & Environment Award and Hernandez and collaborators got Third Place for the LEDA Outstanding Presenter in Agriculture. Representing the Mammal Collection and Dr. Bradley's laboratory in Biological Sciences: Julia Carmona Cabral. Representing the Mammal Collection and Dr. Steven’s laboratory in Natural Resources Management: Hannah Belinne.

March 2024 We are pleased to announce that Seth Palmer has been hired as Outreach Intern for the NSRL. Seth is a current Master’s student in the College of Media and Communications. During his time with the NSRL, Seth will be working on various projects to promote the NSRL and its mission via social media, outreach to schools, and other engagement and outreach activities.

March 2024 On 1 March 2024, NSRL Collection Manager for Mammals Heidi Amarilla-Stevens gave an invited presentation on the “Importance of Scientific Collections” to 30 senior Biology students at the Colegio de Biólogos del Paraguay (College of Biologists of Paraguay).

March 2024 The Spring 2024 edition of NSRL News is now available! Check it out for updates on the latest NSRL happenings.

March 2024 The NSRL Ornithology Collection database is now available online. Dr. Nancy McIntyre, Curator of Ornithology, and Ashley Kempken, former graduate student in the Museum Science Program at the Museum of Texas Tech, in collaboration with NSRL Curator of Collections Heath J. Garner and Curator of Invertebrate Zoology Dr. Jennifer C. Girón, made the records of the Ornithology Collection available online through the portal Consortium of Small Vertebrate Collections (CSVColl) and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). The data can also be searched through the NSRL vertebrate database. More than 6,000 records of birds, with an emphasis on Texas species, are now publicly available.