From world record setting fish to singing mice, this year’s 25th Annual Colloquium at the ROM was a hit. On Wednesday, November 19, curators, educators, and graduate students from the ROM and U of T presented highlights of their recent discoveries and ongoing research.

The presentations were only “a tip of the iceberg taste of the kind of research done at the museum,” says Dr. Mark Engstrom, Vice-President of Collections and Research.

The most anticipated presentation of the day was the Vaughan Lecture on Shifting Paradigms by Rick Winterbottom. Winterbottom traveled to tropical locations such as Fiji and Bora Bora to uncover the evolutionary relationships of coral-reef fishes of the Indo-Pacific region. He collected fish, identified them, and attempted to classify them. He found 80 species of Trimma fish, of which only half were already known and named.

Winterbottom and his crew had the honour of contributing the Trimma Nanus to the Guinness Book of World Records. “It had the shortest vertebrae ever found,” says Winterbottom. “From tip of the snout to the base of the fin, it is 8 mm long. The head contains as many as 98 bones out of [a total] 170. 63,000 of this tiny fish would be the length of the CN Tower. From a McDonald’s consumer perspective, it would take 300,604 of them to make a -pounder.”

Winterbottom’s discoveries from his field work and research have “culminated in a new theory,” he explains, “to help explain the historical reasons behind the incredible biodiversity of the ‘Indonesian Triangle’ [Sumatra/Philippines/New Guinea], which in turn has implications for the rationale behind the establishment of marine parks and conservation areas in the region.”

Jacqueline Miller’s presentation of singing mice won over the animal lovers in the audience. After some technical difficulties, the audience was able to hear the mice singing their high-pitched songs of courtship and identification.

“The species, age, sex, identify, and motivation of the individual sending the message can be communicated between mice. The length of the call and the length of the intervals between the call was studied. Then the wavelengths of one species were compared to other species,” says Miller.

One of the species studied was the Grasshopper Mouse. This mouse lives in the desert, and hunts insects. “It is notorious for taking out Scorpions,” exclaims Miller. “Its call has between 1 and 200 notes.”

The vocal behavior of mice, the study suggests, may provide better understanding of how complex vocal communication evolved in mammals.

The remaining presentations included how the T-Rex grew up, the evolutionary relationship of frogs, and the mystery of an unidentified Roman mummy found in a 3,000 year-old coffin.