FWS Scholar: Mary Burnham-Curtis
Mary Burnham-Curtis, Ph.D. is the Genetics Team Leader for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Office of Law Enforcement-National Fish and Wildlife Forensic Laboratory (NFWFL) in Ashland, Oregon. Mary has worked for the Department of the Interior for over 33 years, with the last 20 years at NFWFL as a Senior Forensic Scientist. She and her team conduct genetic analyses to determine species, population, and individual source for pieces, parts, and products of a diverse array of fish, mammals, birds, herps, and invertebrates using traditional Sanger sequencing and microsatellite DNA techniques, as well as next generation sequencing technologies.
Mary graduated from DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana in 1984 with a Bachelor of Arts in Zoology, then headed to Ann Arbor, where she attended University of Michigan and obtained her Master’s and Doctorate in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. She worked with Gerald R. Smith on her thesis project to document the population genetics of Lake Superior lake trout and investigate genetic links to the evolution of sympatric populations of morphologically and ecologically distinct lake trout called Leans, Siscowets, and Humpers. Her PhD program was supported by the USFWS CoOperative Education Program, currently the SCEP program, and was sponsored by the USFWS National Fisheries Center at Great Lakes. She stayed on at that Lab through its conversion to the USGS Great Lakes Science Center in 1996, first as a Fishery Research Biologist, where she rode the boats on the Great Lakes and helped collect fish population dynamics data, and eventually became the lead for the development of genetics capabilities at GLFC.
Mary loved the project she worked on for her graduate work! She arranged several collection trips for lake trout samples with staff from the USFWS Ashland Field Station in Ashland, WI which is now part of the USGS Great Lakes Science Center, and got to meet many of the local fishermen on Lake Superior.
“Great Lakes fishing communities are near and dear to my heart, and many of them are disappearing because of economic and environmental factors.”
Although they did not find concrete genetic evidence for speciation of the different lake trout morphs in Lake Superior, Mary discovered an osteological character that was unique to one of the morphs, the “Humper,” as well as evidence that the Humper population had some unique ecological characteristics.
Apparently, Mary’s a legend among some of the GLFC boat crew from an incident at Isle Royale on the RV Siscowet. She was the only female biologist on the boat, and was sleeping in the sampling lab, but got up to use the facilities on shore at 4:30am the morning they were leaving. The captain left the dock to head out to pick up the last set of nets and was mad that she wasn’t awake and setting up the lab after they set sail…it turns out that Mary was still on shore and they left the dock without her! Thankfully they were only half a mile out and came back to get her.
“Funny enough, a longtime colleague, Chuck Bronte, was one of the other biologists on that cruise, and my coauthor on the Humper otolith paper.” Mary tells me jokingly.
In 2001, Mary was selected for a Senior Scientist position at NFWFL, and she and her family moved out to Oregon, and in 2007 she became Genetics Team Supervisor. Mary has been active 8 years as a former Board Member and Chair of the Proficiency Testing Board for the Society for Wildlife Forensic Science (SWFS) and 8 years as a member and affiliate of the Organization of Scientific Area Committee’s Biology/DNA-Wildlife Forensic Subcommittee. Mary participated with an amazing group of Wildlife Forensic Scientists on the original Scientific Working Group for Wildlife Forensic Science with early efforts to establish best practices standards and guidelines for wildlife forensic laboratories in the US. She is currently a member of the Technical Working Group of SWFS, assisting with efforts to establish ISO 17025 compliant standards and guidelines for non-US wildlife forensic laboratories. Mary has been a Certified Wildlife Forensic Scientist since 2013.
“My favorite part of this job is finding the answers to interesting questions about species identification and population genetics. Because of our support role in the Office of Law Enforcement, we receive a hugely diverse array of questions on a daily basis! Sometimes they are easy to answer, such as species identification of common wildlife items with DNA sequence analysis. Sometimes they are much more difficult and complex when they involve species we’ve never worked with before, or items we’ve never processed. I’ve always loved puzzles, and solving these kinds of puzzles is my favorite part of my job!”
Mary finds this work important primarily because of the applied aspect of forensic science. Because of the unlimited number of species they may need to be able to identify, they’re always doing some kind of research and looking into solving puzzling questions about species identification. Sometimes they have enough time left to publish, and sometimes they don’t, but they always know that what they do is not only important to their role as stewards of the environment, but also to their role as scientists.
Assisting with student projects is always a joy for Mary, and she’s been honored to participate on several Masters and Doctorate projects over the years, including Kevin Page from Michigan State University who continued some of her lake trout studies with the Scribner Lab and Juliana Machado Ferriera of University of Sao Paolo, who worked in our lab at NFWFL on her doctoral thesis. Juliana is currently Executive Director at FREELAND Brazil, as well as a TED fellow and a NatGeo Emerging Explorer!
Moving on to a new adventure at NFWFL in 2001 has given Mary opportunities to collaborate with many people from all over the world who work in wildlife forensics. Most of their “scholarly writings” are in the form of case reports, but occasionally they can collaborate on publications that cross over between the scientific and legal aspects of forensic science, in particular, helping attorneys understand what forensic science is capable of doing for them.
One of her favorite projects that she’s been involved with over the long term is individual identification and matching for Bald and Golden eagles. Mary put together a method to use population genetic data to match feathers back to eagle carcasses found by their agents. It was an important part of a recent effort to interrupt black market trade in eagle feathers called Operation Dakota Flyer. She often works with their Ornithologists who can easily identify the species of the feathers, but can’t say if they came from the same bird — that’s where the genetics comes in! They’re currently developing an improved panel of genetic markers that she hopes to have validated for casework by the end of the year. Another fun long term project she’s been working on with their Herpetologist is the extraction of DNA from sea turtle and crocodilian leathers. They’re still making some progress on that!
More recently, her energy has been directed toward efforts to develop standards and guidelines in the field of wildlife forensic science. To that end, Mary and her colleagues have produced a number of standards documents for the Organization of Scientific Area Committees, published by the Academy Standards Board, as well as general standards available to the international wildlife forensic community through the Society for Wildlife Forensic Science.
To learn more about Mary Burnham-Curtis’s research in forensic science, genetics, and lake trout studies, check out her full list of publications; discoverable via USFWS Conservation Library. For more information about Mary’s job, visit the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Forensics Laboratory, which is the only lab in the world dedicated to crimes against wildlife. #FWSscholar is brought to you by the USFWS Conservation Library, #WeAreUSFWS.
