Welcome to the Laboratory for Environmental Biology's Home Page
The Laboratory for Environmental Biology (LEB) of the Department of Biological Sciences of the University of Texas at El Pasois is associated with the Centennial Museum through a Memorandum of Understanding. It concentrates primarily on research into the natural history of the Greater El Paso Region, although it also supplies teaching materials for biology classes at the undergraduate and graduate level.
The Laboratory was founded as part of the Department of Biological Sciences of what was then Texas Western College in 1965 under the name of the Museum of Arid Land Biology (thus the acronym MALB used for many years). For arcane reasons beyond local control, it eventually changed its name to the current one. At its initiation, it incorporated some biological sciences faculty collections; since 1965, it has grown primarily through the activity of Biological Sciences faculty and students. We are associated with UTEP's Centennial Museum through a memorandum of understanding.
MISSION: The mission of the LEB includes collections-related research in the biological sciences, curatorial responsibility for the biological research collections and for collections utilized primarily for teaching within the Department of Biological Sciences; provision of work space, equipment, and other facilities to classes, individual students, staff, and visiting professionals; interaction with professional institutions and societies; provision of informational services to the professional and general public; and both formal and informal interaction with non-traditional students.
We currently are eliminating some duplication between the Laboratory for Environmental Biology website and that of the Centennial Museum. The Chihuahuan Desert pages that have been duplicated on both sites are being assigned to the Centennial Museum alone as is fitting with their outreach role. The Lab pages will be concerned more with the research side, although the web courses on the natural history of the Chihuahuan Desert and mammalogy will be retained.
Our web pages cover on a variety of topics: collections (plants and both Recent and fossil vertebrates and invertebrates), LEB curators, checklists of vertebrates (modern and Pleistocene) and of butterflies of the El Paso region. Other natural history material can be accessed by going to the Natural History subsection of the Centennial Museum pages.
We would appreciate any feedback (phone, fax, and e-mail information is at the bottom of this page).
The Mammalogy, Ornithology, Herbarium, and a portion of the Vertebrate Paleobiology collections databases are online. On the first visit to these databases, please go first to the database introductory page. The Herpetology Collection database is accessible through HerpNET.
A website specifically focused on the Chihuahuan Desert was funded by a NASA MUSPIN grant to the Centennial Museum. The web pages are now integrated on the Centennial Museum site with other materials formerly spread among the several sites sponsored by the Centennial Museum and its Laboratory for Environmental Biology. New material on the Chihuahuan Desert is added periodically.
A university-mandated overhaul of the Centennial Museum website has rendered a number of pages unavailable, at least temporarily. We are currently working to restore accessibility to those pages.
Especially featured on these pages is the Pleistocene Vertebrates of New Mexico and Trans-Pecos Texas, a book-length web production based on LEB paleobiology collections and the technical literature.
The University is a member of the Natural Science Collections Alliance, and the mammalogy collections are accredited by the American Society of Mammalogists.
Original materials on this web site are copyrighted. Limited use for educational purposes is allowed provided proper credit is given; however, some images are presented by permission of others, so please query us before using images. For textual material, please inform us of use as a matter of courtesy. Commercial use of images or text, in whole or in part, is expressly forbidden without formal, written approval. Contact the Laboratory for further information.
