Erin has a bachelor's degree in Biology from New Mexico State University and a Master’s degree in Environment and Natural Resources from the Ohio State University. She volunteered at the NMSU Vertebrate Museum as an avian specimen preparer and collections assistant. She worked as an avian field technician in Maine, California, Pennsylvania, Hawai'i, and Australia before arriving in Ohio to attend graduate school. Her thesis project investigated the use of remnant and restored habitats by songbirds during fall stopover in the agricultural landscape of northwestern Ohio.
Before coming to Ohio History Connection, she worked on the Second Ohio Breeding Bird Atlas as a field technician, database manager, Atlas website editor, publishing assistant, GIS technician, and contributor. This beautiful volume, which is the definitive guide to all the breeding birds of Ohio, was published in 2016.
An avid outdoorswoman, Erin enjoys being outside as much as possible and teaching others to appreciate nature and wildlife. Although her specialization is birds, Erin is equally enthusiastic about reptiles, amphibians, and arthropods and aims to increase awareness and encourage appreciation for these oft-overlooked and sometimes maligned creatures. She can be found hiking, backpacking, reading, sewing, and attending nerd conventions in her spare time.
Dave started as a volunteer at Ohio History Connection as a high school student, was hired part-time through college, and has been in the museum profession ever since. He has a B.S from Ohio State in Zoology and an M. S. in Museum Studies and Vertebrate Paleontology from the University of Nebraska. Dave’s main interest is the vertebrate skeleton, and his various museum jobs have reflected this. He was formerly the Collections Manager for Natural History at Ohio History Connection, where he helped build the comparative skeletal collections. He then was hired to build large mammal skeletons for a major exhibit on the Ice Age at the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History. Most recently, he was the Curator of the Zoological Museum at the University of Montana. He had the opportunity to return to the Ohio History Connection in 2013 as a curator of natural history.
Dave has worked extensively with forensic cases involving wildlife remains. He has analyzed over 120 cases for the University of Montana Dept. of Anthropology, Montana Dept. of Forensic Sciences, and several law enforcement agencies. He has written many articles and reports on faunal remains from archaeological sites and on Pleistocene mammal finds. For 10 years, he taught an upper-level university course on identifying animal remains from archaeological sites and forensic contexts.
When not in the office or lab, Dave enjoys hiking, cross-country skiing, kayaking, photography, and collecting bones! He also travels to the North Country whenever possible and has canoed across Alaska and the Yukon, hiked across the Brooks Range in northern Alaska, and traveled to Iceland.
Curator Emeritus Bob Glotzhober has been working with Odonata since the early 1980s. He was a member at large of the Dragonfly Society of the Americas from 1994 to 1995. In 1990 he founded the Ohio Odonata Survey, which later morphed into the Ohio Odonata Society, for which he served as the first president. The survey mirrored the Lepidoptera survey, discovering to date 164 species of dragonflies and damselflies in Ohio and maintaining a database with more than 29,000 records of specimens, published records and photographic records.
In 1998 Glotzhober became a member of the Hines Emerald Dragonfly Recovery Team. The Hines Emerald Dragonfly (Somatochlora hineana) is the only federally listed dragonfly. He has been part of three different attempts to survey Ohio for this species – which was first discovered by Ohio History Connection’s first curator of natural history, Dr. James Hine, in Logan County, Ohio. It has not been seen in Ohio since collected in the Oak Openings region near Toledo in 1961. Glotzhober and other members of the Ohio Odonata Society have visited many of the existing population sites in Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Missouri to more fully understand the habitat types where it could be found again in Ohio.
For ten years, beginning in 1996, Glotzhober studied the larval life history of the Tiger Spiketail dragonfly (Cordulegaster erronea). This species inhabits tiny headwater streams in forested regions. Often these spring-fed streams are only one to two inches deep and six to twelve inches wide. Before his study, this species was listed as State Endangered. It was quickly discovered that while uncommon, the main reason so little was known about Tiger Spiketails was the heavily shaded, forested habitat with initially insignificant-looking small streams that are home to the larvae. Glotzhober combined field studies of the larvae from spring through fall with a laboratory rearing project. The results were published in 2006 in the Bulletin of American Odonatology.
Former curator Carl W. Albrecht wrote his Ph.D. on skippers (family Hesperiidae) and was a co-founder of the Ohio Lepidopterists, formed to provide a baseline survey of Ohio’s butterflies and moths. The group worked with the ODNR Division of Wildlife to list state endangered and threatened species. The Ohio Lepidopterists continue to study butterflies and moths. They have since worked with the Division of Wildlife to produce a butterfly monitoring program that provides critical information on population changes within this group of animals. Find more information by visiting the Ohio Lepidopterists website.
