The Moore Lab’s Theme Song

An original score written and sung by Garrett Hughes, accompanied by Jason Schaller on guitar.

The Collection Song
    by Garrett Brady Hughes

​A long, long time ago in a place not too distant
An entomologist left home with her graduate assistant
They searched through trees and forest leaves until they found the one
A rare arachnid you might know: a pseudoscorpion
 
And when they caught th’elusive bug they straightaway wrote down
The who the when the where and how the specimen was found
They wrote it on a little label with archival ink
If you saw that note today you could still read it I think
 
Out in the field yeah, out in the field yeah
It’s where you go to seek and find arthropods of every kind
Out in the field yeah, out in the field yeah
‘Cause if you need new specimens, the only place that you’ll find them is
Out in the field
 
And when they got back to the school they put it on a slide
Though insects on the other hand are pinned through their top side
Either way these arthropods are carefully preserved
For future entomologists to study and observe
 
The researchers sent out requests to collections everywhere
To borrow other specimens to contrast and compare
the differences between each one which helped them make the claim
That the species found was undescribed, so they gave it a name
 
Taxonomy yeah, taxonomy yeah
A system used to classify all living things beneath the sky
Taxonomy yeah, taxonomy yeah
‘Cause if a species is brand new, naming’s what you’ve gotta do
Taxonomy
 
The years went by, that specimen was all but long forgot
Until a student came along and had a brand new thought
The specimen was more unique than others had supposed
To make a genus based on it, is what he proposed
 
With DNA from specimens in collections here and there
He tested his hypothesis using new software
Analyses revealed that this species was distinct
And so he wrote a paper up He kept it quite succinct
 
Phylogeny yeah, phylogeny yeah
A tree of every living thing linked by evolution’s strings
Phylogeny yeah, phylogeny yeah
‘Cause if you really want to know how things diverged so long ago
Phylogeny
 
Later on some people thought they ought to build a mine
Right where that pseudoscorpion was found for the first time
They met with entomologists to counsel and discuss
how the plans that they had made might affect the bugs
 
The entomologists reviewed the labels on the slides
On several pseudoscorpions of the species from that site
Only known from that locale, the species would go extinct
If the project wasn’t moved to a new precinct
 
Ecology yeah, ecology yeah
If it’s seasonality, or habitat locality
Ecology yeah, ecology yeah
For natural history, the label tells you what you need
Ecology
 
I hope you see yeah, I hope you see yeah
Collections fill a special niche, they’re not something that you can ditch
I hope you see yeah, I hope you see yeah
For our science to progress, we need collections to persist
Now you can see