It took a lot of people working together to make the Vietnam Expedition a success. The core team consisted of people from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHMLAC) and the Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources (IEBR) in Vietnam.

The team was (from left to right):

Dr. Le Xuan Canh, Mammalogist, IEBR
Dr. Can is both a mammalogist and was the leader of our team. He kept things working smoothly and made the arrangements for the different areas we traveled to.

Jim Dines, Mammology Collections Manager, NHMLAC
Jim works with Dr. Horovitz back at the museum and takes care of all the mammal specimens that are housed there. With so much work to be done- he works closely with Dr. Horovitz in the field, locating and preparing specimens, to make the most of their research time.

Dr. Kirk Fitzhugh, Curator of Polychaetes, NHMLAC
Dr. Fitzhugh studies polychaetes, or marine worms. There is one elusive species of polychaetes that lives inside the shell of freshwater snails he was hoping to find This tiny animal lives in only a few places on earth, one of them being Vietnam.

Dr. Ines Horovitz, Curator of Mammals, NHMLAC
Dr. Horovitz studies different species of mammals and how they are related to each other. She had never been to Vietnam before and was looking forward to making new discoveries, especially being able to study tree shrews.

Leah Melber, (Ph.D. Candidate) Science Education Specialist, NHMLAC
Here I am -- one of the few times you'll see me on this side of the camera. I was the documentarian on the expedition, collecting information about our researchers' work so I could share it with the public through programming like this Web site.

Dr. David Kizirian, Curator of Herpetology, NHMLAC
Dr. Kizirian not only organized the entire trip on the Natural History Museum side of things, but also kept things running smoothly. He studies reptiles and amphibians and had been to Vietnam several times before to conduct research. He is especially interested in the many species of frogs that live in Vietnam.

Nguyen Quang Troung (not pictured), Herpetologist, IEBR
Truong worked closely with Dr. Kizirian over the past several months to organize permits and plans for the expedition. As a herpetologist, he worked closely with Dr. Kizirian.

Other individuals that made our expedition such a success were:

• Dr. Do Van Nhuong, Invertebrate Biologist, Hanoi Pedagogic University
  Nhuong studies earthworms and collaborated with Dr. Fitzhugh during the expedition.
• Nguyen Kiem Son, Ichthyologist, IEBR
  Son studies freshwater fishes of Vietnam and collected gobies for the NHM Ichthyology curator, Chris Thacker.
• Truong Xuan Lam, Entomologist, IEBR
  Lam studies insects and was the Vietnamese escort for Dr. Fitzhugh during his trip to Cao Bang.

Find out more about the collaboration with our Vietnamese colleagues.