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Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum

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Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum

The Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum (LKCNHM) stepped up our emphasis on outreach, education and scientific communication, to complement our established areas of excellence in biodiversity research and collections. 

We celebrated our 8th anniversary on 18 April 2023 in the company of distinguished guests. We commemorated our key achievements, new frontiers of collaboration, digitisation and biodiversity histories. We also unveiled three exciting initiatives: a new book Two Wallace Lines, a new gallery video Small Island, Big Data and a new application (app) A Digital Naturalist (LKCNHM*) designed in collaboration with NUS’ College of Design and Engineering.

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We hosted a visit for Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for Economic Policies Mr HENG Swee Keat on 17 May 2023. Our guests viewed the gallery and got a glimpse behind the scenes into our Zoological Reference Collection. Members from our various teams were also excited to highlight our Museum’s significance in Singapore’s local education, ecology and biodiversity, as well as our collaborative work with vibrant regional and global research communities.

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We launched our inaugural Aspiring Naturalist Programme: The Wallace Edition at the end of 2022, where participants learned about Southeast Asia’s biodiversity and natural history through the lens of well-known naturalist Alfred Russel WALLACE. The programme comprised an entomology and ornithology workshop. Wallace travelled the world to observe and collect samples of species, including many insects and birds. To learn more about these two animal groups, participants took part in a gallery and collections tour as well as various hands-on and outdoor activities. Some intriguing activities included insect sampling and sorting, bird watching, scientific illustration and nature journalling.

Entomologist Dr ANG Yuchen’s course, NST2007 Biodiversity and Natural History in Singapore, aims to nurture passionate naturalists. Students deepen their knowledge through fieldwork sessions, where they hone their observational skills and experience as field biologists. 

This year, two students focused on documenting the entomological diversity in Cinnamon College. They amassed a collection of 156 insect specimens (including some rarely encountered species) and curated a guidebook to challenge negative attitudes towards insects and encourage coexistence with them. The students were awarded a full scholarship for travel and accommodation to present their interdisciplinary project at the 7th Conference for Student Research (2022) in Berlin, Germany.

On 28 January 2023, LKCNHM held its inaugural inclusivity initiative, Quiet Hour, which reserved the first hour of our Gallery opening time for a group of adults with intellectual disabilities from Y STARS.

Our guests were given a tour and were amazed by the array of specimens on display. They were also treated to an art activity with reference to our specimens after the tour.

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Following the hiatus from the pandemic, we resumed our specimen-based research and collection-building from Singapore and around the region, with several new biological discoveries made by our scientists.

New cockroach species in Singapore named after Pokémon

“We named it after the Pokémon, Pheromosa, as we hope to break the stigma that all cockroaches are bad and unsanitary.”

What do you get when two entomologists, who also happen to be Pokémon fans, meet? You get Singapore’s first insect species named after a bug-type Pokémon! Mr Cristian LUCANAS of the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) Museum of Natural History, Philippines, and Mr FOO Maosheng of LKCNHM published a paper describing a new species of delicate cockroach, Nocticola pheromosa! It was named after the Pokémon character, Pheromosa, which was largely inspired by a freshly-moulted American cockroach – hence its pale body. This delicate cockroach falls in the family Nocticolidae which has only 32 species known to date. It was collected during an insect survey in 2016 at a nature reserve. While its exterior resembles that of a known species, a dissection revealed that it is actually a species new to science.

New catfish species recorded in Singapore for the first time

“This discovery highlights the conservation significance of our remaining habitats which are a refuge for many rare and undiscovered species.”

A previously unreported air-breathing clariid catfish species was sighted at Nee Soon Swamp Forest in the Central Catchment Nature Reserve. The Museum and the National Parks Board (NParks) collaborated to document this Encheloclarias kelioides catfish in an article which was published in the museum journal, Raffles Bulletin of Zoology (2023). The catfish was spotted during a field survey by the lead authors of the paper, research assistant Mr TAN Zhi Wan and Ms Elysia TOH, Yale-NUS research associate. The acidic habitat of the forest is ecologically suitable for E. kelioides. Yet, despite the protected area’s long history of sampling, this clariid catfish remained undetected all these years. This remarkable find highlights the importance of conserving such habitats as places with significant potential discoveries like this.

New bent-toed gecko species in Timor-Leste

“We have barely scratched the surface of Timor-Leste’s biodiversity. New discoveries can have profound impacts on conservation and policymaking.”

In August 2022, we led an expedition to Timor-Leste in collaboration with Conservation International and the government of Timor-Leste. The Museum’s herpetologist, Dr CHAN Kin Onn, discovered a new species of bent-toed gecko which was named Cyrtodactylus santana, in reference to the Nino Konis Santana National Park, where the gecko was discovered.

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Our Climate Change and Biodiversity Programme, organised in partnership with HSBC Singapore, was a highly successful one-year programme that offered a series of sponsored workshops that introduced the basics of climate change and its impacts on biodiversity. 

Participants learned about ocean acidification, deforestation and carbon storage. They also got to play the ‘HSBC Green Champion Card Game’ – a card game specially designed by our education team. A total of 15 HSBC staff-volunteers were equipped with the knowledge and skills to co-conduct upcoming workshop sessions. Overall, the programme reached out to 516 individuals through nine school and six public workshops.

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New bent-toed gecko species in Timor-Leste

“We have barely scratched the surface of Timor-Leste’s biodiversity. New discoveries can have profound impacts on conservation and policy-making.”

In August 2022, we led an expedition to Timor-Leste in collaboration with Conservation International and the government of Timor-Leste. The Museum’s herpetologist, Dr CHAN Kin Onn, discovered a new species of bent-toed gecko which was named Cyrtodactylus santana, in reference to the Nino Konis Santana National Park, in which the gecko was discovered.