If you're a UT graduate student studying the diversity of life and organisms in their natural environments, then check out this fellowship program! The Stengl-Wyer Graduate Fellowship program is now open for applications, closing on December 12, at 5 p.m. Central Time.
This fellowship includes a 12-month stipend of $36,000 beginning September 1, 20...
This month's Science Under the Stars event is "I Like Big BATS and I Cannot Lie!," presented by Brandi Christiano.
Have you ever seen a bat flying around? Probably (especially in Austin)! With more than 1,400 species worldwide, bats live in almost every environment. As the only flying mammal, they can be found in caves, trees, and under bridges. So...
SCUBA diving to conduct lobster, grouper, and conch surveys in The Bahamas
Philip Souza is one of our 2022 Stengl-Wyer Fellows. He is a Ph.D. candidate in the Simon Brandl - Fish and Functions Lab where he studies estuarine soundscapes. Philip's path into his research focus is fascinating, and he shares his story below.
Tell us where you came fr...
Photo: Larry Gilbert
The period of rain here in Texas a few weeks ago was intense but welcome. The moisture brought a revival of plant life, and the return in Austin for some insects that depend on these plants. This was largely due to heavy rains that broke the drought 150-200 miles south of us. One such insect that has been seen in great...
Photo: Larry Gilbert
Dr. Eric Rodger Pianka was an evolutionary ecologist of enormous influence who spent his life studying lizards. Nicknamed “The Lizard Man,” his research covered a broad range of topics pertaining to the ecology, biology, and evolution of lizards, including rarity and responses to fire. His work contributed to the under...
Cladonia parasitica, a lichen found at Stengl Lost Pines (Photo: Liz Bowman)
Lichens are beautiful, sometimes otherworldly, in ways that aren’t overlooked by arts and culture. They also have had medicinal and culinary uses for millenia. As explored in What the Heck is a Lichen, our introductory blog, lichens are complex organisms created b...
"The Divine Insect" (12th century). Nara National Museum.
We're happy to share info for this fascinating talk: "Entomological Poetics: Reading for Insects in Japanese Literature and Culture" by Professor Mary A. Knighton. It is hosted by the Center for East Asian Studies in the Department of Asian Studies (College of Liberal Ar...
Join us for a talk exploring careers in conservation. Graduate and Undergraduate students are both welcome. We will hear from UT alum (BS 2004, PhD 2012) Dr. Nikhil Advani, who is currently the Director for Climate, Communities and Wildlife at World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Washington DC. Dr. Advani will talk about how his time at UT prepared ...
(Photo: George Yatskievych)
Lauren is our new Assistant Curator in the Billie L. Turner Plant Resources Center. Lauren took some time out of her busy day to tell us a little about herself and how she got her start.
Tell us where you came from before UT, and what you studied.
I recently graduated from California Polytechnic State Univ...
Cavity-nesting bee house showing bamboo reed that was stripped open.
Common images of bees often show them living in a hive or colony. These are European honeybees and they are considered “social” bees. While some native bees, such as bumble bees, are social, most are solitary. This means that one solitary female bee makes and provisions her sma...
Funded by the Stengl-Wyer Endowment, the Stengl-Wyer Scholars Program provides up to three years of independent support for talented postdoctoral researchers in the broad area of the diversity of life and/or organisms in their natural environments. The endowment also supports the Stengl-Wyer Fellowship Program, year-long fellowships for doctoral ca...
Domingos holding an inflorescence of Parkia discolor, a legume species ecologically dominant in Amazonian periodically-flooded forests locally known as "igapós"
Domingos Cardoso is an esteemed Brazilian botanist very active in biodiversity and conservation in Brazil. His main research interests are how evolutionary processes have shape...
Butterflies never fail to fascinate young and old alike. They are the subject of countless paintings, poems, and for Professor James Glavan's (Head of the Costume Technology program in the Department of Theatre and Dance) class, Fabric Dyeing and Painting, they were the focus of an ambitious costume building project this spring semester.
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Laurel setting up the lab for the Native Bees of Texas course.
Laurel Treviño is Outreach Program Coordinator in Dr. Shalene Jha’s lab in the Department of Integrative Biology. Members of the Jha Lab examine ecological and evolutionary processes across biological scales, from genes to landscapes, to quantify global change impacts on plant-...
Male cardinal. (Photo: Gary Leavens - Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license)
I awoke on a Sunday morning last week, started the coffee, then opened the curtains to my backyard. My usual habit, but on this Sunday, I had the surprise of seeing a female Northern Cardinal duck into the tight weave of a climbing rose about seve...
Ummat Somjee is one of our 2021 Stengl-Wyer Scholars and is researching the evolution of exaggerated sexually-selected traits in animals. His research aims to understand how the energetic costs underlying these exaggerated traits may shape their evolution. As part of the Stengl Wyer Endowment, the Stengl Wyer Postdoctoral Scholars Program prov...
Burmese python. (Photo: Susan Jewell, US Fish and Wildlife Service, CC)
In the pet trade, amphibians and reptiles are considered “exotic.” They and other species like certain fish and birds for example also share the same label. There is such a demand for exotics that the industry around them is a multi-billion dollar global business. That’s a l...
Photo collage: Larry Gilbert
Nothing quite signals the coming of spring in Austin like when a redbud tree starts to bloom. After our brief but botanically-drab Austin winters, the bright pink flowers are a welcome and invigorating sight.
At Brackenridge Field Lab, redbuds grow there natively in places where limestone quarries existed in t...
Photo: Paige Durant
The UT Spring Bee Competition has a winner! Paige Durant (class of '22) takes the prize of a pre-made Osmia mason bee house. Launched in January of this year, the contest rules are that anyone in the UT College of Natural Science community (staff, students, faculty) be the first to submit a 2022 photo of a Travis County mason...
Nikunj modeling source-sink dynamics at range limits.
Nikunj is one of our 2021 Stengl-Wyer Fellows. He is a theoretical biogeographer working in the lab of Dr. Tim Keitt at the Department of Integrative Biology. He is broadly interested in understanding how dispersal generates and maintains biodiversity. As a Stengl-Wyer Fellow, he is buil...