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Biodiversity Blog

 

Odd and Wonderful Nature

Bdallophytum americanum IMG 1574   Bdallophytum americanum. Every once in a while, we botanists discover things out in nature that, at first glance, appear to defy classification. The present photograph is a case in point. While botanizing in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, I stumbled upon weird little stout spikes up to four inches tall poking out of the ground. What wer...

Featured Species: Hypoponera inexorata

opacior7 X2This rare, mostly underground ant species was not known from UT’s Brackenridge Field Lab until this year, when Curator of Entomology Alex Wild found one by chance under a stone. He snapped this photograph, possibly the first photograph taken of H. inexorata in the field. Colonies are small and subterranean, often near other species of ants. The wor...
Fishes of Texas project works with Smithsonian Museum

Fishes of Texas project works with Smithsonian Museum

The shovelnose sturgeon currently ranges throughout much of the Mississippi drainage, including the Red River in Texas. A disjunct population once existed in the Rio Grande River of Texas and New Mexico. This is known primarily from archeological material and historic accounts, but the specimen record is limited for this population. Nearly a centur...
Featured Species - Pecos Pupfish (Cyprinodon pecosensis)

Featured Species - Pecos Pupfish (Cyprinodon pecosensis)

This species was once one of the most abundant fishes in the Pecos River, but is now restricted to Salt Creek in Texas and just a few locations in New Mexico due to hybridization with Sheepshead Minnow (C. variegatus) and groundwater pumping. As a result, it is classified as Threatened in Texas. It has a wide tolerance for physiochemical factors su...
Featured Species - Toothless Blindcat (Trogloglanis pattersoni)

Featured Species - Toothless Blindcat (Trogloglanis pattersoni)

  The Toothless Blindcat, Trogloglanis pattersoni, is one of two highly cave-adapted eyeless and depigmented catfishes known only from the deepest parts of the Edwards Aquifer under San Antonio, TX. Specimens from its humanly inaccessible habitat have come only from a few very deep city water wells near the area of the aquifer where salin...