Woof. (Photo: Andrea Stacks)
Last in our series on pets as invasive species looks at “Man’s Best Friend.” Are pooches so perfect?
First, let’s define what an invasive species is. We’ve got a great blog on it here, but to summarize: the National Invasive Species Information Center defines an invasive species as non-native to the ecosystem i...
CAMN member digging through rock soil to plant three red yuccas (Hesperaloe parviflora), a favorite for hummingbirds and night-pollinating moths.
Not so long ago, there was a butterfly garden at the Brackenridge Field Laboratory, one of the field stations in UT’s growing field station network. This garden was initially created in 2012 with fundi...
Courtesy University of Texas Press 2023
With a state as big as Texas is, there is an extremely diverse ecology. From high altitude desert mountains in the west, to our vast coastline, to low-lying swamps in the east. Since most of the residents of the Lone Star State live in urban centers, sometimes it’s difficult to learn about the plants...
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED.
Please stay tuned for a possible reschedule in the near future. Email nicole.elmer[at]austin.utexas.edu if you have any questions
About the talk:
With more than a million described species, the Class Insecta is the most species-rich group of multicellular organisms on Earth; insects can be found in...
USDA Photo by Jack Dykinga
We're pleased to announce we have a winner for the UT Spring Bee Competition! The winner is Caroline Chessher ('22) who collected a male Osmia on Mountain Laurel flowers on campus at 1:27pm, February 13th. She will win a free wall poster: “Back Yard Bees of North America”!
The Entomology Collection holds a yearly...
Dr. Pauly's talk has been recorded and can be viewed by clicking here
We are pleased to announce that Dr. Greg Pauly is the first spring semester speaker sponsored by the Biodiversity Center, and he will be talking about urban biodiversity.
Talk title: The Next Frontier of Science is in your Backyard (with you and your sm...
The Stengl-Wyer Endowment is proud to share this public seminar with Ben Novak, Lead Scientist of Revive & Restore, hosted by Stengl-Wyer Fellow Erik Iverson.
Friday, December 9th, 10:00 am - 11:00 am, UT Campus, NHB 1.720
Revive & Restore is a nonprofit conservation organization leading the effort to responsibly integrate bio...
Monk Parakeet (Photo: Bernard Dupont-Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license)
Birds are another beloved pet, adored for their plumage, their song, and for their interesting behavior. My own parakeets, Ernesto and Clyde, never fail to amuse with their head bobbing and love of stick-chewing. But like many pets that end u...
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.
...
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...
Illustration: Nicole Elmer
by Adam Cohen (Collection Manager, Ichthyology Collection), Melissa Casarez (Research Associate/Ichthyologist, Ichthyology Collection), and Dean Hendrickson (Curator, Ichthyology Collection)
Animals not capable of flight, such as fish, frogs, and snakes, occasionally fall from the sky. Throughout history such eve...
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...
The COVID-19 pandemic has forever changed our lives. One thing that will probably never go away, for better or for worse, are remote meetings and online classes. But as some events begin to open up, the online formats are offering both in-person and remote experiences, thus opening access to audiences who could not have seen them otherwise.
One of ...
Cute but deadly. Author's cat, Hazel, poses in the sun.
It’s not often an invasive species is crowned as ruler of the internet. That title goes to cats. From chatrooms with “Meowspeak,” to I Can Haz Cheezeburger, to Grumpy Cat (R.I.P), it’s funny to imagine fire ants or zebra mussels ever getting adorable memes made about them. With cats, ...
USDA Photo by Jack Dykinga
The winner of this year's contest is Paige Durant! Click here to learn how she found this season's bees.
Bring us the first Travis County mason bee of 2022, you’ll win a native Osmia bee house!
Rationale: One measure of our changing climate is the shifting dates of emergence of our earliest spring flowers and in...
David Ledesma is one of our 2021 Stengl-Wyer Fellows. With his advisor Dr. Melissa Kemp, he studies the responses of herpetofauna (non-avian reptiles and amphibians) to environmental changes, and the long-term responses of herpetofauna over the last 21,000 years. As part of the Stengl Wyer Endowment, the Stengl Wyer Fellows Program supports ye...
What comes to mind when you imagine a snake? A rattler hissing and shaking its tail, ready to strike? A coral snake and the common identification rhyme “Red touches black, venom lack. Red touches yellow, kill a fellow”? Do you coil (pun intended) in fear? You’re not alone. Fear of snakes ranks in the top phobias for adults. This fear is called “oph...
Jenifer Dubon (left) and Jaylin Knight (right)
The Stengl-Wyer Endowment is the largest endowment in the history of the College of Natural Sciences. It supports UT Austin’s programming in ecology and biological research, with a focus on the study of the diversity of life and interactions between living things and their natural environments...
Illustration: Nicole Elmer
Ah, Thanksgiving. We visit family, for better or for worse, slave for hours in the kitchen, gorge ourselves on football, and gather around a table to feast on a big fat roasted...eel?
Historians agree that the very first Thanksgiving dinners had not only the ubiquitous turkey, but other fowl, venison, and yes, ee...