The Biodiversity Center and the Department of Integrative Biology is pleased to announce the annual Focus on Biology science imaging contest! Focus on Biology celebrates visual explorations of our research in the form of photographs, micrographs, figures, and illustrations.
Contest winners and honorable mentions will be printed ... 
Gambusia affinis, female. (Illustrations by Joseph Tomelleri)
Male.
If you visit the turtle pond on campus, you might notice the turtles have quite a few tiny fish neighbors. Some of these are silvery-grey fish called by their common name of “Western Mosquitofish” or just “mosquitofish.” This is the species Ga... 
Photo by Gustavo Pazmiño with BIOWEB Ecuador
Meet Hyloscirtus hillisi, a newly discovered species of Andean tree frog, named after our own Director of the Biodiversity Center: Dr. David Hillis.
This frog was discovered by a team of researchers from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, led by biologist and UT doctora... 
Fall is here in Central Texas, announcing its arrival through color. This time of seasonal change is a particularly vibrant time at Brackenridge Field Lab. Splashes of vivid yellow and red appear when Flame Sumac, Spanish Oak and Cedar Elm trees prepare to shed their leaves. But why do trees do this?
These new hues arise as trees begin breaki... 
by Adam Cohen, Melissa Casarez, and Ryan Rash
Figure adapted from Dennis Rose's thesis showing the major streams in the Little River Basin.
Staff from the Biodiversity Center’s fish collection (home of the Fishes of Texas Project) recently teamed up with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s River Studies Program (TPWD) &n... 
Click on image to play video.
Biodiversity Collections, specifically the Entomology Collection team, are collaborating with researchers from UT's Brackenridge Field Laboratory, University of Georgia, and more to produce a series of SciComm videos that aim to expose people to the decades of research that have gone into what we know about o... 
Stacks of thin wood display cases fill an overflow room in the Biodiversity Center’s Entomology Collection. The cases contain 10,000 specimens of butterflies gathered from all over the world, starting in the 1970s. They are the Robb butterfly collection UT acquired in the winter of 2017, now being reorganized and queued for incorporation ... 
Fox squirrel vs. mesquite: this one is girdling a mesquite for lunch. (Photo: Dr. Larry Gilbert)
The fox squirrel (Sciurus niger) has made quite a comfortable existence for itself on the UT Austin campus. In trees, bushes, trashcans, or coming to beg for a bite of your lunch, it’s hard to miss these furry little mammals.
Commonly ... 
(CLICK ON PHOTO FOR VIDEO) Pulling eels out of a bucket of ice water demonstrates how difficult eels are to hold and not to mention their ability to produce copious slime.
The Biodiversity Center’s Ichthyology Collection is working with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to document and study American Eels in Texas with the primary aim be... 
Maculra pomifera (Photo: Larry Gilbert)
by Dr. Larry Gilbert, (Professor, Department of Integrative Biology)
One of the few trees of the original forest on UT’s main campus is a huge Maclura pomifera, also known as “Osage orange” or “horse apple.” A male tree of this species grows in front of Welch Hall. Other members of the family ... 
by Dr. Dean Hendrickson (Curator of Ichthyology)
The very rare and still scientifically undescribed Chihuahua Catfish, "Ictalurus sp." is known only from streams of the Río Grande basin. It looks superficially a lot like the common Channel Catfish (Ictalurus punctatus), and hybridizes with that species. Non-hybrids, however, are identi... 
Tower Girl cools down using "gular fluttering."
As Central Texas moves deeper into the summer months, we Austinites like to find relief from the oppressive heat by wearing shorts and t-shirts, consuming cool drinks, and ducking inside air-conditioned spaces. If you have been watching our resident Peregrine falcon, Tower Gir... 
Nolina nelsonii growing at the corner of Inner Campus Dr. and Whitis Ave., the University of Texas at Austin
by Dr. José Panero, Associate Professor and Associate Director of the Billie L. Turner Plant Resources Center
The gardens surrounding the BIO Building and the Teaching Greenhouse have several interesting plants donated in y... 
The Department of Integrative Biology held its third annual science image contest, open to all members of the department. The categories included:
Science Subjects - images (photographs or illustrations) of natural history, field sites, behavior, miscroscopy
People of Science - images of researchers at work
Science Figures - figures, model outputs... 
by Adam Cohen (Ichthyology Collection Manager) and Dean Hendrickson (Curator of Ichthyology)
For the last 25 years, the Hendrickson Lab has been monitoring the fishes of Waller Creek, on the UT campus as well as the surrounding vicinity. Their specimen collections have usually included UT students, the public, or local schools, illustr... 
