Campus health and safety are our top priorities. Get the latest from UT on COVID-19.
From Ants: Their Structure, Development, and Behavior (1910)
When UT opened its doors in 1883, biology was not part of the curriculum, despite that faculty at the time pushed for representation of botany and physiology. “The new State University organized in 1883 had more ambitions than resources,” wrote Geneticist and UT professor Clarenc... 
The prestigious journal BioScience just released "Natural History Collections: Advancing the Frontiers of Science," a compilation of recent natural history collection-related papers that sheds light on the importance of digitizing and publishing collections data, and the substantial obstacles confronting collections staff working on that. This come... 
Dung beetle (Photo: Alex Wild)
Natural History collections hold material going back centuries, but the digital revolution means their holdings are now open to everyone, pending the process of digitization. Properly digitizing specimens consumes enormous resources, particularly the one we all have so little of: time.
But the Entomology Coll... 
Photo: Alex Wild
Austin sits at the far southwestern corner of the range of the Eastern Firefly (Photinus pyralis), the species that gives eastern landscapes the characteristic dusk light show in early summer. This insect is common in neighborhoods around Austin, with large flights in April, May, and June and a smaller emergence w... 
by Dr. Alex Wild (Curator of Entomology, Biodiversity Collections) and Nicole Elmer (Biodiversity Center)
Adult Gulf Fritillary (Photo: Alex Wild)
Austin is a butterfly town. About 150 kinds are known to occur in our area, a mix of temperate and tropical, desert and deciduous forest species. Although many people know the famous... 
A female Tipula crane fly in an Austin garden
Spring continues to roll through Austin, paying no heed to our human worries of viruses and lockdowns. Rains fall, trees leaf out, bluebonnets speckle the roadsides, and crane flies flutter clumsily across our lawns.
Crane flies?
Few insects are as strongly evocative of the Texan sprin... 
Glyptapanteles alexwildi is one of 136 new tropical wasp species that have been recently discovered. This species is named after Entomologist Alex Wild, curator of Entomology in the Biodiversity Center.
Glyptapanteles is a genus of small, often inconspicuous parasitoid wasps containing hundreds of species found worldwide. The genus is&nbs... 
By xpda - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64833118
Donning the colors of Halloween, this is the Scorpionfly (Panorpa nuptialis). It’s a common insect in Texas in wooded areas and ravines with dense vegetation. They are up to an inch long. Their wings are orange with defined angulate black ba... 
Pencils in hand, erasers in reach, students huddle over cases of butterflies and beetles. The room is quiet, save for the “scratch scratch” of the pencil lead, the occasional rub of an eraser on paper.
This is a scene from “Core II: Drawing,” a class in the First-Year Core Program at the Department of Art and Art History. On September 12t... 
By Jen Schlauch, Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior Senior
Freshman Research Initiative students
A large steel barn lay hidden from the February cold, framed in a banner of painted bluebonnets and the words, “Texas Wildlife Expo.” Within, javelinas, porcupines, and longhorn cattle shuffled in front of curious children and their ... 
Photos: Alex Wild
Explore UT is an annual event that encourages students to become excited about higher education and the research opportunities at The University of Texas. And what better way to elicit curiosity than with rows of animal skulls and live snakes, spiders, and cockroaches?
The UT Entomology Colle... 
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 abo... 
Photo by Alex Wild.
February 2nd was an unusually warm Saturday for winter, even in Central Texas. Many took the opportunity to work in the yard, exercise, lounge in the sun, but in Welsh Hall on campus, about 20 UT undergraduates were instead hovering over 3000 dung beetles.
This was for an event called “Science Sprints,” one-day intensives tha... 
A promotional video the College of Natural Science completed about the Insects Unlocked project recently won a Lone Star emmy. The Lone Star EMMY Chapter is chartered by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, and recognizes excellence in the television broadcasting industry.
Insects Unlocked is a public domain project from the Biod... 
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... 
