Biodiversity Blog
Eel. It's what's for (Thanksgiving) dinner.
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...
Pets as Invasive Species: Fish Gone Wild
by Nicole Elmer and Adam Cohen, Ichthyology Collection Manager Illustration: Nicole Elmer Pet fish may not purr and curl up in your lap or bark when they see you, but because of their colors, anatomy, and behaviors they can be interesting and beautiful to observe in their aquariums or backyard ponds. But sometimes their owners decide...
A Case for Eels
Hannah Chapman Tripp helps set the specimen jar. (Photo: Adam Cohen) The Life Science Library on the second floor of the Main Building is something to behold. With its high ceilings displaying quotations in gold paint, to the massive chandeliers, some have likened it to Hogwarts, the fictional British boarding school of magic in J.K. Rowli...
Featured Species: Slenderhead Darter (Percina phoxocephala)
by Melissa Casarez and Adam Cohen (Ichthyology Collection) Illustration: Joseph Tomelleri The Slenderhead Darter occurs throughout the Mississippi River basin, and only exists in Texas in tributaries of the Red River. It was first documented in TX in 1994 by UT biologists Laurie Dries and David Hillis in Sanders Creek, a...
Sorting Fish
Those preserved specimens in natural history collections didn't get into their jars or drawers on their own. Quite a bit of work was involved, not only in the field, but also in the lab. This time lapse video from the Ichthyology Collection shows one of the first steps, sorting the specimens into jars.
It got really cold. What does that mean for Texas biodiversity?
The February winter storm “Uri” saw temperatures drop into the single digits and stay below freezing for days. The last time Austin had single digit temperatures was in 1989, the year the Berlin wall fell, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade came out, and Taylor Swift was born. So, yeah. It’s been a while. Uri not only caused havoc for Texans and ou...
Sigmund and His Eels
Illustration: Nicole Elmer If someone asks you to imagine Sigmund Freud, what do you see? An older gent with a well-trimmed white beard, cigar in hand? Is he perhaps listening to a patient who talks freely about personal issues while laying on a couch? This is the Freud most know as the famous neurologist and founder of psychoanalysi...
UT’s Non-Digital Biodiversity Specimens Join the Global Digital Revolution
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...
The Texas Trout
Today the only member of the family Salmonidae (trout, salmon and their relatives) that occurs in Texas is the non-native Rainbow Trout Oncorhynchus mykiss. That species is widely stocked around the state and there is one permanent population in McKittrick Creek, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, where it was introduced in the early 1900s. However...Trout of Mexico's Sierra Madre
Young Dean, reading to go fishing with dad...
Like many others I'm sure, I found that working from home facilitated catching up on housecleaning, etc. Picking away at the long-standing task of re-housing old family photos, I came across one of me heading out trout fishing with my Dad.
It got me reflecting on what a big role ... PART 1: Reflections on Isolation from the Middle of the Pacific Ocean
by Ryan Rash
View of Johnston as we were first arriving.
I was a volunteer and then research assistant at the Biodiversity Center’s Ichthyology Collection for a couple years, but moved to the Central Pacific to work and live for 6 months on Johnston Atoll, a one-square-mile island National Wildlife Refuge with a total human pop... Fish Collection Expands with TPWD
A quick overview of 15 years of UT Fish Collection growth and collaborations with Texas Parks and Wildlife
by Dean A. Hendrickson, Adam E. Cohen, Gary P. Garrett
As stated in the Biodiversity Center’s Collections webpage, the challenges for our collections are to: 1) “document biodiversity,” 2) “understand how biological processes... 
Mis-Stocking Mayhem: The Hunt for Invasive Gobies in the Colorado River Basin
By: Adam Zambie (undergraduate student; College of Natural Sciences; Environmental Science Major and Marine Science Certificate) Naked Goby (Gobiosoma bosc), source: FoTX Project Website, credit: Joseph R. Tomelleri Texas has a long history of non-native fish introductions into its rivers, streams, and lakes. Many are improbable st...FEATURED SPECIES: Rio Grande Cichlid (Herichthys cyanoguttatus)
By Melissa Casarez and Adam Cohen (Ichthyology Collection)
Rio Grande Cichlid (Illustration by Joseph Tomelleri)
The Rio Grande Cichlid, sometimes called the Texas Cichlid, is the only member of the Cichlid family native to Texas, and the United States. Their native range includes most of the Rio Grande draina... River Monsters, a Texas Edition
By Adam Cohen, Collection Manager and Melissa Casarez, Assistant Collection Manager (Ichthyology Collection)
We, in the fish collection, often find ourselves wading in deep, murky waters when out collecting around the state in creeks and rivers with steep banks and little chance for a quick escape, if necessary. During these times, we find it ... Creatures of Halloween: Widemouth Blindcat (Satan eurystomus)
By Dean Hendrickson (Curator, Ichthyology Collection) and Nicole Elmer
Satan eurystomus (Photo: Garold Sneegas)
In our last Halloween posting, the scorpionfly donned orange, black, and yellow. The species in this blog’s focus is pale and pink. This is Satan eurystomus, also known as the Widemouth Blindcat, a cave catfish, known... 
