Biodiversity Blog

Monday, 01 August 2022

A Proper Home?

Cavity-nesting bee house showing bamboo reed that was stripped open. Common images of bees often show them living in a hive or colony. These are European honeybees and they are considered “social” bees. While some native bees, such as bumble bees, are social, most are solitary. This means that one solitary female bee makes and provisions her sma...

Thursday, 05 May 2022

Meet Outreach Program Coordinator: Laurel Treviño

 Laurel setting up the lab for the Native Bees of Texas course. Laurel Treviño is Outreach Program Coordinator in Dr. Shalene Jha’s lab in the Department of Integrative Biology. Members of the Jha Lab examine ecological and evolutionary processes across biological scales, from genes to landscapes, to quantify global change impacts on plant-...

Sunday, 21 June 2020

Nest building isn't just for the birds

by Laurel Treviño, Outreach Coordinator for the Jha lab Have you ever wondered what insect carves out the leaf edges on your garden plants? If the leaves look like this cut-leaf daisy, American beautyberry, or rock rose, you may have leafcutter bees in your garden. Several native bees have made nests in my native pollinator garden this May; I spott...