Biodiversity Blog
The Year After
Mosses appear post fire. A year ago, I was sitting in the bus on my way home, cursing the heat, staring out the window at the suffering plants when my phone started to buzz and buzz. Turns out, it wasn’t some bot spammer calling me from Valentine, Nebraska. I was getting news about a fire at one of our field stations: Stengl Lost Pines Bio...
What the Heck is a Lichen?
Cladonia parasitica, a lichen at Stengl Lost Pines (Photo: Liz Bowman) When my sister and I were little, my parents often took us camping in Colorado during the summers. We brought our Barbie dolls and when evening came around, we built pretend campfires and served pretend food. Part of those imaginative meals included lichen fragments we’...Citizen-Scientists Project at Stengl Lost Pines
L to R: Kathy Cox, Susan Schroeder, Kathy McAleese, Megan Lowery, Nancy Rabensburg, Betty Henley, Carolyn Turman – Displaying newly mounted plant vouchers for the herbarium
By Kathy McAleese
It all started in the fall of 2018. A group of friends were beginning a project to remove invasive and aggressive plants from an old pastur... 
Edward Wilson's signature moment in the history of BFL
E.O. Wilson in 2003 (Photo: Jim Harrison, Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license) Edward O. Wilson passed away on December 26th, 2021. He was a professor of biology at Harvard University with an incredible list of awards including two Pulitzer Prizes. He was a myrmecologist passionate about ants, and often consider...
Meet Stengl-Wyer Fellow: David Ledesma
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...Meet Stengl-Wyer Scholar: Liming Cai
Liming Cai is one of our 2021 Stengl-Wyer Scholars. She is a systematic biologist broadly interested in the study of phylogenetics and evolutionary genomics of plants. Her research integrates fieldwork, herbarium collections, and genomic analysis to characterize the patterns and drivers of biodiversity. As part of the Stengl Wyer Endowment, th... Stengl Wyer Research Award to Support Creation of Environmental Sensing Network
Angle of prototype. Sensors are to the right and left of the processor.
Advances in machine learning and remote sensing provide potential for studying life’s diversity and interactions between organisms and their natural environments. Tim Keitt, professor in the Department of Integrative Biology, and his colleagues are interested in lev... 
Meet Eric Abelson
Eric Abelson is a Research Scientist in the Department of Integrative Biology. He works closely with the Biodiversity Center. Tell us where you came from before UT, and what you studied. After receiving my Ph.D. from Stanford University, where I worked on wildlife behavior and conservation ecology, I went on to two post-doc po...Center Hosts Nature Photography Workshop
On May 18th and 19th, the Biodiversity Center hosted the Nature Photograhy Workshop at Stengl Lost Pines Biological Station. The workshop focused on everything from photography basics, to composition, lighting, and processing. About 40 miles outside of Austin, the location of Stengl was an ideal for photographers of nature as the field station comp... Down and Dirty at Stengl Lost Pines: post-doc Tim Gallagher gets into soil to find answers about carbonate formation
Tim Gallagher stands amongst his completed pits at Stengl.
In a clearing on the north side of Stengl Lost Pines Biological Field Station lie twelve wood frames. At first glance, these seem to be small garden plots where plugs of the Texas State Grass, sideoats gramma, are prospering. But beneath these frames are pits that form an ... Biodiversity Center Sponsors Freshman Research Initiative Course
Biodiversity Discovery FRI Students Christiana Peek, Evan Samsky, Hannah Gilbreath, Thomas Johnston and Ari Nehrbass prepare to sample vegetation at BFL (Photo: Alejandro Santillana)
By Nicole Elmer and Dr. Susan Devitt
The Freshman Research Initiative is a pioneering program allowing first-year students chances for hands-on resea... 
Regents approve plan to expand Stengl Lost Pines Biological Station
The UT Board of Regents approved a plan to expand the 208-acre Stengl Lost Pines Biological Station. Read more at My Statesman >>
