The College of Natural Sciences is pleased to announce that it is now accepting applications for the 2022 Stengl-Wyer Scholars Competition!
Recent Ph.D.s are invited to apply for distinguished postdoctoral positions to study the diversity of life and/or organisms in their natural environments at The University of Texas at Austin (UT), one...
The crypt keeper (Photo from paper by Scott P. Egan, Kelly L. Weinersmith, Sean Liu, Ryan D. Ridenbaugh, Y. Miles Zhang, Andrew A. Forbes. Creative Commons.)
Talk about a nightmare of a roommate.
Imagine yourself to be a larvae of gall wasp, the species Bassettia pallida more specifically. You are inside the gall of an oak tree, a gall that...
Photos: Wilfredor (iguana) and Alan R Walker (mite)- Creative Commons
Pockets are pretty cool things. We put our belongings in them, warm our hands on cold days in them. Some lizards have them too, but they aren’t storing cell phones in them. Chiggers live in these pockets, although sometimes a tick finds its way in there too.
Chiggers are...
Peek a boo! (Photo: Elkin Fricke, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International)
Cat got your tongue? Not in this case. Something else does.
Meet the “tongue biters,” Cymothoa exigua, a species of parasitic isopods in the family Cymothoidae. These things range in size from 0.3-1.1 inches in length for the females, and...
Photo: Henrik Ishihara Globaljuggler (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported)
Next in our parasitism series is the flowering plant in the parasitic genus Rafflesia, also known by the evocative names of the “corpse lily” or “carrion flower.” Why does it deserve our attention in the Halloween series? Because it t...
This is a mermithid found in an Asian Hornet. (Wikicommons photo: PeerJ, 2015)
In the spirit of Halloween and all that is spooky, we are doing a series of short blogs on parasitism!
In biology, parasitism at its most basic level is where one species benefits at the expense of its host. The parasite does not always kill its host, but when it does...
With the weather finally cooling, I think about the upcoming winter. Usually, it’s the most beloved Austin season for me as I can go outside comfortably without the aid of mosquito repellent, for about a month anyway.
This year however, I wonder about the next season with some trepidation. Most of us here in Austin right now remember winter storm U...
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...
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...
by Sarah Hunter
This summer, through the ongoing haze of the COVID-19 global pandemic, I had the unique opportunity to explore the inner workings of the Billie L. Turner Plant Resources Center at UT. The Herbarium Curation Summer Graduate Fellowship program allowed me three months of hands-on training in the varied aspects of herbarium curat...
Photos: Larry Gilbert
This ubiquitous native low shrub is hard to miss. Part of the verbena family, those red, orange, and yellow blooms appear when the weather in Central Texas becomes close to unbearable. The scientific name is Lantanta urticoides, however it often gets confused with Lantana horrida, the name inspired by its strong odor...
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...
Lucy (back) and Olive (front), two out of three of the author's feline invasive species.
Humans have pets for lots of reasons. Companionship, protection, admiration of the animal’s beauty, an excuse to get outside for a walk. As much as we don’t want to hear it, our beloved Fido or Snowball, when mismanaged, can become invasive and threaten biod...
A male Túngara frog. (Photo: Ryan Taylor)
Herpetology at UT really kicked into gear when William Frank Blair arrived in 1946. Our first blog in this series looked at his influence on herpetology research and the Herpetology Collection. Here, we’ll review some of Blair’s work on frog communication, and how this focus carried into the presen...
Guadalupe fescue. (Photo: Carolyn Whiting)
West Texas is known for arid landscapes reminiscent of old Western movies rather than cool damp mountains 6000 feet in altitude. But this is what areas of the Chisos Mountains are like, and where UT researchers have been surveying a rare grass, the Guadalupe fescue (Festuca ligulata).
While once s...
A small example of groundwater species. (Gilbert & Culver, 2009, Freshwater Biology)
When we think about biodiversity, we often imagine life on ground, in the sea and air. Rarely do we think about biodiversity being in places we can’t see.
Beneath our feet, there are water sources with vast amounts of life, species being discovered, and spec...
by Jason Lawson, Field Station Research Engineering/Scientist Associate
Susie’s Meadow: a favorite landmark at BFL and one of the areas currently undergoing treatment for invasive grasses.
The bucolic image of undulating grass fields in a summer breeze looks and feels uniquely Texan. It seems almost unbelievable that so many grasses t...
Drought experiments with switchgrass using the rainout shelters in the Experimental Garden at BFL.
As a field station near the heart of Austin, Brackenridge Field Lab hosts important research by many UT faculty. Amongst them is Dr. Tom Juenger in the Department of Integrative Biology. He studies ecological and evolutionary genetics of local adap...
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...
by Viv Shu (undergraduate Museum Studies Certificate student and Sustainability major)
Living plants need water to survive, but dried museum specimens of plants are exactly the opposite! The Billie L. Turner Plant Resources Center houses more than 1,000,000 such herbarium specimens in the Main Building. This 85+ year-old landmark, also known as the...