Photo: Stanley Trauth 2007 (wikipedia)
A few years ago, I built several ponds near my house at the Double Helix Ranch, hoping that frogs would colonize them and I could enjoy the sound of frog calls outside my window. Several different species have come and bred there including Strecker's Chorus frogs (Pseudacris streckeri), Grey ... 
Dr. David Crews and Dr. Andrea Gore
In late spring, UT professors David Crews and Andrea Gore were awarded as inaugural winners for the 2019 Escher Prizes in Germ Cell Exposure.
Their recent studies receiving the honor demonstrate that exposure of rats in utero to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDC) impact fetal germ ce... 
By Gary Garrett (Ichthyology Collection)
Native fish conservation areas of Texas.
Freshwater fishes and the ecosystems they depend upon are experiencing massive degradation on a global scale. The American Fisheries Society estimates that around 40% of the freshwater fishes in North America are imperiled. Our studies show that in Texa... 
The Atta roach in a fungus garden. (Photo: Alex Wild)
A moonless springtime night at Brackenridge Field Lab. The sun will rise shortly. The Texas leaf-cutter ants (Atta texana) have started their nuptial flights as the winged virgin females and much smaller males fly about. Some of the queens are not alone in their journeys howeve... 
Commelina erecta flower. The genus name Commelina honors the three Commelin brothers. The specific name erecta refers to the erect form of the plant. Photo by David M. Hillis.
Ever wonder how species get their scientific names? The scientist who describes a new species selects the name. As long as the name follows a few basic rules, and is uniqu... 
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... 
Virginia Opossum (Photo by Cody Pope)
At night, the UT campus slows but never quite stops. Those out and about in the dark hours might witness some of the nocturnal creatures on campus, one being the only marsupial native to North America: the opossum.
The opossum is of the order Didelphimorphia and is endemic to the Americas, the... 
George Yatskievych, Curator of the Billie L. Turner Plant Resource Center, speaks with a student
Despite the smattering of rain and wind, campus and off-campus organizations partook in the annual Biodiversity Day near Gregory Gym on Wednesday, April 17th. This event was to spread awareness about sustainability, biodiversity, wellness, cli... 
By Adam Cohen, Melissa Casarez and Dean Hendrickson (Ichthyology Collection)
Some of ULM's Texas holdings that are now at UT's Biodiversity Collections. Photo taken at Tulane prior to packing
In spring of 2017, administrators at the University of Louisiana at Monroe (ULM, historically NLU – Northeastern Louisiana University) made the dec... 
For the observant visitor to the UT-Austin campus, the 40 Acres sometimes reveal botanical treasures. For example, not many local inhabitants are aware that the campus harbors native wild orchids. In recent weeks, the spring coral root orchids, Corallorhiza wisteriana have been experiencing an exceptionally good bloom.
Corallo... 
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... 
A young lizard crawls over the eggs of its brethren. (Photo: Yin Qi)
The old riddle “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” is not much of a riddle to biologists. The shelled amniote egg, which is familiar to many of us as chicken eggs, evolved about 325 million years ago. The wild ancestors of chickens, in contrast, only appe... 
photo by Jacob McGinnis
Our campus is home to lots of different birds that are impossible to miss: an inky black grackle flying dangerously close overhead, a chubby pigeon picking at a crust of pizza. But with winter upon UT, we also have another visitor: the Cedar Waxwings. These are strikingly beautiful birds that are less obvi... 
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... 
The Biodiversity Center and the Department of Integrative Biology is pleased to announce the annual Focus on Biology science imaging contest! Focus on Biology celebrates visual explorations of our research in the form of photographs, micrographs, figures, and illustrations.
Contest winners and honorable mentions will be printed ... 
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... 
Students in Biodiversity Discovery stream.
With construction completed in 1933, Painter Hall has been around long enough to see plenty of renovations. One of the most recent is the addition of a brand-new lab space currently in use by students in the Biodiversity Discovery and Bugs in Bugs FRI (Freshmen Research Initiative) Stream... 
Gambusia affinis, female. (Illustrations by Joseph Tomelleri)
Male.
If you visit the turtle pond on campus, you might notice the turtles have quite a few tiny fish neighbors. Some of these are silvery-grey fish called by their common name of “Western Mosquitofish” or just “mosquitofish.” This is the species Ga... 
