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Scientists, Public Team Up to Discover Biodiversity

By Guest PostOctober 30, 2011Education, Science2011 bioblitz, arizona, arizona sonora desert museum, bioblitz, bobcat, cecil schwalbe, creosote, disease, diversity, don falk, don swann, dustin sandberg, ecology and biodiversity, elizabeth betsy arnold, facebook for students, fungi, globe, gps device, jaguar, jeff eble, jojoba, kim franklin, mountain lion, natalie luna rose, nick massimo, ocelot, palo verde, pharmaceutical drug discovery, Phoenix, photosynthesis, plant pathogens, saguaro national park, sonoran desert, team endophyte, tropics, tucson, tundra, university of arizona, ziploc bags

*During the 2011 BioBlitz at Saguaro National Park Oct. 21-22, school children and volunteers teamed up with experts to embark on a 24-hour race to discover and tally as many of the park’s living creatures as possible in an effort to better understand the ecology and biodiversity of the Sonoran Desert.*

Under an afternoon sun that is beating down much too relentlessly for this time of year, our group of eleven is scrambling up a hillside in Saguaro National Park just west of Tucson.

What has brought us together is the 2011 BioBlitz, a two-day celebration of biodiversity organized by the National Park Service, National Geographic, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and the Friends of Saguaro National Park. For two and a half hours, we get to be field biologists on a real science mission. (more…)

This Beetle Uses Eggs as Shields Against Wasps

By Guest PostSeptember 19, 2011Sciencebeetle larva, beetles, charismatic organisms, cocoon, eggs, joseph deas, m amicus, martha hunter, mesquite and acacia trees, mimosestes amicus, national science foundation, novel discovery, palo verde, parasitic wasps, parasitoids, red eyes, seed beetles, southwestern us, trees of tucson, university of arizona, uscana semifumipennis, wasp

*New UA research has discovered that seed beetles from the desert Southwest shelter their broods from attacking parasitic wasps under a stack of dummy eggs.*

They lead modest lives among the palo verde, mesquite and acacia trees throughout the Southwestern U.S., laying their eggs on seed pods and defending the survival of their offspring against the parasitic wasp species that attacks their eggs before their young can develop.

They are the seed beetles Mimosestes amicus, living all around us in the trees of Tucson, and yet remaining all but invisible to our eyes – or nearly so. (more…)

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Scientists, Public Team Up to Discover Biodiversity

This Beetle Uses Eggs as Shields Against Wasps