Lots o' bees!

   A few weeks ago I attended one of the Whitten-Newman ExplorOlogy programs out in Black Mesa, Oklahoma as a scientist representative. The program was called PaleoExpedition, and the main goal was having the students work with fossils and geology at the Whitten-Newman property in the area. My job as a recent-invertebrate curator and trained entomologist was to help teach the high-school age students about how current animal life can infer about the past, so part of the time they were there I led them on insect-based surveys and experiments in the area.
    One of the first observations we ran into when we arrived at Black Mesa was the massive nest site of Digger bees that were adjacent to the on-site campground being used by many of the paleontologists. They had never seen such a concentration of these bees, and neither had I. The Digger bees dug holes into the sandy soil to lay their nests, some as close as 1 inch apart from each other, and there had to be thousands of nests within a baseball-field area.

Piles of Digger-bee nests. Image by Nick Czaplewski. 

Close up of the nests, including the tunnels built extending from the nests. Image from Nick Czaplewski

     What was also interesting about the nests was some of the bees seemed to use nearby bright rocks, pieces of glass, or sticks to "mark" them. We used the bees and nests as an example of developing a question, creating a hypothesis, and testing the hypothesis with the students. One pair of students did a little survey of the nests to see what was the preferred type of object that they would use to mark nests, and found they generally preferred native rocks after all. Another group of students surveyed whether nests with the tubes on the top of the nests helped prevent velvet ants from entering the nests (they are parasites of the bees), and found it did help deter them. Lastly another group of students surveyed how many types of velvet ants were in the area attacking the bee nests, and found at least three species (all of which I think are county, if not state records!).
     It was interesting trying to tie-in paleontology with bug-hunting, but I think the students enjoyed an opportunity to work with live animal observations, field work, and developing their own experiments. I'm hoping to follow up with some of the students on projects from some of the observations and specimens we gathered from the sites, too. Who knows, maybe I converted a few into future entomologists!
    I'll be posting pictures of the bees and velvet ants shortly, and it was a great opportunity to work with the ExplorOlogy program!

Back with a Buzz

Hey Everyone! We've been on a bit of a blogging hiatus with our department, which is due to how busy our summer has been this year. One grant down, two manuscripts being finished, two ExplorOlogy trips completed with some fantastic kids, and soon to be two workshops in Gainesville, Florida and Ann Arbor, Michigan in August and September, respectively, mean a busy summer will continue ahead!
    We do have two new announcements for our department that we are really excited about: we have a new graduate student, Brent, who will be helping us with our shell accessions this year, and we hired a new full-time Collection Manager, Andy! Both will be starting in August, so we'll be able to accomplish even more in revitalizing our collection.
    Brent, who is doing research on mercury levels in freshwater mollusks here in Oklahoma, will help us with his mollusk knowledge to recurrate and incorporate two new collections into our main shell collection. We received two major donations recently: the Mathers collection of shells collected in the United States, and the Perry Yates Jackson collection of shells collected in the United States and across the world. We also will hopefully hire an undergraduate student to help him with the Jackson collection and gain some experience learning mollusk taxonomy and curation, so we'll have a dynamic duo tackling our bivalves and snails shortly! We're also hoping to write a bit more about these exciting donations this fall as we learn more about the snails and mollusks we're getting.

Cataloged and sorted shells from the Jackson Collection. Notice the care taken to get them identified!

     Andy has a PhD in the systematics of parasitic hymenoptera (wasps that lay eggs in other animals, mostly insects) and will be taking over a lot of the duties that are critical to our department, such as maintaining the collection, managing our staff and students, accessions and loan information, our departmental catalog and records, education activities...the list goes on and on! With his expertise in wasps and other insects he'll also be a huge asset to our collection, museum, and state as a resident expert for the group. Andy will also be helping us out with fieldwork and outreach events, especially Bioblitzes, so that we can have our taxonomic expertise available for Oklahomans. We're really looking forward to having him be a part of our team.
     So those are the big events that are coming up for next month. Next week, however, look for a post about our adventures with ExplorOlogy, and integrating Recent Invertebrates with learning about the scientific method!