Author & Ecologist
Cup traps proved very effect for sampling early spring native bees. Friday, I met my student, Gabrielle, on a frosty spring morning to set up traps for her capstone project. Gabrielle is following up on work begun last year assessing the impact of stem nester refugia on native bee communities in prairie remnants at Jerry... Continue Reading →
On some of the many reasons I'm happy and excited to become Chair of the School of Natural and Applied Sciences (SNAS) at Avila University. #AvilaProud #AvilaSTEM #AvilaSNAS
Unknown author - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=774892 A year and a half ago, when travel was still a thing, I had the opportunity to visit the great city of Berlin. While there, I spent an afternoon at the Topography of Terrors Museum. Built on the rubble of the former headquarters of the... Continue Reading →
August already, and I am moving into late summer collections at Jerry Smith Park. This season I don't have students working with me in the field. Avila is a small college, and the timing of biology majors moving through our programs isn't always conducive to having research assistants on my summer team. Even when you... Continue Reading →
Taking a moment this week to give a shout out to my friend and colleague Matt Kelly, who together with biologists Olivia Carril and Joe Wilson, has launched a crowdfunding campaign centered on the incredible bee community of Grand Staircase-Escalante. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is an extraordinary site in terms of bee diversity, housing some... Continue Reading →
In 2007, I sold my first short story, 'Turning Point,' to the speculative fiction journal ZAHIR. Set in the highland forests of Costa Rica, 'Turning Point' chronicles the tensions between three field entomologists who must decide what to do when a faerie falls into one of their malaise traps. The meticulous Ruth, dedicated to documentation and... Continue Reading →
The number of bees we've identified from our summer collection topped 160 this week. We won't finish identifying all the specimens collected before the deadline for my student's final written report, but we'll get through most of it. She'll certainly have enough data to say some interesting things. Between our garden and prairie sites, we've... Continue Reading →
Not too long ago, I hit a milestone in the native bee project I've been working on with my Avila honors student, Laura Presler: We identified the 100th wild bee in our summer research collection. A lot of people out there have identified many more bees than that, so by some standards 100 bees is... Continue Reading →
One of the most common questions I hear is how I got interested in writing. I actually have a very clear memory of the first story I wrote, based on a dream I had when I was a little girl. I always point to that as the initiation of my interest in story telling. Similarly,... Continue Reading →
After a rather slow start this spring, activity has picked up at Jerry Smith Park. Less than a month ago, not only were bees in short supply, but insects of all kinds were scarce. Now the prairie is buzzing, hopping, flying - even being chewed apart! The explosion of life in such a short space... Continue Reading →
