Category: Women and Science
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It’s Okay to Pull Back (Or, Confessions of a Would-Be Entomologist)
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 Smith Park. Sampling in 2020 hit some roadblocks due to the…
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Biodiversity Includes Knowledge Diversity
According to many textbooks, an ecosystem is defined as a community of living organisms interacting with each other and the nonliving components of their environment. Whenever I introduce this concept to students, I ask them to consider what is meant by “living” and “nonliving.” Common examples of “nonliving” parts of an ecosystem include air (oxygen, carbon…
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Predators and Mutualists
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…
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On Confronting Our Mistakes
Last fall, I wrote in a bee update that about 40% of our 2018 summer bee collection belonged to one species of small, metallic green bee: Augochlora pura. Turns out I was wrong. With a little more experience and a fresh look at our collection, I’ve been able to determine that of the 70-some-odd bees I…
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Yes, it’s innate
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,…
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Autumn Portfolio
Classes start this week. In other words, we are five blinks away from Christmas! I’ve been blessed with a wonderful summer and am starting the new academic year rested and ready (more-or-less) to go. Two of my favorite courses are in this fall’s line-up: Introduction to Animal Behavior and Women and Science. When I was an undergrad, I…
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On Connections and Castanets
There are several aspects of flamenco that have bedeviled me since I first started studying the dance form a few years back. One of these is contratiempos. The other is the use of the castanets. Last week, I had the opportunity to tackle both in an intensive workshop with the Escuela de Flamenco Paulina Peralta in Costa Rica. Contratiempos is…
K. R. Gastreich, Author 