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This post was written as a guest blog for Explore the Outdoors , a program started by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources that endeavors to educate people about the natural wonders of Ohio. I highly recommend that you check out their website--it has great information on outdoor activities and state parks and reserves you can visit in Ohio. You can see my original post here . Winter can be a beautiful time of year (when the weather deigns to give us snow), but if you're like me, it can also be pretty dreary for one important reason: there aren't many insects about. Sure, you might get lucky and find some stink bugs crawling around inside your house or come across a camel cricket or spider (not actually an insect, but an arachnid, of course) in your basement, but the assorted stragglers can't quite satiate the need to see our many-legged friends like the other seasons can. If you haven't noticed yet, this post is going to emphasize how amazing the insects and other t...

You may have read in a textbook that moths and butterflies feed on nectar from flowers, or don't even feed at all. When reading about science, however, it's important to remember that things aren't simple. It's difficult to neatly fit everything into one classification, and this holds true with the Lepidoptera as well. In this instance, it means that we should say most moths and butterflies feed on nectar. Some feed on fruit, for example. One moth in particular does something much different. It's related to a species that feeds on fruit, but gets its food from another source. No, it doesn't feed on vegetables, but instead...blood. Wait, what? National Geographic has you covered for this week's Science Video Friday!

Do you ever stop to think about where the trash you throw out each day ends up? A landfill, you might say. Or, if you live near the coast, you might consider the chance that your trash could end up in the ocean. That's a pretty good guess. Literally tons of garbage enter the oceans and rivers each year, including plastics. To illustrate this problem, Woods Hole Sea Grant created a poster detailing how long trash remains in the environment, and where the trash is coming from. Link to larger PDF version This is one reason why recycling is so important: it keeps trash like this out of the environment. Once trash items enter the environment, it can take a while until they go away. While time works its toll on these items, they don't stay in one place. In the ocean, this results in the trash being moved around by ocean currents.   Image from the NOAA Marine Debris Program In the Pacific Ocean, this has created what is known as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch." In the abov...

It has now been a year since my journey to Costa Rica as part of a semester study abroad experience focusing on Biology and Spanish. I returned last May, and one of the things I was most looking forward to was fall: I needed to see some explosive leaf colors. Don't get me wrong, the plants I saw in Costa Rica were beautiful and vibrant green, but it's difficult to compare that with the leaf colors you can see during an Ohio autumn. As fall came and went, I saw some wonderful colors, and gradually came to the realization that one of my favorite trees is the American sweet gum, Liquidambar styraciflua . Even its scientific name is beautiful and rolls right off your tongue, it's fantastic. The leaves of the tree are palmate to be technical, but I would rather describe them as five-pointed stars. The colors of these leaves are astounding and range from green to purple, with yellows, reds, and oranges in between.The maples have nothing on this tree! Leaves of a young tree. Notic...

This week's Science Video Friday features some interesting art. It's a visualization of the orchid Cattleya warneri , shown in a way you haven't seen before. To learn more, check out the article on Tree Hugger .

One of my goals for this past summer was to find as many moths in the family Saturniidae as I could. The saturniids are the moths that give moths great publicity: they're huge, they're colorful, and they make their presence known. In fact, this family includes North America's largest native moth: the Cecropia moth. The Cecropia moth: Hyalophora cecropia . With a wingspan of up to 6 inches , it is a HUGE moth. I was out at the Barbara A. Beiser Field Station often during the summer, and on my first day there, in late May, I struck gold. As I knelt down to examine a Clubtail dragonfly ( Gomphus sp.), I heard a strange rustling in the grass nearby. I took a few quick snapshots of the dragonfly and turned around to see what was causing the ruckus. I could hear it, but due to the dense, wet, matted grass, I couldn't quite find it.  And then I saw it. But...what was it, exactly? My eyes darted around, surveying the yellow, white, and maroon mass crawling towards me. At fir...

This past summer, as I mentioned a few times before on this blog, I had the opportunity to carry out a field survey for assassin bugs at the Barbara A. Beiser Field Station. This field station is used by the biology classes at Marietta College for lab sections, such as Zoology and Aquatic Biology. I knew that I would have a good portion of free time during the summer, and I wanted to get a head start on my capstone project, and do some more research with insects. Out of that grew a project during which I would research the abundance, diversity, and ecology of assassin bugs (insects in the family Reduviidae). I wrote up an application for an Investigate Studies Grant for these types of student-led projects from the college, and I received one to carry it out. It took place during six weeks in May and June, and I found a lot of different species--both assassin bugs and other insects. I focused on the assassin bugs most of the time, and presented on my findings (I'll elaborate on tha...