K.R. Gastreich's Blog, page 5
January 27, 2020
First Goals and Aspirations for 2020
Avila University started its regular spring semester about two weeks ago. Seems I’ve hardly drawn a breath, and the month has already slipped by! After some worry that I might be teaching an overload again this spring, I managed to negotiate with the powers that be so that my teaching obligations remain within contract. This will provide some much-needed time to catch up on tasks neglected last fall, namely research and writing. I have four students finishing their capstone projects this spring and three more joining my lab, so it is going to be a very busy and exciting semester.
Among the happenings in my corner of Avila Biology:
It’s official: I’m being promoted to full professor!! The letter from the President arrived Christmas Eve, no less. Great news for finishing up the fall semester and starting the New Year.
My laboratory exercise Using Citizen Science Data to Explore Bumblebee Diversity and Distribution has now been published on the LifeDiscoveryEd Digital Library. This is an open-source repository of peer-reviewed pedagogical materials available to all educators. You can check out my lesson and other media at the LifeDiscoveryEd web site.
In addition, I have a short paper coming out in the March issue of Ecological Restoration, based on the urban bee projects completed with Avila alumna Laura Presler. Stay tuned for more on that when the article appears in about a month.
I am in the process of determining my spring and summer conference schedule, crafting and submitting abstracts for events with the Kansas Academy of Science, the North American Congress for Conservation Biology, and the Society for Ecological Restoration’s North American Conference: Reclaim, Restore, and Rewild. (Seriously, who would not want to attend a conference with that title?) Not sure if I will attend all of these events – depends on who’s interested in hearing the stories my lab has to tell. But I’ll let you know as the schedule firms up.
Last but not least, I’m preparing to submit my application for permit renewal to the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) to continue our bee work in the Kansas City area. This requires not only summarizing last year’s results, but proposing a plan for the upcoming field season. Once I have everything mapped out, which should be in the next couple weeks, I’ll update my bee page with information about summer 2020. A sneak preview: MDC along with Bridging the Gap/KC Wildlands are implementing some novel approaches to managing their prairies, so one of our projects will be to assess whether their efforts have the desired effect on target groups of native bees.
These are some of the priority tasks on my mind as we launch into spring semester. I also hope to spend more time with my online journal, reflecting on various themes tied to the work I do and sharing updates as the field season picks up later this spring.
I have also, for the first time in forever, agreed to participate in a speculative fiction reading hosted at The Writers Place here in Kansas City, MO. Scheduled for the evening of Friday, March 6, the event will feature five area authors. Yes, I will be reading excerpts from my amazing award-winning trilogy. And yes, books will be available for sale and signing. Mark your calendars – and please watch my web site for more information.
Wishing you a wonderful week!
December 21, 2019
Winter Solstice Reading
[image error]With fellow writers and women of magic in NYC.
Happy Winter Solstice!
I’m celebrating this year by bringing back a tradition I let slide a while ago: my annual holiday reading.
Technology has changed since the last time I did this, so it took some time to figure things out, but the recording is finished and uploaded – embedded below and available on YouTube for your listening pleasure.
I was inspired to do this by the song “Bring Back the Light,” shared today by a friend on Facebook. “Bring Back the Light” reminded me of Midwinter’s Eve in Eolyn’s world, which also features a hymn to the sun. Curious minds can listen to the song below. It’s quite lovely.
Enjoy! And many bright blessings on this long winter’s night.
December 8, 2019
Holiday Respite
Well, I warned you back in September, and I was right: My autumn overload was too much to allow weekly niceties such as visiting my online journal and communicating with all of you.
I have missed this space. Truly. I’m hopeful I will have more time to spend with you in the spring, as I have a lot of exciting news and fun thoughts to share. Unfortunately, I just got word the Powers That Be at Avila want to saddle me with another overload for spring. It’s within my right to refuse, of course, so…We are working on that. I will keep you posted.
In the mean time, a few updates.
First, great news! I’ve had three manuscripts accepted for publication. I’ll talk about one of them here and save the other two for later posts.
Ecological Restoration has accepted a manuscript based on my studies of native bees in prairie remnants and organic gardens in the Kansas City area. Even more exciting, the article will be featured with a cover photo by Matt Kelly of the Bee Report. I couldn’t be happier about this. It’s an important reaffirmation and great inspiration for the next stage of my research. Despite my teaching load, I have managed to move forward with some bee work thanks to the wonderful and very capable students who joined my lab. I’ll post more about that and my Ecological Restoration article in the coming weeks.
Second, I’m very happy to report I’ve been recommended for promotion to the rank of Full Professor at Avila.
For those of you unfamiliar with the academic track, this is a big deal. When faculty are hired at an institution, we generally start out as assistant professors. From there, we can apply for promotion to associate professor and then, eventually, to full professor. We can also apply for tenure along the way, which is a separate process. I started as an assistant professor at Avila. Several years later, I was promoted to associate and granted tenure. This fall, I applied for promotion to full professor.
Rank and tenure is never guaranteed, and the application process is long and tedious. At Avila, professors eligible for rank promotion assemble a hefty portfolio loaded with evidence of excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service. In addition, letters of support are solicited from the candidate’s Dean, colleagues at the university, former students, and colleagues outside the university. Last but not least, all members of the candidate’s college have the opportunity to assess the candidate’s appropriateness for rank promotion. There are a lot of cooks in the kitchen!
Once all the letters, evaluations, and so forth are gathered in one place, the portfolio and related materials are reviewed by two separate committees, the Peer Review Committee and the Rank and Tenure Committee (RTC). The RTC makes a final recommendation (yay or nay) to the Vice President for Academic Affairs, who in turn passes on a recommendation to the University President. The President then has the discretion to award rank promotion or not.
As of this post, I have gone through all the most important steps of this lengthy process and earned a positive recommendation from the Rank and Tenure Committee. According to my Dean, everything else from here on out is rubber stamping. (Hope she’s right!) It’s a great honor to be recommended for promotion to the rank of full professor, and I’m very happy to share this announcement with all of you.
Those are the updates for now. We are heading into finals week at Avila, so I need to get back to my students and grading. Warm wishes to you as you navigate the holiday season!
September 23, 2019
Autumn Line Up
We are a quarter of the way through the semester already, and I haven’t given you the scoop yet on the awesome courses I’m teaching at Avila. Here they are:
BI 112 Introductory Biology: Ecology and Evolution. Some professors shy away from newbie courses, but at Avila we say, “Bring ’em on!” More so with BI 112, where I cover one of the greatest stories ever told: of our origins, from molecules to mammoths and beyond. How this amazing planet came to be, how our biosphere works, and why our planetary home is a unique treasure in the universe. I’m teaching both the lecture and lab sections for this course, so my students – lucky them – got double jeopardy with me this semester.
BI 360 Ecology. Ready to leap beyond the newbie challenges of Intro Bio? Advanced Ecology is for you! This year, I threw out the old textbooks and made BI 360 new, contemporary, and hot. Really hot. Literally hot. The syllabus is built around global change, especially climate change and how this impacts every aspect of ecosystem function. I have a sophisticated group of students so we are doing some sophisticated stuff, like using citizen science data to model range shifts of butterflies and their host plants. We aren’t spending all our time on computers though, because… Ecology! We’ve been out in the field, waist-deep in lush prairie grasses counting insects and fighting off arachnids (the annoying, biting, ticky kind) to generate real-world data on patterns of diversity in our hometown of Kansas City. Last time I taught this course was 8 years ago. It’s good to be back.
[image error]To practice skills for their upcoming field project on urban bird diversity, students identified models hidden on the Avila campus.
BI 392 Introduction to Research. I’ve updated the syllabus this fall to make BI 392 a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE). We are collaborating as a class to develop and implement our own group project, and guess what this means? YES! eBird is back! My regular followers may remember I piloted eBird last year for my Conservation Biology course. I’ve updated the module and adapted it for Intro to Research. We are just about done with field training and experimental design. Soon, we’ll begin gathering data on urban bird diversity, addressing a question the students choose and using a protocol they design. Stay tuned for further updates.
BI 492/493/499 Capstone Research and Colloquium. All Avila Biology, Biochemisty & Molecular Biology, and Pre-Health majors complete a capstone project as part of the program requirements. I’m coordinating capstone this semester, helping students get set up with appropriate research mentors and making sure everything runs smoothly as we work to meet deadlines and expectations. As part of this, I have research students of my own completing both literature- and field-based projects. For an idea of the kinds of projects my students are doing, visit my page on Prairie Bees.
That’s the breakdown. If you don’t see me around here, I’ll be with my students.
Happy Equinox!
August 30, 2019
Biodiversity Includes Knowledge Diversity
[image error]According to most 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 dioxide, nitrogen), rocks (minerals), and water.
This makes sense from the Western perspective, but I’ve interacted with many cultures that see air, rocks, and water on different terms. The Ngäbe, for example – whose territory spans the border between Panama and Costa Rica – consider water a living creature. They have strict rules regarding its treatment. According to the Ngäbe, water cannot be blocked or dammed but must always be allowed to flow. Boiling water will kill it.
The awareness of different cultural interpretations of what is alive needles me every time I cover the definition of ecosystem in a classroom. Asking students to distinguish between “living” and “nonliving” is an example of acculturation in science. Education can broaden our horizons, but it can also squeeze us into a very particular – and sometimes limiting – worldview.
This is important because apparently simple exercises like separating “living” from “nonliving” have consequences. In the Western tradition, what we consider “nonliving” too easily becomes the passive “other,” a resource to be used, managed, and controlled. The nonliving are most often “things” subordinate to ourselves. Having no spirit, soul or agency, the “nonliving” can be wasted, contaminated, or even destroyed in order to meet our own needs and desires.
This was one of several themes that Robin Wall Kimmerer (Potawatomi) spoke about in her address to the Ecological Society of America (ESA) during the Society’s annual meetings in Louisville, Kentucky, August 11-16. Dr. Kimmerer’s talk, P-Values and Cultural Values: Creating Symbioses Among Indigenous and Western Knowledges to Advance Ecological Sciences, emphasized the indigenous worldview as an essential element of sustainability.
A Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Dr. Kimmerer is the founding Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. She has written two books, “Gathering Moss” and “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Wisdom of Plants.” Dr. Kimmerer works toward the restoration of ecological communities, and the restoration of our relationships to the land.
I thought it ironic that Robin Wall Kimmerer’s address, which focused on the long and rich history of indigenous knowledge, was billed a “Recent Advances Lecture.” Perhaps this label refers to the field of ecology, which has recently opened up to insights offered by indigenous leaders and scholars like Kimmerer.
I’ve embedded Dr. Kimmerer’s talk below. The video omits the slides – unfortunate since she makes several points visually. But the important messages still come through. If the address leaves you wanting to know more, please check out her books.
Enjoy, and have an inspiring weekend!
August 19, 2019
Inclusion as an Ecological Imperative
About four months ago, this lovely photo by Joe Neely of Diadasia bees sleeping together in a flower appeared on Bored Panda and promptly went viral.
Based on my experience as a biologist, I concluded at once these individuals were two adult females, perhaps sisters, cuddled for warmth as they were sleeping.
Recently, it occurred to me others may have seen a different story behind this photo. Flowers have strong romantic associations. It’s not unreasonable to imagine that as this photo made the rounds on social media, some people assumed the bees were male and female, romantically bonded in a romantic setting.
Reading the original Bored Panda article doesn’t clarify the matter, as photographer Joe Neely’s account confuses the sex of the individuals in question:
“Soon, all the vacant flowers were occupied and this one bee was left out,” Joe Neely reports, according to Bored Panda. “She crawled over to this open flower and got inside with the other one. I was watching as he stumbled around almost drunk-like and then got settled in.”
The emphasis on she and he is mine, to point out the same individual is referred to as female in one sentence and male in the other. It’s unclear whether the error lies with Neely, or if he was misquoted by Bored Panda.
Truth is, I don’t know Diadasia as a genus, so I’m not sure whether these two bees are both females (or males), or one of each. But the fact that I concluded they were females while others might have concluded differently is one small example of a larger phenomenon: Biases affect how we perceive the world around us.
The impact of bias on perception in the sciences was a focus of the plenary address at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA), which I attended last week. With the theme Bridging Communities and Ecosystems: Inclusion as an Ecological Imperative, ESA’s annual meeting brought together inspiring people doing inspiring work across the Americas. It’s been a while since I’ve attended an ESA conference, but I noticed the shift to a more humanistic focus. I don’t recall other conferences being so welcoming or interactive.
Over the next couple weeks, I’d like to share with you some of the presentations from the conference. ESA has made this possible by posting keynote lectures on their YouTube Channel. Unfortunately, they focused the camera on the speakers, so you won’t be able to view the very cool slides. The good news is the speakers are so eloquent you don’t need slides to understand what they have to say.
This week, I’m sharing Dr. Karen Warkentin’s opening plenary on the importance of diverse perspectives – with a focus on queer and feminist perspectives – in the sciences.
Dr. Warkentin is a professor in the Biology Department and the Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program at Boston University and a research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. In her plenary address, she integrates several important themes, including (1) how biases in our perception affect science as a social process; (2) the effect of heteronormativity on what we know about animal behavior; (3) the value of weird observations and diverse perspectives for science; and (4) the biological basis of developmental and behavioral plasticity, and how this informs our understanding of sexual variation in humans.
The take home point? Sound science depends on diverse perspectives and backgrounds. Dr. Warkentin speaks with great eloquence as well as an impressive breadth and depth of knowledge. It will be well worth your time to listen to her.
The plenary address was crafted for a professional audience, but it’s delivered in accessible language. The video should be embedded to begin with her presentation, about 15 minutes in.
Enjoy – And come back next week, when I’ll share Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Keynote Address: P-Values and Cultural Values: Creating Symbioses Among Indigenous and Western Knowledges to Advance Ecological Justice.
ESA 2019 Opening Plenary: All the Variations Matter
Dr. Karen M. Warkentin
August 12, 2019
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 work as part of a field crew, ecology is a solitary endeavor. There comes a moment every day when collective experience is distilled into one-on-one interaction with the creatures that make your study site their home. Individual silence opens the way for a broad exchange based on a range of sensory impressions, a revealing dialogue without words.
I’ve found authors and poets who manage to capture this experience – if fleetingly – in some of their stories. The most recent example is Richard Powers’ The Overstory, which I may come back to in a later post. For the moment, let me just say: You must add The Overstory to your list of recommended reading.
This past week at Jerry Smith Park, a jumping spider caught my eye. She sat still long enough on a compass plant (Silphium laciunatum) for me to capture her in a somewhat blurred photo.
She reminded me of another spider, Dipoena banksii (schmidtii), that caught my attention in the lowland rain forests of Costa Rica many years ago.
A really tiny spider – about the size of the capital “D” in its name – D. banksii inhabit plants of the peppercorn genus, Piper. Piper plants, in turn, are engaged in a special relationship with small ants of the genus Pheidole.
Spiders, ants, and plants: these interconnected organisms eventually gave me my doctoral thesis, and many years of research beyond.
Pheidole ants protect Piper plants from herbivores (insects that eat plants) in exchange for food and shelter. This kind of relationship, where two species help each other out, is called a mutualism.
Another example of mutualism is pollination, where bees or butterflies transfer pollen from one flower to another in exchange for food (pollen and nectar).
Mutualisms are very common. In fact, they may be the most important type of ecological interaction. Yet historically, they seem to have received less attention than other interactions such as competition and predation. This has changed since I began my career. Even so, we have yet to fully understand the profound role mutualistic interactions have in organizing natural communities and determining the course of evolution.
As a graduate student, I was generally interested in mutualisms and specifically in the question of how predators might affect the costs and benefits of mutualistic interactions. Dipoena spiders, along with their plant host and ant prey, gave me the opportunity to explore this question in a pristine tropical ecosystem.
Today, while the focus of my research has changed, I still think about the dynamics of predation and mutualism as I study bee communities of prairie remnants in temperate environments.
Predators abound at Jerry Smith Park – not just spiders, but also dragonflies and robber flies, among others. These winged arthropods cluster around patches of flowers. They snatch bees and butterflies in flight as would-be pollinators seek nectar from prairie plants.
When I began working on Dipoena, I wondered whether the impact of predators was powerful enough to break down mutualisms. Piper ant-plants were a good system for this question, because not all Piper plants support ant colonies. This indicates plants may have a choice whether to participate in the mutualism. If the costs of supporting an ant colony become too high, plants opt out.
In the end, my research showed Dipoena spiders reduced the ants’ ability to protect Piper plants from herbivores. However, the measurable impacts were small. I never found evidence the damage to the plant was sufficient to override the benefits of the mutualism.
[image error]Caught this flower visitor in action at Rocky Point Glade in Swope Park.
A glance across the broad network of mutualisms that characterizes any ecosystem indicates that these are very robust interactions. As data accumulates, I believe we will find predators most often “skim off the top” of abundance created by mutualisms. Predators may do some damage while exacting benefits for themselves. Rarely, however, can they topple the real advantages of interspecific cooperation.
By now, I know my regular readers are reaching for the metaphor – because there’s always a metaphor, isn’t there?
I’ll leave the metaphors to you this week, but with a cautionary note.
Sometimes the stories of nature are just that: stories of nature. They have aren’t about us, but about the organisms we study. Good things can happen when we use the power of metaphor to translate these stories into our every day, human reality, but bad things can happen too.
For example, with this story, who you interpret as “mutualist” and “predator” might be very different from who someone else interprets as “mutualist” and “predator.”
From an ecologist’s point of view, nature doesn’t tell moral tales. There’s no right or wrong in the role organisms play, whether in the rain forests of Central America or in the tall grass prairies of the Great Plains.
I do believe, however, there’s a point to consider in the fact that mutualisms are so ubiquitous and important in natural systems. Yet, across the history of ecology, they have received less attention relative to more exploitative relationships such as predation and competition.
This observation, however, is not a reflection on nature. It’s a reflection on ourselves as scientists and as a society.
August 5, 2019
Dreaming the Present
[image error]While trying to process the massacres this past weekend in El Paso and Dayton, I was reminded by a friend, colleague, and Tribal Elder of the importance of prayer in our life’s journey.
I’m keenly aware that in recent years, “thoughts and prayers” have become synonymous with political inaction. Yet for many of us, spiritual grounding can be necessary in order to take effective action in troubled times.
In my case, I do not subscribe to any organized religion. Still, spirituality occupies an important place in my life. Over the years I’ve developed my own rituals and techniques to center my heart and stay connected with my personal truth. These range from acts as simple as a walk through the woods to more in-depth meditation and reflection.
Because of my friend’s words, I undertook to meditate and pray over the tragic events in El Paso and Dayton. After I finished my evening ritual and went to sleep, I had a remarkable dream.
In my dream, after helping a young woman escape some threatening men, I was transported to a large structure or house, somehow suspended in the sky. At first, I wandered through the rooms alone but unafraid. In the moment I realized this “house” was a place to rest and heal from the dangerous world I’d left behind, a person appeared. This person informed me I would soon have to leave the house and return to the dangerous world. This made me sad.
[image error]My new “guide” showed me one more room before I left, in a school or kindergarten. I had some connection to the children there. They were my children, or nieces and nephews, or wards – I’m not really sure. Their teacher – engaging, fun, and fully dedicated to his students – was reading the poetry of Kwame Alexander.
I joined the class, and we dove into Alexander’s very special rhythms together. The room filled with joy as we explored the power of words, laughing and giggling and even dancing in circles. The children especially liked one stanza that we chanted like a song:
Boom shaka laka laka Boom shaka laka laka Boom shaka laka laka BOOM!
I woke up from the dream at 5:20am, a middle-aged woman in my Midwestern home – someone who maybe watches basketball once a year if KU is doing well in March – and found myself repeating a basketball meme I couldn’t recall having heard before.
Boom shaka laka laka Boom shaka laka laka Boom shaka laka laka BOOM!
I searched for phrase on line to find out what it means. Here’s what the urban dictionary told me (emphasis mine in all cases):
The sound heard when someone makes an awesome slam dunk!
An onomatopoeic “in your face” to express a feeling of joy and dominance while at the same time trying to show the world who you are and where you stand in society.
To rub your achievements in an opponents or challenger’s face to let others know you are in control and they cannot stop you .
Reflecting on my dream and the context in which I had it, I remembered the revolutionary power of poetry, the way it unites us in joy and defiance.
I was first introduced to this power through the Latin American poets during my years in Central America. That power has been reaffirmed in the United States through voices like Kwame Alexander, who I had the privilege of seeing at the Tucson Book Festival this past spring.
To rub your achievements in an opponents or challenger’s face to let others know you are in control and they cannot stop you.
[image error]I believe this was the message of my dream, what I need to remember when racism and white supremacy try to tear down the beautiful colors of this nation and shred the fabric that makes us whole. Unity against our opponents is important, as is anger and defiance. But so is joy. As we persist, we must celebrate our achievements as a diverse nation and rub that pride in their faces. We must remind them we are in control and they cannot stop us. We must do this until we stamp out the rot and disease of racism once and for all.
I am not sure how to get there, but I hold this goal in my heart, and every day I look and listen for ways, big and small, to help make it happen.
Experience has taught me the act of searching will invariably reveal the path.
Boom shaka laka laka Boom shaka laka laka Boom shaka laka laka BOOM!
August 2, 2019
Recommended Reading: LATINX by Ed Morales
[image error]I recently started LATINX by Ed Morales, and I must take a moment to recommend this very insightful and moving book. LATINX examines the history of and interface between social constructs of race in Latin America and social constructs of race in the United States, as well as the implications for our common future.
I didn’t realize how much I’d been searching for someone who could articulate this narrative until I found Morales’ work. LATINX has allowed me to assemble many disparate threads of truth that have been floating around in my head in a chaotic fashion for too long. It’s also helped me better interpret my transition from many years in Central America to my current life in the U.S., in particular the change in headwinds that Rafael and I faced as a couple when we left behind Heredia to move to Kansas City.
I’m still in the early stages of reading, processing, and understanding, so I’ll leave my personal reflection at that. Please go out and find this book – at your library, bookstore, or online. It’s essential reading for our current dialogue on race and race relations, and the kind of society we wish to build in the United States.
While I’m making a plug for great ideas, books, people, and events, I should also mention I discovered this book at the Tucson Festival of Books last March, which was quite simply the most amazing book event I have ever attended. Next year’s festival is March 14-15. Mark your calendars!
Wishing you a good weekend and enlightenment days to come.
July 17, 2019
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 originally keyed out to Augochlora pura, only 2 belong to that species.
That’s right. Last fall, I misidentified 97% of my little green gems. I totally bombed the Halictid (sweat bee) test.
Some instinct must have told me I was way off because as I worked through the rest of the bee families over the spring, I had it in my mind that I needed to go back to the Halictids and re-examine every single one of those 70+ bees under the microscope. Just in case I’d made the same mistake 70+ times.
It was an easier task to undertake once classes were over and the students were gone – once there was nothing standing between me and absolute focus on the bees.
There are two characters I had to learn how to see that make the difference between Augochlora pura and some other kind of small, shiny, green bee. One is the presence of a keel on the abdomen – looks like a boat keel, except it’s on a bee, not a boat. The other character has to do with the number of teeth on the bee.
Here’s the odd magic of species identification: When you’re working with a particular group for the first time, it’s really hard to know what the distinguishing characters are supposed to look like – even if you have photos and sometimes even if you have an instructor pointing things out. You might think you’re seeing the right thing when you’re not. As a result, you can misidentify any number of specimens – in my case, 40% of my summer 2018 collection.
But if you work at it enough – if you’re willing to tackle the uncertainties and go through things over and over until you’re sure – there’s a moment when the curtain suddenly lifts. That character you’ve been so uncertain about for so long stands out in sharp relief. More importantly, you know you will never unsee it. No matter how many time you’ve made the same mistake in the past, you will never make that mistake again.
As I sat in the lab re-examining 70+ bees – tooth by tiny tooth – I reflected on the power of learning from our mistakes and of correcting the mistakes we’ve made.
I think it’s hard in today’s society to publicly grapple with our mistakes. We seem to have become vindictive toward ourselves and others, in the errors we make. We fail to understand why what’s obvious to us hasn’t always been obvious in the past or isn’t obvious to others right now.
Today, I look at the teeth on my tiny green bees and think, “How is it possible I didn’t see these differences from the very beginning?”
But I didn’t, and that’s okay. Rather than tear myself apart for not having seen what is obvious to me now, wouldn’t it be better to celebrate that I worked hard at this until I acquired the necessary knowledge and awareness to recognize the truth?
Wouldn’t it be better to confront and honor our mistakes – even the big ones – as part of our learning process, as a necessary step in every person’s effort to grow and become better at who they are and what they do?
Today I can tell you, with confidence, that all the bees I originally thought belonged to one species in fact belong to 3 species within 2 genera: Augochlora pura, Augochlorella aurata, and Augochlorella persimillis. All three species are important for pollination. All three are small, green and shiny, making them really hard to tell apart unless you get them under a microscope and count their beautiful little teeth.
All three have a lot to teach us, even though they don’t speak our language. I’m looking forward to their next lesson.
