K.R. Gastreich's Blog, page 7
August 31, 2018
Hidden Heritage
We’re well into classes at Avila, but in quiet moments I still reflect on my summer trip to Germany and all the things I learned and saw traveling the country with my family; visiting the stomping grounds of relatives and ancestors.
I’ve long been fascinated by family histories, a habit instilled in me no doubt by my own family. I’d drink up their stories when I was young, write them down, and as an adult, even weave them into my own fiction.
I’m especially intrigued by untold stories. The shape of what’s left unsaid is so often more interesting than the official spoken word. Filling in blanks can occupy a lifetime, and sometimes all we have left to connect the dots is our imagination, fed by the somewhat more solid coincidence of history.
On this last trip to Germany, I was given a new blank page in my family history. It turned up in the most unexpected of places, as part of my maternal grandfather’s story. Opa was a close relative to be sure, and a man I thought I knew well, in as much as I could have known him before he passed away more than 25 years ago.
While we were visiting the hometown of my mother’s family near Frankfurt, she mentioned that her father, my Opa, had often been referred to as Zigeuner, the German word (considered offensive by many Romanis) for “gypsy.” Opa and his family were olive-skinned and had black hair, and the area they lived in was known, at least informally, as a Roma settlement.
My mother was never sure whether this actually meant Opa had Roma blood. He was, after all, very much German and 150% Frankfurter. In fact, she has his genealogy dating back to the 1700s; his family had been farming in the same village outside of Frankfurt at least since that time.
But I was intrigued by the possibility of my grandfather’s hidden heritage, so I’ve done a little research since our trip. It turns out there’s an ethnic group tied to the Romani diaspora that arrived and settled in Germany some 600 years ago. They now use the name “German Sinti” – a phrase that didn’t exist when my mother was growing up – to distinguish themselves from more recent Roma arrivals.
So, there it is. Opa could very well have had Roma blood and been part of a family that had settled in Frankfurt and integrated into German society centuries ago.
Which means I might be full quarter Roma. Or rather, German Sinti. (I’m still getting the vocabulary straight.)
It’s extraordinary to come across a revelation like this at this stage of my life. Especially for someone like me who’s had a very particular vision of her heritage drummed into her head from a rather young age.
Extraordinary, and somehow liberating. I don’t know how else to explain it: I feel like I recognize myself now when I look in the mirror. Parts of me that were at war with each other have suddenly settled down. If true, a bit of Roma blood running through my veins – a touch of Sinti culture handed down from my grandfather through my mother – would explain so much.
Of course, this raises questions too. Lots of questions. Now I have a new mystery to explore, a blank page to fill. The stuff a writer’s dreams are made of.
Maybe if I listen carefully enough, I’ll discover Opa’s still there, somewhere. Waiting to tell his story. Ready to help me find the words.
August 22, 2018
Inconceivable!
Every year around this time, I look at my August calendar and say, “Who are you, and what have you done with my summer?”
Classes start at Avila this week.
Wait, what? Classes start this week??
Why does time always takes us by surprise? I once read a theologian who argued this was evidence of our eternal nature. Wish I could access a bit more of that eternal nature right now!
I’m very excited about this semester. I have a great roster of classes, fun research to follow up on with my capstone students, and other projects coming down the pipeline that I look forward to sharing over the coming weeks. This autumn’s course line up includes:
BI 112 Ecology and Evolution. As long as I’ve been at Avila, this is only the second time I’ve taught our classic introductory ecology and evolution course. For many years, BI 112 was the exclusive domain of a senior faculty member who retired just this past spring. While it was sad to see him go, I’m thrilled to be teaching this course, introducing our incoming students to the two topics I most enjoy in biology, and on which I’ve built my own career.
BI 313 Plant Form & Function. Legend has it that when Avila undertook the search that led to my hire, there was some tension between the biology faculty and the administration regarding what expertise to look for. The biology faculty wanted a plant person; admin wanted a zoologist. Their compromise was me: A zoologist who managed to convince herself somewhere along the way that plants are important too. BI 313 was one of the first courses I was handed when I arrived at Avila; to this day I embrace it with joy. I love helping my students — also largely animal-biased — achieve a deeper appreciation of this incredible group of organisms on which we all depend.
BI 363 Conservation Biology. NEW COURSE FOR FALL 18!!!! omg I’m super psyched about this one! Conservation Biology has been in our catalogue forever and a day, but Avila has never been able to offer it until this fall. Originally it was assigned to another faculty member who over the summer decided to accept a position at another university. There was talk of canceling BI 363, but I stepped up to plate and rescued this very important course from sudden doom. That was late June, which means I’ve had just under two months to pull this whole thing together. It’s going to be awesome. Among other exciting activities, the course will include a citizen science project where my students will contribute real time data to the international eBird data base maintained by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
IS 365 Ecology Through the Writers Lens. This is the third iteration of one of the most innovative courses in my portfolio, inspired by the Andrews Forest Writers Residency which I completed some years ago. I co-teach the course with Dr. Amy Milakovic from the Avila English Department. We’ll be travelling with a group of intrepid students to Konza Prairie Reserve in western Kansas, where we’ll explore the spectacular tall grass prairie from both scientific and literary/creative perspectives. And yes, I will post pictures. Nothing better for a field biologist than being in the field!
That’s my fall line up, but I can’t help but mention – as a sneak preview for the spring – that we are also planning a new interdisciplinary studies course, IS 337 Tropical Systems: Diversity, Resistance and Resilience, which will go to Puerto Rico in May! Could it get any more thrilling? Actually, it could! But I’ll keep a few reveals under my sleeve for future posts.
Good luck to all of you who are starting a new academic year!
August 9, 2018
ADELANTE 2018
[image error]I’m honored to announce that I’ve been invited as the keynote speaker for this year’s ADELANTE conference, presented by Prospanica KC.
Prospanica is a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering the Hispanic community to reach their full educational, economic, and social potential. They also advocate the pursuit of higher education in all careers and advance Hispanic Leadership.
This year’s conference theme is Fail Forward: Paving your path towards professional development and personal growth through risk-taking, resiliency and reflection. Specific topics covered during panels and workshops will include communication, career transition, and community involvement, as well as the keynote address itself: How to utilize the concept of failure and resiliency to empower yourself to move forward.
All I can say is, whoever decided to invite me to speak must have been reading my blog!
At first, I was rather daunted by the idea of giving a keynote address, but I’ve found putting together the talk a very useful exercise. It’s helped me organize and consolidate lessons learned over the course of my career, including those revisited during my recent (and perhaps ongoing) midlife reboot. I’m looking forward to sharing my experience with conference participants, and to learning from them as well.
The conference will be held on Friday, August 24, from 11am to 5pm at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. If you’re in the area and interested in attending, you can find out more by visiting the conference event page or Prospanica’s web site. Pre-registration is required.
Hope to see you there!
July 26, 2018
Radio Silence
I’ve been away from my blog and most things internet during July, enjoying a family vacation in Germany.
By ‘family,’ I mean family in the broadest sense of the word. This was a very special trip, celebrating the 80th birthday of my father. We were able to bring together so many people over our three-week journey, including my parents, brother and sister with their families, as well as uncles, aunts, and cousins.
We spent the first week in Reit-im-Winkl, a Bavarian mountain paradise if there ever was one. From there, we went north to Munich, spending time on the shores of the crystalline Starnberger See. The last stretch of the trip included a few days in Frankfurt where my maternal grandparents used to live and then a visit to the area of Cologne, where we enjoyed several days with my Dad’s side of the family.
Lots of stories to tell, as you can imagine, but mostly I’m stopping in today to send out a reminder of the importance of getting off the web.
Anymore, being away from social media makes it painfully apparent that there’s not much worth coming back to on the internet. The internet may be necessary in some ways to modern life, but it is darkly addictive. It gives a distorted view of reality that tends to feed our anger and anxiety, most often toward no clear purpose.
I’m a firm believer in tempering negative energy with positive influences. To achieve this, we cannot encase ourselves in on an on-line existence, but must live our lives in the organic world. We must engage with real people and places, much more than with hashtags and memes. We must act rather than think. Speak rather than fume and thumb. Laugh with each other and remember the good that brings us together even as we tackle the bad that drives us apart.
[image error]Most of what speaks to me in this world has no voice on the internet. Reit im Winkl, Bavaria.
My Achilles heel is that it seems I must leave the country every so often to remember this. The last time I went full-on internet silence was over a year ago, in Barcelona. Being away makes me realize I don’t miss anything while I’m gone. But once I reconnect, I fall back into the old fear I might miss something if I stay away.
Now I’m wondering if I can be more disciplined about this internet thing at home as well. Can I manage a day of internet silence every week? Or a week [gasp] of internet silence every month?
What would life be like if I stopped browsing click-bait headlines designed to enrage me and struck up a conversation with someone new at the local coffee shop instead? What if I spent more time walking through wild places, or even just…I don’t know, walking? What if I did anything but log into yet another social media network bound to fill me with disappointment, if not anger?
My bet is that life would become about as rich and enjoyable as every moment of my vacation was in Germany or in Barcelona. Not a life without pain or negativity, mind you – that’s not what I’m asking for. But something more real and authentic, filled with truer companionship and a deeper core of hope. It may be that the power for significant change can be found in silencing that device we keep in our pockets. Worth a try, at least. If it doesn’t work, we can always reconnect again.
I’ll leave you with that thought, even as I invite you to come back to my little corner of the internet next week as we begin our countdown to the start of fall semester. Enjoy these last days of summer, and the precious moments they bring!
[image error]
June 27, 2018
June Bee Update
Bee activity has spiked this month out at Jerry Smith Park. Our collection protocol brought in twice as many individuals compared to April and May combined! I’m also seeing bees I haven’t seen before; notably, Svastra, a striking bee with very furry legs. (That “fur” by the way is what biologists call “scopa;” specialized hairs for carrying pollen.)
Last week, Matt Kelly of the Bee Report came through Kansas City. Matt is a photojournalist who covers all aspects of bee conservation, from biology and natural history to politics and economics. He was accompanied by Suzanne Hunt, president of Hunt Green LLC, an organization dedicated to helping businesses transition to more efficient clean energy models. Matt and Suzanne’s home base is in the Finger Lakes region at their family farm, Hunt Country Vineyards, which you must check out if you like excellent wine that is also sustainably grown.
Suzanne and I have a special history. In spring 2000, she was a student on the Duke-OTS Undergraduate Semester Abroad Program, at a time when I was running the field-based experience in Costa Rica. Afterwards, we kept in touch and over the years, we’ve become very good friends. It was an extraordinary moment of serendipity when I learned, as I was setting up my first bee projects for this summer, that Suzanne’s fiancé Matt also has a passion for bees. In short order we got out our calendars and found a week when we could explore the remnant and restored prairies of Kansas and Missouri together.
As is customary for like-minded biologists, a lot of folks joined the party! Larry Rizzo, retired biologist with the Missouri Department of Conservation, Linda Lehrbaum, Program Manager for Kansas City Wildlands, Tom Schroeder, also a photographer and master naturalist, and Matthew Garrett, Biologist with Johnson County Parks and Recreation, all accompanied us at some point during the tour.
[image error]With Matt Kelly and Suzanne Hunt at Shawnee Mission Park
In addition to Jerry Smith Park, where I’m conducting my own bee research, we visited restoration sites at Rocky Point Glade in Swope Park on the Missouri side and Ogg Prairie in Shawnee Mission Park on the Kansas side of the greater metropolitan area. Our tour of prairie remnants and restoration areas finished with a day trip to Prairie State Park, about two hours south of Kansas City. There, we were treated to sightings of the at-risk regal fritillary butterfly as well as a small herd of the iconic American bison.
Today I was reflecting on the irony that, having spent the early part of my career in the pristine tropical rainforests of the Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica, I am now dedicating my midlife reboot to restored and fragmented ecosystems like the tall grass prairie.
This hasn’t been a sudden transition. I was introduced to fragmentation biology and restoration ecology during the years that I worked at Las Cruces Biological Station in Costa Rica, first as a research mentor and then as coordinator for the Native American and Pacific Islander Research Experience (NAPIRE) Program. During that period, I still clung to deep forest work, but fragmentation and restoration became part of my daily vocabulary. It wouldn’t be long before those terms would be joined by yet another new and growing field that I am now making my own: urban ecology.
[image error]Augochlorini at Jerry Smith Park. Photo by Matt Kelly.
Not a sudden transition, but a dramatic one nonetheless. Representative of the divide crossed by my generation, from a time when ecology meant diving away from humans and into the furthest reaches of untouched wilderness, to this present reality where we deliberately seek to reconstruct fragments of wilderness around our built environments. I’m not sure whether this transition is good, bad, or ugly, but it’s the truth we now live with – a truth I feel compelled to address through my research.
It was inspiring to see the prairie habitats that have been restored and maintained in recent years by many hard working professionals and volunteers in the greater Kansas City area. But on Saturday when we drove south to hike through the modest expanse of prairie that blankets a handful of broad hills in Prairie State Park, we experienced a poignant reminder of everything we lost during the European conquest of the Great Plains.
Will we ever recapture the essence of the vast and wild grasslands that were once the hallmark of the North American continent? As I learn about the growth in public interest and the work that’s being done here in restoration and conservation in the Midwest, I believe we just might – but it will take a while.
One bee at a time, I like to say.
One bee at a time.
[image error]Bison grazing at Prairie State Park – a herd of 50 clinging to what remains of an ecosystem that used to support 20 million.
June 18, 2018
Discovering eBird
[image error]All the true birders out there are going to say, “It’s about time you got with the program!”
And they’re right. It’s been a couple years since a friend and colleague introduced me to eBird, the wonderful app developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
I’m not sure how long eBird has been around, but it’s a massive project, logging data from more than 100 million observations every year from all over the world. It’s a perfect integration of natural history, modern technology, and citizen science – all leveraged to better understand the population dynamics of some of the most charismatic and ecologically important organisms on the planet.
And it’s so easy!!
Cornell Ornithology offers two apps that can make every individual a birder and citizen scientist: eBird and Merlin. They are free, and unlike so many apps in the app store, free means free means FREE. There’s no optional $3.99 upgrade for “special features” that actually make the app worthwhile. All the bells and whistles – and there are many – come with the free versions.
eBird is phenomenal. Just open the app and press the big green button to start your checklist. You can program predetermined locations or have the app locate your position. If you use the location feature, eBird will track as you go, recording the length and time of your hike. It also automatically downloads a list of common species for your area, making it much easier to determine what you might be seeing.
[image error]eBird maps one of my routes
For beginner or amateur birders like myself, Merlin is truly a wizard’s tool. It allows you to identify almost any bird with 5 simple pieces of information: Location, date, size, color, and habitat. Enter these five bits of information and inside of a few seconds, Merlin kicks back photos of about half a dozen species that you might be looking at.
Merlin has worked for me every single time, even with fairly nondescript, fidgety, sparrow-sized things that are notoriously hard to identify. Along with photos, Merlin also supplies natural history information and sound recordings so you can match song as well as appearance to your bird.
Over the last couple weeks, I’ve done six walks with eBird and Merlin, identifying 8-11 species per walk for a total of 28 species in the Kansas City area. A lot of those species are birds I already knew well, like the Northern Cardinal, the American Robin, and the ever-present Canada Goose.
But I’ve had some very special treats along the way, as well. I’ve discovered there’s a Cooper’s hawk living in my neighborhood – who’d’ve thought? Also in my neighborhood, I met a lovely, shy little bird called the warbling vireo. (Probably shy because of that Cooper’s hawk!) I’ve seen indigo buntings at Jerry Smith Park, which are not new for me, but I never tire of seeing their deep, soulful purple flash through glades and over prairies.
The most special moment of all happened this past week in Saeger Woods, when I came upon a pair of summer tanagers, the male in his scarlet plumage and the female a fiery yellow-orange. They perched on some branches just overhead, calling at me with their characteristic chicky-tucky-tuck and hanging around long enough for me to be absolutely sure of what I was looking at.
[image error]Summer Tanagers, male, female and immature male from The Birds of America by John James Audubon.
I was in awe, because while summer tanagers are not uncommon in these parts, the encounter was unexpected and these birds are of special significance to me. The center of diversity for tanagers is the Neotropics. They are characterized by extraordinarily bright colors, and there are rare and endemic species scattered throughout Central and South America. During my years in Costa Rica, they became my favorite group of birds.
The summer tanager is one of just four species found north of the U.S.-Mexico border, and one of only two that can be seen where I live now. Summer tanagers are migratory, spending summers in North America and winters in Central and South America.
This post was supposed to be about eBird, and eBird is about birding, but the truth is no part of our lives is completely separate from the other. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the meaning of migration in my own life, and how the fact that I have moved away from the tropics does not mean the tropics have left me.
This is one of the many questions that has been on my mind since the divorce: How much of my love for the Neotropics was mine and wholly mine, and how much of it was an outgrowth of the very special relationship I had with my ex-husband? How much of the Latin American style and spirit would I now lose – would I have to let go of – in having lost him and the life we once led together?
It’s taken a very long time to answer this question, but the most important questions are worth the time it takes to find the answers.
Latin America, especially the region from the Tropic of Cancer to the Tropic of Capricorn – with its diversity, passion, history, resistance, and resilience – that beautiful, sometimes chaotic, and always extraordinary place is an indelible part of me. It has been since I first stepped off the plane in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1988, an intrepid undergrad with a rudimentary command of Spanish, about to begin a long and fulfilling career in field ecology.
As awful as divorce is, when all is said and done, the event for all its trauma cannot change who we are. It might alter the strategies with which we address life, making us more cautious in some spheres and less risk-averse in others. But the fundamental dreams of our hearts, the elements we need to surround ourselves with in order to keep the fire of who we are alive, remain constant.
For me, Latin America – its people, cultures, and landscapes – are part of the spark that feeds my soul. During my post-divorce journey, I’ve realized that like Eolyn in The Silver Web, who must always return to the South Woods to renew her magic, I will always need to find a way back to the place I called home for so many years. I may never live there like I used to, but one way or another, I will stay connected.
These were the thoughts running through my mind that morning when two summer tanagers suddenly appeared on the edge of Saeger Woods in Kansas City, Missouri, and perched just above my head.
We know you, they seemed to say as they tilted their heads to get a better look at me. We’ve seen you before, back in our southern home!
I laughed, mist filling my eyes as I recognized my old friends.
“You’re right!” I said. “That was me.”
And like the summer tanagers that follow the turning seasons back to their winter home, someday when the time is right, I’ll fly south again. Until then I know a part of the tropics will always be with me.
Moral of the story: Get eBird and Merlin! Use the tools that help you listen to the creatures around you; you never know what they might have to say.
June 15, 2018
Daughter of Aithne available in multiple ebook formats
June 11, 2018
Undine – and where our stories come from
Saturday I attended a meeting of the Heartland Authors Guild, which goes by the wonderful acronym HAG. We did a flash fiction workshop including an exercise based on sensory prompts. Prompts were given to us by chance – drawn from a deck of cards. Mine read as follows: the sound of a garden hose
What a great summertime prompt! The first thought that came to mind was how refreshing the spray of a garden hose can be on a hot summer day.
Then by free association, I remembered a potting disaster I had earlier in the week, when I took all my house plants out back because they needed to be transferred to bigger pots. It took a couple hours to finish, and afterwards I decided to leave the plants out to get some fresh air and sunshine.
At the end of the day, I went to check on them. Everyone looked bright, happy and green – except for one succulent that had been scorched and wilted by the Missouri sun. Horrified, I took her inside immediately and have been nursing her back to health ever since. She’ll survive, but the burn scars are permanent, so she’ll have to grow a new set of leaves and shed the old before she looks the same as before.
I thought there might be a story seed (pun intended) in the fate of my poor, scorched plant. But potted plants rarely make for exciting protagonists, so I decided to reach a little further.
That’s when I remembered the Undine, a fantastical creature that for unrelated reasons has been on my mind recently. And with these three elements – the sound of a garden hose, the image of my scorched and wilted plant, and the fairy-like Undine – I found my story. Here it is:
Undine
Parched she lays amidst the tall, crisp grass, sun hot overhead, sucking the last drops of water from her diaphanous form.
And the Sea – so far away! A memory, mirage, lost even in her dreams.
How did she land here? Through wind and storm to perish on now-brittle ground. T oo far from home. Un-nurtured, un-drenched, un-protected from the death-kiss of a too-bright star.
Shadow interrupts the glare and through fading awareness she hears a high pitched gasp followed by the short burst of a child’s run; a dry squeak like the dolphins she once sang with; a choked whoosh-gurgle and the hiss of a distant whale surfacing from the deep.
And then…
A miracle.
It rains in the desert, the shower of cool water falling over her tiny form, filling pores and replenishing spirit, soaking deep into her heart.
She breathes, a sudden intake of wet air. Not the thick salty sea that once suffused her with life, but a bland, sweet mist that promises no more than temporary awareness. Still, it is enough to live another day.
Enough to get her one step closer to home.
June 4, 2018
Casting Away the Gifts
It’s been a month since I said good-bye to my friends at Virginia Beach, happy yet sad as we embraced each other in the bittersweet end to our annual gathering of creativity, womanly power, and meaningful companionship. I always come away from that week with a sense of renewal and at least one important lesson sealed in my heart.
This year, that lesson was about resisting the temptation to cling to every bright object that is given to us, no matter how wonderful it seems or how worried I might be that I’ll never find something like it again. The lesson came about during my week at VAB in a little game I played with the Sea.
The first day I walked on the beach, I came across a beautiful shell. It was white and worn smooth by pounding waves, and immediately I wanted to take it home.
But a voice inside of me said, “You should throw it back to the waves, and see what the Sea gives to you next time.”
So I did.
Two more times that week, I repeated this ritual. Once with a multi-colored shell whose lines were like an earthen rainbow; another time with a dark scallop, perfectly formed. Each shell seemed more lovely than the last, and harder to throw away. But I was intrigued by the game I’d invented, and they were only shells in the end. What did I have to lose by throwing them back into the water and waiting for what came next?
During my last evening at Virginia Beach while walking at the water’s edge, I found the remains of a conch like a flame at my feet. The outer whorls had been stripped away, the inner column sculpted and polished by pounding waves. Some might say this mere fragment of a shell was damaged and incomplete, but I’d never seen anything so stunning.
It wasn’t until a week later, when I was choosing a place for the Sea’s gift in my home, that I realized from a certain perspective the worn conch looks like a sea dragon. That’s what I call the conch now, my Sea Dragon, granted to me because I was patient enough not to horde those earlier gifts, but to enjoy them in their moment before casting them back to the Sea.
By now the practical reader is saying, “You know, Karin, if you’d kept those earlier shells, maybe you’d have all of them and Sea Dragon, too!”
Well, yes. Maybe.
But you also know this post isn’t really about sea shells, don’t you?
This week, in other aspects of my life I was reminded how important it is to occasionally cast away the gifts we’ve been given. These can be physical gifts of place, possession, and comfort. They can be emotional gifts too, of dreams and friendship and even love. Especially of love.
Love is the seashell we would like to collect without limits. We want to gather and gather and gather love into ourselves, to fill our homes with pieces of beauty, sometimes stolen and horded until we risk the objects that enamored us lay forgotten, gathering dust and starved for the sun, sand, and waves that once gave them their magical glow.
Sometimes there are shells we are meant to hold onto, like I held onto my Sea Dragon. But more often than not, we are asked to cast away the treasures we find, just as I cast away those other shells. It’s not an easy thing to do. In fact, it’s one of the hardest tasks for our hearts to master. But you have to remember: Every time you cast one treasure back to the waves, there will be a greater gift forthcoming.
The Sea will keep its promise.
May 21, 2018
May Bee Update
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 of time is truly impressive.
In fact, you can actually hear the prairie being eaten. Anyone who’s been snorkeling on a coral reef has experienced something similar – the crunch crunch of all those fish nibbling on coral is very similar to the munch munch of all the insects nibbling on prairie grass.
We may not think about it, but grass is crunchy. Too crunchy, in fact, for human teeth. That’s why you and I don’t put grass in our salads. Blades of grass have tiny bits of silica deposited in their tissues – like grains of sand or shards of glass. It’s hypothesized that these silica deposits are a defense against herbivores. (For some interesting experimental evidence of this, see Massey et al. 2006.)
[image error]Flowering herbs like this catch our eye, but grasses are what dominate the prairie.
Of course, for every adaptation there is often an equally powerful counter-adaptation. Silica deposits have deterred many potential herbivores like humans, but others have adapted over time. Large ruminants such as bison have evolved continually growing teeth to counteract the wear and tear of chewing on sand-paper-like food, while grasshoppers – master herbivores of the plains – have powerful, grinding mandibles that last long enough to get them through their life cycle.
I’m still amazed I could actually hear them as they ate.
Of course, I wasn’t there for the grasshoppers. Friday was bee-hunting day, and – thanks to a still-tight schedule on campus where we’re wrapping up the end of the semester – only my second collecting day this season, the first having been at the end of April. Amazingly, what I found on Friday was completely different from what I collected just three weeks ago.
At the end of April, the restored prairie site (Jerry Smith West) was the more active site, with the bright green Halictine Agapostemon dominating the scene. This time, bees were more numerous at the remnant prairie (Jerry Smith East). Moreover, instead of small, shiny Halictines, large, furry bumble bees (family Apidae, genus Bombus) were out in force.
Of course, with only two collecting days under my belt, it’s not possible to draw any general conclusions from these patterns – other than the fact that the bee community is incredibly dynamic. Within a few weeks, from one site to the next, you can see dramatic changes in what’s out there.
I also have – after just a short time with these marvelous creatures – a deep appreciation of the vital importance and shifting nature of the floral resources on which they depend. The wild flower crop where I found most of my Halictines just a few weeks ago is gone – and so are the bees I collected there. Now, a new crop of wildflowers has appeared on the remnant prairie and with it a new set of bees.
Bees apparently have to move – and move fast – as floral resources shift and change across the landscape. And they fight each other over access to flowers; I saw several aggressive interactions near a flowering bush on the remnant prairie site that seemed particularly attractive to many different types of bees.
[image error]The bee boxes have residents!
All of this points to a sense of urgency in the life of a bee. Nectar and pollen are precious resources, perhaps even unpredictable. When bees find them, they hoard them aggressively, even chasing other individuals away.
All this to say that little patch of flowers you put in your garden for the bees and butterflies matters. It matters a lot, even if it flowers only for a little while over the summer, because the one period when your garden is flowering may make up for scarcity faced elsewhere by the bees in your area. And if you can manage to have different flowers blooming at different times across the summer, then you will have done even more help the bees of the world get by.
In other bee news, two of our mason bee boxes at Jerry Smith have been colonized! Both boxes had one tube filled by the end of last week, and both of these were on the remnant prairie. Mason bee females use hollow spaces to lay their eggs and provision young with nectar and pollen before sealing off the tubes in hopes that the larvae can grow and mature undisturbed. I actually saw an adult bee in one of the tubes when I checked the house, but I wasn’t able to get a photo of her. She was just too shy to come out while I was there.
I’ll be writing annual reports for work from now until the end of May, and I also have WisCon next weekend (yay!), so there won’t be any more bee posts until June. But June will be a very busy month bee-wise, so please check back then if you want to hear more. I know we will have some fun stories to share!
