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July 10, 2007
Bioblitzed!
If you read my Michigan Odonotes blog, you can read all about the Bioblitz that was held at the UM Biological Station in Douglas Lake, MI. It's about 270 miles N of Ann Arbor, south of the Mackinac Bridge. The station (UMBS) hosted its first bioblitz on July 5-7, with array of resident and invited people to come and see what species of flora and fauna are there. Adrienne and I had a great time talking with other biologists, and it reminded me somewhat of my days at Cranberry Lake in the Adirondacks, where I went for MY summer bio station experience while attending SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in the late 1970s.
sorting moths - Dave Wagner (L)and Brian Scholtens (R)
Brian Scholtens organized the UMBS bioblitz, and Dave Wagner from Storrs, CT was the featured speaker on two nights. Dave's enthusiasm for his work on caterpillars was evident, and his book on the caterpillars of Eastern NA is a must-have. Dave and Brian have both been involved with bioblitzes elsewhere, and for a first-time event at UMBS, it went very well. My main duty was to work on the Odonata, and we ended up with 31 species for the Bioblitz period. That's a far cry from an estimated 400+ species of moths that Brian and Dave collected, but it represents nearly half of the 68 Odonata species that I know to occur there.
Progomphus obscurus, the common sanddragon.
One big surprise was that Adrienne collected a female Megachile sculpturata (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae), the giant resin-bee, which originated in Asia. That was a great catch, as I didn't know that the bee was in Michigan. We also saw Polistes dominulus there, which means that species has really moved northward.
Bioblitzes are a great way to get organismal biologists together for a weekend, doing the things that we like to do -- go out in the field.
Posted by mfobrien at July 10, 2007 02:52 PM