News and notes from your librarian: the “new digital collection!” edition

Hi all! It’s been a little while since my last posting, but I hope to make this a regular thing again in the coming months. To celebrate my return with a bang, it’s my pleasure to unveil the results of a project that I’ve been working on for some time with my Library colleagues, Lara…

Weathering the storm

By Katrina Munsterman I am thrilled to finally get started on a social-ecological study aimed to documentways in which people involved in fisheries in The Bahamas respond to multiple shocks,namely a category 5 hurricane and the Covid-19 pandemic. Hurricane Dorian, one of the strongest hurricanes on record in the Atlantic, hit TheBahamas on September 1,…

Biological Sciences Building home of architectural marvel

by Emily Laub, University of Michigan Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Graduate Student The Biological Sciences Building is home to many fantastic exhibits of mammoth proportions, including a soaring Quetzalcoatlus and a 45 ft long Basilosaurus skeleton vaulted from the ceiling. What visitors might not know is that the BSB is also home to an architectural…

News and notes from your librarian: the waiving edition

by Scott Martin, Biological Sciences Librarian, University of Michigan Library Happy almost-spring! My childhood in Michigan notwithstanding, I’ve never been particularly good with winter, so I’m enjoying the turn of the temperatures towards above-freezing this week. One of my current tasks is pulling together lists of Library reserve items to support the courses at the…

News and notes from your librarian: the “news blast!” edition

by Scott Martin, Biological Sciences Librarian, University of Michigan Library Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you all had the best possible holiday break, given the circumstances. I mainly spent mine listening to new music, catching up on guitar playing, and ringing in the new year by chopping off my accumulated pandemic hair growth. (In…

Dressing right for the occasion: camouflage in spiders

An orchid mantis (Hymenopus coronatus) sits beside an orchid flower. Image credit: Igor Siwanowicz

by Zulay Rodriguez, Frontiers Master’s Student, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (they/them/theirs) Most of us have likely experienced that honest mistake of dressing in a way that makes us feel out of place. Maybe you dressed too formal for a casual outing for friends, or you accidentally wore sweatpants to an event that required slacks. Regardless…

Ecology in a box

by Lynn Carpenter, lecturer and advisor for the University of Michigan Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology As with most other faculty last year, I was completely at a loss of how to take my Ecology Lab normally “In-Person” class to online. During a regular term, we go to the botanical gardens for our labs…

One of these things is not like the other…

From Bug News by Erika Tucker, former Assistant Research Scientist and Collection Manager of Insects, University of Michigan Museum of Zoology One of these things is not like the other … One of these things is just pretending … Can you tell which one is the bee and which on is the bee mimic? This…

Vampire hoards

From Bug News by Erika Tucker, Assistant Research Scientist and Collection Manager of Insects, University of Michigan Museum of Zoology Have you been inundated with hoards and hoards of flying, bloodsucking, tiny demons this summer? Yeah, me too 🙁 In case you didn’t guess from the photo header, I’m not talking about actual mythological vampires.…

The future is science communication

by Katrina Munsterman, Ph.D. student in the Coastal Ecology and Conservation Lab in EEB I always wanted to be an actress, faking illness in dramatic attempts to trade the classroom decorated with construction paper flowers for a day spent counting banana slugs on the mossy floor of a redwood forest. I grew up with a…

News and notes from your librarian: conferencing edition

Don't get too excited - I didn't build it from scratch. Image: Scott Martin

by Scott Martin, Biological Sciences Librarian, University of Michigan Library Happy almost-solstice, everyone! Hopefully you’re enjoying the wonderfully unpredictable variability of temperature and humidity that summer in Michigan brings. I’ve been enjoying the posts from colleagues about the Brood X emergence in the area; we are cicada-free out here on the Washtenaw/Jackson County border, but…

Changing impacts of herbivorous fishes through time

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

From reefbites, with permission by Matthew Tietbohl Animals are well-known to be important ecosystem engineers, impacting their habitats in a number of different ways. Some predators may create landscapes of fear where herbivores avoid, resulting in mosaics of different plant communities across a habitat. Other terrestrial herbivores, like elephants can impact their environments by destroying trees and…