Many people squirm at the thought of picking up a live scorpion. But biologist Lauren Esposito is on a quest to find and identify every scorpion in the Caribbean.
Author Archive | Ryder Diaz
In the key of bee
As I walked down a path at the UC Santa Cruz arboretum, I heard them. The buzz was distinct. It wasn’t the thin sound of a common housefly or the high-pitched trill of a mosquito. This vibration had some weight behind it. I knew it was a bumblebee before I saw it. Years of studying…
Buzz McFly, Private Investigator
Detectives look to insects for clues to crack cases A lot of dead bodies turn up on Mount Hamilton and in the Santa Cruz Mountains, two natural areas near San Jose, Calif. Some bodies are found decomposed beyond recognition. Jeffrey Honda has worked on a number of these cases. He searches for subtle clues that…
From disaster to outreach
Sharing science in the days of YouTube Steven Ward has a pretty good trick. He can drop you right into the heart of a natural disaster and you’ll come out unscathed. Guaranteed. Tsunami? Earthquake? Volcanic explosion? He’ll even take requests. (more…)
Can non-native birds save plants from extinction?
As most native Hawaiian birds have gone extinct, “widowed” flowering plants are missing their lifelong partners – the birds that pollinate them. The loss of these partnerships threatens to drive some Hawaiian plant species to extinction, as many of these plants are not found anywhere else in the world. Biologist Clare Aslan investigated whether a…
That which slimes us only makes us stronger
Almost every morning since I moved to Santa Cruz, I’ve seen their long, brown-and-yellow bodies slither across my counter tops. My unwanted house guests are cellar slugs and I imagine that their shimmering slime trails are chock-full of germs, ready to infect me. Like most people, I strive for sterility from the outdoors. But could…