STEAM Storytimes have been gaining popularity at our partner libraries! We have been lucky to host STEAM professionals from UC Riverside, UCLA, and the Audubon Society, and hope to recruit more to read STEAM stories to kids! We have upcoming dates on second tuesday of each month at the Baldwin Hills Public Library and at rotating locations and dates at the City of Riverside public library branches. To stay tuned for Los Angeles STEAM Storytimes, follow Baldwin Hills Library on facebook. For dates and locations in Riverside, follow the City of Riverside Public Libraries on facebook.
The inaugural STEAM Storytime in Riverside took place on April 4th at the SSgt Salvador J. Lara Casa Blanca Public Library! Postdocs and undergraduates from UCR Entomology read stories and brought insects and spiders for children in attendance to touch. It was a hit! Stay tuned for monthly storytimes at Riverside public libraries on their facebook page HERE.
I am coordinating a day of citizen science workshops and guided hikes with the Ameal Moore Nature Center on March 17th, 2018. Free to the public, and kid-friendly. For more details, see the event page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/156600401670453/
It was a small but eager gathering at the inaugural STEAM Storytime at Baldwin Hills Public Library this weekend. My fellow researcher from the Wilson Ranin Lab at UCR and I read stories about pollinators to the kids in attendance, had a science show and tell where we looked at bee specimens and hummingbird feathers under the microscope, and made DIY recycled bottle hummingbird feeders.
A big thank you to the CNPS Educational Grants Committee for awarding funds from the Helen Sharsmith & Gertrude R. Hardman grants to my research on California pollination networks. These funds will go towards research in untangling visitation and pollination rates of hummingbirds at plants not normally thought of as "hummingbird syndrome" plants. http://www.cnps.org/cnps/education/grants.php
The 2018 National Science Teacher's Association (NSTA) list of Outstanding Science Trade Books is here, and it features two books about citizen science!
The books are: Bat Count: A Citizen Science Story by Anna Forrester and illustrated by Susan Detweiler (https://www.arbordalepublishing.com/bookpage.php?id=BatCount) and Moonlight Crab Count by Neeti Bathala & Jennifer Keats Curtis and illustrated by Veronica V. Jones (https://www.arbordalepublishing.com/bookpage.php?id=MoonlightCrab). , For the full list of NSTA books go here: http://static.nsta.org/pdfs/2018OSTB.pdf
Interactive pollination networks!
Here are some photos I've gathered of visitors to flowers during field work in California. While we are focused on pollination by bees, these photos highlight the fact that insects (and a surprise predator - check out the photos) visit flowers for a variety of reasons. Flowers can act as shelter or a convenient meet-up site for mating. Many visitors use flowers for food, but do not pollinate them while they are doing so - they may eat the petals, for example. Very little is known about the specifics of these interactions for the vast majority of plants.It's not every Ecology conference that I get to see a guy riding a unicycle wearing a Darth Vader mask while playing a bagpipe! I am just a little disappointed that in my surprise at the spectacle I didn't snap a picture of the guy! The conference itself was far from disappointing and exceeded all my expectations. I was very pleased I had the chance to present the preliminary findings from my lab's DNA metabarcoding study of California hummingbird diets. I had the chance to meet incredible scientists, reunite with old friends, and learn about what's going on at the frontiers of ecological research.
|
Archives
April 2018
Categories |