[Biennial Contents]

     Some college classes stop by for a day or overnight visit. For example, in 1997 and 1998, Joseph Colosi of Allentown College, Pennsylvania brought his Florida Ecosystems class by for a talk and tour of the Station facilities and nature trail in the morning. In the afternoon, the students experienced field biology in the Florida scrub. In 1997, the students helped with a plant census conducted by Eric Menges and members of the Plant Ecology Lab and in 1998, the students spent the afternoon on a bug walk with Mark Deyrup, both are Station Research Biologists.

     James Wagner, of Transylvania University, Kentucky, a former intern in the Invertebrate Ecology Lab, visited the Station with his Invertebrate Zoology class for a week. While at Archbold, the students used the library, collections, labs, and trails to pursue individual research projects and their days and nights were filled with lectures, laboratory procedures, and field observations. During several of the days they were here they helped Karl Krombein (Station Research Associate) and his collaborator Beth Norden and Mark Deyrup (Station Research Biologist) with a gallberry pollination study. The students carefully collected data on the time of day when insects came to male and female gallberry plants. The students made a synoptic collection of bees, flies, and beetles that visit gallberry for the invertebrate collection.

    In July 1998 William Conner of Wake Forest University began a 5-week, 5-credit Insect Biology course designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate students who had no previous course work in entomology. Lectures were held every other day in the morning covering areas of insect biology. Labs held on alternate days lasted all day. Laboratories featured insect taxonomy and independent student research projects involved insect behavior and ecology. Field trips to Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades were also included. At the end of the 5 weeks, the students were required to present their individual projects to the class.

Cornell University’s Graduate Field Course in Ecology assembles in the morning light at Archbold Biological Station, March 1998. Faculty; Peter Marks, bottom left; Dick Root, middle right. Photo by Nancy Deyrup.