Breakthroughs in Science

The Oregon State Arthropod Collection lives in Cordley Hall and is part of both the College of Science and the College of Agricultural Science. The curator of the collection is entomologist Chris Marshall, who came to OSU from the Smithsonian and has made great strides to make the collection the largest in the PNW.

A particular point of pride for the collection are the butterfly specimens which, like much of the collection, extend back through the early 20th century.

To read more:

Trip Brings Insect Discoveries 

Christopher Marshall examines insects on the back of a three-toed sloth that wandered into camp one night during his trip to the Guyana Shield in 2007.

From the Sacramento Bee, this is important news:

The researcher, Katie Moriarty, a graduate student at Oregon State University, wasn’t looking for wolverines. She was studying martens, a slender brown weasel fond of old-growth forests, at the Sagehen Creek Field Station between Truckee and Sierraville, just west of Highway 89.

The work – part of a master’s degree thesis – was going well, according to Zielinski, who was supervising Moriarty’s project from his office in Arcata. By baiting locations with raw chicken and positioning a motion-detecting digital camera nearby, Moriarty was capturing a diverse gallery of Sierra wildlife, including martens, a spotted skunk, bobcat and black bear.

Click the link above to read the entire exciting story!

[wolverine photo: National Park Service]

Mark Hixon is one of OSU’s scientists involved in studies of coral reef ecology. He has also been cited as the leading expert in the Western Hemisphere and third in the world, based on journal publications that were most often cited for their scientific significance. Overall, OSU coral reef research programs ranked sixth in the U.S. and eighth globally.

Mark recently gave a talk summarizing the body of science around coral reefs. He concluded his talk by reading this poem, written by Kimiko Hahn:

The Fever

The coral reefs are changing color,
the black and crimson bleached away:
the ocean’s rising fever,

in every drop the seas over,
damages the membrane of symbiotic algae
and coral reefs change their color.

True, it’s less sensational than acts of terror.
True, we can slather sunblock, then sunbathe,
despites the ocean’s rising fever.

After all, the planet isn’t broiling over;
algae is not an inflamed country.
It’s just coral reefs, changing color.

I wonder if it’s, yet again, the ozone layer
ruined by my aunt’s persistent use of hairspray–
this ocean’s rising fever?

I already own my share of vivid jewelry
from Mother’s childhood village on Maui.
Still, the living are losing color
in my ocean’s escalating fever.

Leading Research on Coral Reefs

[photo: Jeff Lovin]