Kyle Catt of Paschal High School carefully removes a female monarch butterfly for tagging. After being captured and tagged at the Historic Campus of Texas Wesleyan University, this insect will make its way to the highlands of central Mexico where it will overwinter.
Pat Averitte ’84 is ready to write aluminum tags for trees in the OLC permanent forest plot.
Yolanda Thomas records species name and tree diameter at the OLC permanent forest plot. White Rosinweed (Silphium albiflorum) at Tandy Hills Prairie.
labeled collections from Tandy Hills Prairie and the Fort Worth ISD’s OLC. At the same time, they acquired and learned to use data loggers that continuously record temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure, sound and light. These data loggers are deployed in the FWISD OLC in and near the permanent forest plot established in 2010. BRIT collaborates on this project as a clearinghouse for plant information about North Central Texas plants. Teachers take their visit to the BRIT herbarium and their own first-time collecting history into their own classrooms with taxonomic exercises.
hands-on experience and a state presentation
One of the Asteraceae that garnered attention of the teachers is White Rosinweed (Silphium albiflorum). Collected and photographed by teachers in Tandy Hills, they discovered that White Rosinweed is a Texas endemic (has a narrow geographic range restricted to the north central part of the state). Endemic species are notorious for being extinction-prone. This is due to their small population sizes that have unique and narrow habitat requirements. White Rosinweed’s rarity was the focus of fieldwork in the fall of the first year. Demographic study of the populations in Tandy Hills shows that less than 5 percent are reproducing effectively to maintain the population. Teachers presented this work at the 2010 Texas Wild Plant Conservation Conference at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin. Teachers gained experience modeling population dynamics and estimating population viability.
Fall 2011
our work leads to better understanding During the 2010 summer
and academic term sessions, teachers mapped and measured 143 trees (> 3 cm diameter) occurring in 1000 m2 of lakeside forests of Eagle Mountain Lake. Fifteen species of trees and two lianas comprise the sample. The next step is to genetically fingerprint each of the trees. Fingerprinting uses chloroplast barcode sequences — a gene or usually an intergenic region shared by a large number of related species that is taxonomically informative. Initial sequences suggest that many of the species occurring in these tracts of forest are novel, not previously fingerprinted. Teachers contribute to our understanding of Texas biological diversity and should provide a stepping-off point for future plans to barcode the Texas flora. Our intention is to use these forest plots to monitor biological diversity in the Trinity River watershed. Continued study of the understory will provide a glimpse at recruitment of the tree species in the context of future meteorological and urban change. The result of the constant and continual monitoring is posted on the FWISD OLC website guaranteeing widespread access and classroom use. Numerous individuals contribute and/or participate in this program. Teachers from the FWISD are the primary recipients, though participants from Eagle Mountain, Saginaw, White Settlement and Everman have also taken equipment, data and support from our program back to their classrooms.
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