Elizabeth Self - 2023 Fellow
Hello! My name is Elizabeth Self, and I'm an early childhood teacher in Boston, Massachusetts. I'm thrilled to be kicking off our week Counting Caterpillars in Nevada with EarthWatch.
Science Blog:
For our first day, we gathered at the Reno airport and immediately began to connect over our geographic connections and teaching experiences.
At our first stop at the Reno campus, Dr. Dyer introduced us to the decades of research legacy that we're stepping into. He explained that climate change it affecting not only plants, insects, and parasitoids, but also the interactions between them. The compounds that plants make, their generic material and ongoing evolution, the herbivores that way plants and viruses that affect them, and the health and number of parasitoids attacking the herbivores were all interacting in complex ways, and now climate change and other human interventions are intervening on these interactions in chaotic ways. Some herbivores and parasitoids are very specialized to just one kind of food, and these are most susceptible to changes in the environment. One of the ways that our work is connected to the ongoing work other caterpillar research sites is that usually creatures living further from the tropics are less socialized, so the researchers are checking how this will impact their response to changing temperatures are precipitation patterns.
Next, we visited the museum at the Reno campus. We got to see specimen collections that have been consulted for decades to study ecology. We learned about how new species have been discovered and classified, including how type specimens in museums are used to verify species identifications. The collection at the museum included species that we hope to encounter here in Nevada, as well as species that other teams are hoping to find in the tropics.
After we settled into our home away from home, we started a conversation about permaculture and how it operates both in the natural world and in our society. We began exciting conversations about how our society could be more regenerative and how we can start that process in our classrooms.
Personal Note:
I can't wait to see all the ideas we come up with to make ripples of change in our classrooms based on our insuring experiences this week.
Did you know?
Parasitoids are the reason the Earth is green, preventing herbivores from eating up all our plants?
Hello! My name is Elizabeth Self, and I'm an early childhood teacher in Boston, Massachusetts. I'm thrilled to be kicking off our week Counting Caterpillars in Nevada with EarthWatch.
Science Blog:
For our first day, we gathered at the Reno airport and immediately began to connect over our geographic connections and teaching experiences.
At our first stop at the Reno campus, Dr. Dyer introduced us to the decades of research legacy that we're stepping into. He explained that climate change it affecting not only plants, insects, and parasitoids, but also the interactions between them. The compounds that plants make, their generic material and ongoing evolution, the herbivores that way plants and viruses that affect them, and the health and number of parasitoids attacking the herbivores were all interacting in complex ways, and now climate change and other human interventions are intervening on these interactions in chaotic ways. Some herbivores and parasitoids are very specialized to just one kind of food, and these are most susceptible to changes in the environment. One of the ways that our work is connected to the ongoing work other caterpillar research sites is that usually creatures living further from the tropics are less socialized, so the researchers are checking how this will impact their response to changing temperatures are precipitation patterns.
Next, we visited the museum at the Reno campus. We got to see specimen collections that have been consulted for decades to study ecology. We learned about how new species have been discovered and classified, including how type specimens in museums are used to verify species identifications. The collection at the museum included species that we hope to encounter here in Nevada, as well as species that other teams are hoping to find in the tropics.
After we settled into our home away from home, we started a conversation about permaculture and how it operates both in the natural world and in our society. We began exciting conversations about how our society could be more regenerative and how we can start that process in our classrooms.
Personal Note:
I can't wait to see all the ideas we come up with to make ripples of change in our classrooms based on our insuring experiences this week.
Did you know?
Parasitoids are the reason the Earth is green, preventing herbivores from eating up all our plants?