Last September’s KABT meeting at Cowley County Community College

KABT folks:

This is a partial reposting from the Teaching Biology Blog…

We had a great time at the KABT Fall meeting at Cowley County College.
Thanks to Michelle, the presenters and others.

Todd, Bill and others should have a report from the meeting. I’m adding some picts that I took:

Getting fueled and ready to go:

One of the “hands-on” lab experiences. In this case a lab that investigates CO2 data sets and the effects of heating different amounts of CO2 in closed containers.

Maybe Sandy was catching a wiff of something more than CO2….

We’ll try and get a program up and more reports on the meeting here in KABT news….

In the afternoon some of us went out to the Chaplin Nature center. One of the beasts observed was this antlion:

Antlion pits from another site:

During the field trip out at Chaplin Nature center a group of us came across large numbers of caterpillars defoliating catalpa saplings. The trees themselves were difficult to identify (since they were defoliated and small saplings) and we weren’t sure about the caterpillars. I guessed that they were some sort of horn worm—well guesses sometimes workout. We apparently had found the dark form of the Catalpa sphinx (hormworms). Here’s a link that includes images.

http://www.ag.auburn.edu/enpl/bulletins/catalpasphinx/catalpasphinx.htm
or
http://insects.tamu.edu/fieldguide/cimg305.html
or
http://entomology.unl.edu/ornamentals/pestprofiles/catsphinx.htm

Ours matches the dark form in the bottom of this image:

http://www.ag.auburn.edu/enpl/bulletins/catalpasphinx/photo6.htm

or in this image:

http://www.ag.auburn.edu/enpl/bulletins/catalpasphinx/photo2.htm

BW