Santa Cruz Island Reserve

05 Jun, 06 AM - 09 Jun, 08 AM

This CAREERS project, based at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, will build a foundation for synthetic study of the rich beetle fauna of the California Floristic Province. It will establish the PI as one of a very small number of arthropod biodiversity specialists of this increasingly imperiled region. Focusing on the southern Californian Transverse Ranges, this project integrates field-based inventory work, DNA-based studies of geographic variation, and a cutting edge bioinformatics platform to develop a uniquely deep understanding of the area's biodiversity. The California Floristic Province is an internationally recognized biodiversity hotspot, yet its most diverse inhabitants, beetles and other arthropods, remain very poorly known. This project will discover hundreds of undescribed beetle species, will reveal the extent of genetic diversity across the region, and will document the distributions of thousands of species in unprecedented detail. The data developed through this study will have far-reaching application. The region has long been recognized as an important natural laboratory for studying evolution, providing important insights into the process of speciation. But these studies have been taxonomically limited. Expanding on this body of work through studies of regional beetles will allow real generalizations to be made about these processes. Additionally, despite their ecological significance, invertebrates have received little consideration in land use management in the region, due principally to a lack of applicable and accessible data. This project will produce this data and an online system for accessing it.

Visit #7196 @Santa Cruz Island Reserve

Approved

Under Project # 5359 | Research

California Beetle Project

faculty - Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History

Reservation Members(s)

Michael Caterino Jun 5 - 9, 2005 (5 days)
Michael Caterino Jun 5 - 9, 2005 (5 days)

Reserve Resources(s) | Create Invoice

Pickup Truck 2 Jun 5 - 9, 2005
Private Room 2 Jun 5 - 9, 2005