Spring Field Meeting at Lake Eufala State Park

The Spring Field Meeting was April 19-21 at Lake Eufala. Except for a couple of cold nights for campers, the weather was excellent, just warm enough to be comfortable but cool enough to make hiking around a pleasure, with gentle breezes. It was a late spring, but the buds were open enough to allow botanists to identify trees and shrubs.

On the morning botany field trip, we worked our way downhill from the group camp toward the lake. We spent the better part of an hour looking at the lawn. To many people, it would come as a complete surprise how many species of plants a spring lawn contains. You can walk across an incredible amount of biodiversity in just a step or two. Gloria Caddell helped us to identify these species. Down in the forest, Gloria helped us recognize tristyly in Oxalis violacea, which promotes outcrossing between individual plants.

On the morning and afternoon botany trips, we explored forests, and learned to recognize many species of trees. Thanks to Bruce Smith for helping us to recognize important traits of trees and shrubs and, of course, a few ferns. There were several oak species (we couldn't always distinguish them on the basis of immature leaves). Some tree species have immediately recognizable features such as the horizontal lenticels of black cherry bark and the multiple leaf shapes of sassafras:

In addition to Gloria Caddell and Bruce Smith:

we had contributions from another botanist, Stan Rice, but also from plant pathologist Steve Marek, who helped us find an orange rust fungus that alternates between cedar and crabapple hosts, and a conk mushroom growing out of a dead black locust. We also saw lots of lichens. At least three species are visible in this photo:

The botany field trips were joined by numerous high school and middle school students brought by Russell Hudgens of Tahlequah and Bruce Smith of McLoud, as well as college students such as Amber Fisher from UCO and Nick Owens from Southeastern:

It was two Southeastern students (Tyler Titsworth and Ben Singleton) who noticed that most of the tent caterpillars on a cherry tree were safe and snug inside their tent but that a few of them sat conspicuously outside; and as if they were not conspicuous enough, the caterpillars were twitching wildly! We speculated that this was due to a parasite in the caterpillars that would attract a bird as an alternate host:

There were other wonderful field trips, but I will invite leaders or participants of those trips to post their experiences on this blog, or if you do not have access, send text and photos to srice@se.edu. We also had a wonderful Friday evening presentation by Warren Booth of TU, about parthenogenetic snakes. I had to miss Adam Ryburn's Saturday evening presentation, but he is welcome to tell us about it.

Stanley Rice
President-elect

Oklahoma Evolution Road Trip!

Time is running short to register for the Oklahoma Evolution Road Trip! It is May 30 through June 2 and costs $350 which includes travel, accommodations, and most meals. (The cost is $400 if you prefer single accommodations.) This is a real bargain; a recent Big Bend ecotour of similar length cost almost $3000. Home base is the University of Oklahoma Biological Station on beautiful Lake Texoma. We will see fossil deposits, dinosaur footprints, and living trees, and visit creationist museums. There will be plenty of time for discussion. Dr. Stanley Rice and Dr. Gordon Eggleton, both of Southeastern Oklahoma State University, will lead the trip. The tentative deadline is May 3, though we may extend this upon request. Pre-college teachers will receive professional development credit. More information, and registration information, is available at http://www.ou.edu/uobs/evolution.html as well as at Dr. Rice’s blog (http://www.honest-ab.blogspot.com) and website (http://www.stanleyrice.com). If necessary you may attend for just part of the trip, although registration costs remain the same. We’ve talked about evolution; now let’s go see some stunning evidence for it!

The trip is organized by Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education and is an activity endorsed by OAS. It should be especially valuable for science educators. As always in OESE and OAS events, there will be wonderful people to talk with.

This will not be a creation vs. evolution debate event. When we visit creationist museums, we will listen to them and ask questions, which we will discuss by ourselves later.

Help spread the word to people you know who may be interested. Tax-deductible donations are accepted by the University of Oklahoma Foundation (see the registration website) to help pre-college science teachers.

See you at the Field Meeting! Let's post photos and information about what we see at Lake Eufala after we get home. If you are a board member who has misplaced the login information, contact me (srice@se.edu) and I will send it to you.