Date: July 25, 2008
Contact: David Manski, 207-288-8720
Acadia National Park staff and local experts will present a free public workshop called “BioBlitz for Beginners: True Bugs” on Sunday, August 10, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. This session will take place at the Schoodic Education and Research Center in Winter Harbor, Maine, as part of the 2008 BioBlitz. Participants will learn to recognize and collect true bugs (Hemiptera).
Dr. Cassie Gibbs, retired professor of entomology from the University of Maine, and Marcia Siebenmann, an entomologist specializing in aquatic invertebrates, will explore the habits, life history, and importance of this fascinating order of insects. Participants will go out into the field to collect specimens for the BioBlitz and come back to the lab to look at what they collected under microscopes. No previous experience is necessary!
This year’s BioBlitz, sponsored by the National Park Service, Maine Entomological Society, Maine Forest Service, University of Maine, and Dorr Museum of Natural History at College of the Atlantic, is the sixth annual event. A BioBlitz is an event in which dozens of scientists join in a race against time. Armed with sweep nets, pit traps, tweezers, and more, they fan out across a given habitat, collecting every specimen within an identified taxonomic group they can find in a 24-hour period. BioBlitzes can provide important information on species occurrence and estimates of species richness, and identify rare and unique species. Past Acadia National Park BioBlitzes have discovered species never before found in Maine.
To register for the workshop, contact David Manski at 207-288-8720 or david_manski@nps.gov.
