I had just finished my safety talk to some middle school students when I heard a bloodcurdling scream. In many years handling aquatic insects and other small water creatures, I have never been…

If freshwater insects did senior superlatives before graduating from aquatic life, what would yearbook entries say about dobsonflies? Largest? Most ferocious? Most likely to change names? Most likely…

The opossums that show up on my students’ trail cameras at Saint Michael’s College sometimes look out of place, with their naked tails and frostbitten ears that seem so poorly suited to…

Mention carpenter ants, and Declan McCabe, chair of the biology department at St. Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont, thinks about the time he got a lungful of formic acid. He had taken a…

Imagine for a moment that you travel on all fours like other self-respecting quadrupeds. Extend your imagination yet a little more, and with it your body, so that a large dome-shaped shell-like…

On a clear mid-winter day several years ago, my student Sarah Wakefield and I pulled on snowshoes, donned backpacks, and headed up through Smuggler’s Notch. Our destination was Big Spring, which…

In early November, I flicked on the porch light and took out the trash. In the brief time it took, a couple of late-season moths found their way to my porch light, and as I slipped through the back…

Recently, my daughter participated in Odyssey of the Mind, a creative problem solving competition devoted to ingenuity and team work. As an entomologist, I was thrilled to learn that the program calls…

Phantom midges are among the most common, but least seen, planktonic insect larvae in lakes and ponds. These members of the genus Chaoborus earn the “phantom” moniker from both their…

While sampling in the LaPlatte River, students noticed what looked like rough black pebbles about the size and shape of well-worn pencil erasers. I suppressed my mild distress as they started to…

By December, foliage season is long over for us humans, but it’s peak season under the water. Last month, as the last bus of tourists departed for home, fallen leaves accumulated in our streams…

My students and I were conducting research in the Winooski River floodplain at Saint Michael's College last week when the buzzing became particularly intense. A brisk walk is enough to outdistance…

In peaceful streams, aquatic macroinvertebrates such as crayfish, stoneflies, and caddisflies travel over and under submerged rocks, foraging for other invertebrates, leaves, and algae. When rain…

As we leaned over the Colchester Bog boardwalk, a student asked, “What’s that black stuff on the water?” I suggested gently poking it with a twig. This elicited the expected…

I was in southern Connecticut a few weeks back to pick my son up from college. While he took his last exam, I took myself up a local hiking trail. Connecticut black flies are as bad as their Vermont…

Some of my favorite children’s books describe life cycles as heroic tales of persistence and redemption. From The Ugly Duckling to The Very Hungry Caterpillar to A Seed is Sleeping, these…

If you get a chance this winter, take a peek through the icy window of a pond surface. You may see water boatmen (order Hemiptera: Family Corixidae) clinging to the pond floor. Long oar-like hind legs…

Scanning a sunlit pond floor for crayfish, I was distracted by seven dark spots gliding in a tight formation. Six crisp oval shadows surrounded a faint, less distinct silhouette. The shapes slid…

A small boy asked “what’s your favorite insect?” I answered without hesitation: caddisflies.  Not the short-lived adults, which while charming in their own hairy moth-like way,…

A few Thanksgivings ago, my then-ten-year-old daughter and I went for an afternoon stroll.  Unseasonably warm weather made for a longer than planned walk through a power line right-of-way and on…