During last year’s BioBlitz at the University of Iowa’s eight-acre prairie restoration project — the Ashton Prairie Living Laboratory (APLL) — 52 volunteers observed 238 different species of plants, fungi, insects, arachnids and birds, as well as one frog (an American bullfrog), which brought the observed species total to 239. All 239 were spotted in just two hours by the group of scientists, students and people just interested in nature.
Appropriately enough for an event that took place on the UI campus (APLL is located within the Ashton Cross Country Course) and was organized by the university’s Office of Sustainability and the Environment, the black-and-gold bumble bee (Bombus auricomus) was one of most often observed species. Spotted 27 times, it came in fourth among the most observed species, behind wild bergamot (44 observations), the margined leatherwing beetle (39 observations) and the common eastern bumble bee (31 observations).
The BioBlitz is returning for its sixth year on Saturday. The two-hour blitz is scheduled to start at APLL at 9 a.m. The family-friendly event is free, but people do need to register online in advance. No special training is needed. You don’t need a background in science, just an interest in spending part of Saturday morning wandering across a patch of restored prairie learning about nature.
And if you’re worried about not being able to tell the difference between Bombus griseocollis (the brown-belted bumble bee) and Bombus affinis (the rusty-patched bumble bee), don’t be. Experts will be on hand.
“Participants will have the opportunity to examine insects under professional microscopes, learn how to identify a variety of species … and how these collections and observations contribute to greater research and ecological health,” according to the BioBlitz’s site.
Participants with smart phones can download a free phone app, iNaturalist, and use it to upload photos of what they observe to BioBlitz’s page on the app’s site to be identified. The photos, which iNaturalist will tag with geolocation data, will be available to researchers worldwide through a free and open-access database.
“Findings from the event will contribute to ongoing research and conservation initiatives, helping build a broader understanding of the region’s ecological health,” the Office of Sustainability said in a news release.
In addition to the regional information, the BioBlitz provides a detailed snapshot of the health of the prairie restoration effort at APLL. The restoration project began in 2019. In spring the following year, seeds were sown on a one-acre plot. After the prairie plants were successfully established in that area, seven more acres were seeded over the winter of 2021-22.
The tallgrass prairie is “one of the rarest and most endangered ecosystems in the world,” according to the National Park Service. It once covered 167 million acres in the middle of North America, stretching from the Red River Valley in Canada into Texas. Only about 4 percent of the tallgrass prairie that existed before the European settlement of North America still exists, most of it in the Flint Hills of Kansas.
The tallgrass prairie covered almost all of the land became Iowa before American settlers arrived. Now, there’s no place where the tallgrass prairie is more endangered than Iowa. Before American settlers, prairie covered almost all the land that became Iowa. But in the 19th and 20th centuries it was cleared and plowed under to make way for agriculture, eliminating 99.9 percent of the original, ancient prairie.
