Illinois Natural History Survey News
-
INHS Fisheries Research Scientist Josh Sherwood was called out by WCIA to catch and identify some large fish found in a drainage ditch. The large fish were Bigmouth Buffalo (Ictiobus cyprinellus), usually found in large rivers, but spawn in tributaries. The flooding caused by the recent heavy spring rains likely allowed the adults to swim up to these ditches where they will lay their eggs before returning downstream.For more information visit the Sport Fish Ecology Lab or WCIA news video
-
INHS Botanist John Taft and Outreach Coordinator Jen Mui were quoted in an article in the Chicago Tribune about skunk cabbage. Skunk cabbage, Illinois' earliest flowering native plant, gets its name from the foul odor produced as it generates heat. The heat and odor attract pollinators including flies, carrion beetles and honey bees. A link to a video about skunk cabbage pollination produced by the Outreach Department was also included in the article.
Chicago Tribune -
INHS Researcher Jeremy Tiemann is part of a team working to relocate endangered mussels from a bridge construction site in Pennsylvania to Illinois rivers. The first mussels (relocated in 2010) were given PIT (Passive Integrated Transponder) tags to allow monitoring and after a year and a half, approximately 80% of the relocated mussels had survived. An additional 1200 were transplanted in 2012, and now, new locations are being sought for additional transplants.
Enquirer Herald
News Gazette -
Researchers at the INHS Forbes Biological Station have banded lesser scaup over the past two seasons to examine their use of restored habitats. Director Heath Hagy hopes to have funding to continue taking blood samples to look at metabolites and contaminants in the birds.
“There are a lot of scaup here,” Hagy said. “We are catching 200-400 per day and we are only getting 10-20 recaptures, so there are a ton of birds out there."
State Journal Register -
INHS Wildlife Epidemiologist Nohra Mateus-Pinilla has been investigating the recent beaver die off at Meadowbrook Park. Although there is no "conclusive evidence," Mateus-Pinilla said, "but it appears that the only thing that could have caused the die-off is an outbreak of tularemia." Toxins from run-off, and other diseases including leptospira and salmonella were ruled out and other evidence pointed to tularemia.
Tularemia are common bacteria. "They are present in rabbits and squirrels," Mateus-Pinilla said. "They are part of the natural ecosystem."
Environmental Almanac -
The Illinois Department of Natural Resources has released a press release today that INHS researchers and their collaborators have confirmed the presence of White Nose Syndrome - a disease fatal to several of our bat species - here in Illinois. Read more about this problem and the work our researchers are doing to understand it:
INHS White Nose Syndrome Website -
INHS Astracologist Christopher Taylor and INHS Ichthyologist Emeritus Larry Page were interviewed about an unusual animal found during aquatic surveys in Lake County in NE Illinois. Lake County Forest Preserve staff turned up a "Palaemonetes kadiakensis," glass shrimp or Mississippi grass shrimp, whose range is typically further south.
Taylor said that there are only five species of freshwater shrimp in North America and this particular species has adapted to live further north than the others.
Page added that this species is usually found in cleaner streams, so this could be a good sign for the health of Des Plaines River.
Chicago Tribune
AP story in Daily Herald
AP story in Washington Examiner -
INHS Ornithologist Steve Bailey told the Chicago Tribune that Danville has "the largest winter roost of crows that we know about in the U.S. and Canada." Christmas Bird Counts found 121,500 crows, whereas a year ago, the count was 238,000.
INHS Affiliate Mike Ward added that the drought caused a resurgence of West Nile virus, to which crows are particularly vulnerable.
Crows rebound well, which might be bad news for the residents of Danville who have unsuccessfully tried many things including trucks with a "cannon" booming to scare the birds.
Chicago Tribune -
INHS Waterfowl Ecologist Aaron Yetter conducts weekly aerial surveys and on Nov 13 found more waterfowl than average for this time of year.
Yetter counted 305,310 ducks along the Illinois River compared to the10-year average of 234,434 birds for this same week and 356,735 ducks on the Upper Mississippi River compared to the 10-year average of 226,801 birds.
"It looks like we got a big push of new mallards. We also have well above average numbers of pintails, gadwalls, lesser scaup and other species."
Field and Stream -
INHS Herpetologist Chris Phillips was interviewed for a recent installment of Environmental Almanac. Phillips was contacted by a photographer who captured an image of an elusive, fully aquatic amphibian known as a siren, being eaten by a Great Blue Heron in Vermilion County. Sirens are known from southern Illinois but have never been detected by the extensive INHS herpetological surveys of Vermilion County over the past 20 years. Phillips said "It goes to show you there are still some surprises out there for a herpetologist in the Midwest."
Photo by Jessica Runner 
-
INHS Botanist Greg Spyreas was interviewed for a radio segment on WBEZ, a Chicago based NPR affiliate. The host of Curious City contacted Spyreas to find out how to find the most biologically diverse place in Chicago. His suggestion was to find large areas with a variety of habitats and indicator species, such as Powderhorn Prairie and Marsh on the southeast side of Chicago.
According to Spyreas, "The Chicago Region probably has more habitat types and species than just about any other comparably sized area in the Midwest, due to its fortuitous geographic location, soils, topography, glacial history, lake Michigan, etc. And it is certainly one of if not the most important in terms of biodiversity. "
Read the full article -
INHS Fisheries Biologist Josh Sherwood was featured in a recent Environmental Almanac about the Fishes of Champaign County surveys. Sherwood is conducting the 5th iteration of the surveys that began in 1885.
The original Fishes of Champaign County survey was conducted by Stephen A. Forbes between 1885 and 1901 and found 65 species of fishes. A 2nd version of the Fishes of Champaign County was conducted by Forbes and Robert E. Richardson, and added 14 species to the list. R. Weldon Larimore and Phillip W. Smith conducted the 3rd survey in the 1950s and added 9 more species to the list. Larimore and Peter Bayley conducted the 4th survey in 1987 and brought the species list to 94 species of fishes.
History of the Fishes of Champaign County
Environmental Almanac -
INHS Plant Ecologist Bill Handel has been surveying railroad prairies for the Illinois Department of Transportation for years. He recently told a reporter with the News Tribune that Because most of the
state is converted to agriculture, [the best prairie] is wedged between the railroad tracks and the road,
Handel's reports, and the reports of other INHS researchers, go into a database used by state agencies to protect native habitats when planning construction projects, mowing along roadways or applying pesticides.
Northwest Indiana Tribune -
The Illinois Cooperative Agricultural Pest Survey (CAPS) program is a joint effort between several state and federal agencies to safeguard our nations food and environmental security from invasive pests that threaten our production and ecological systems. This program focuses on state surveys of harmful or economically significant exotic plant pests, diseases, and weeds that have eluded first-line of defense inspections.
Illinois CAPS coordinator Kelly Estes discusses the current and upcoming surveys, including new techniques for monitoring.
Illinois Invasive Species Awareness Month Article -
INHS Field Biologist Sarah Bales accompanied a group to survey mussels at Lake of the Woods. The group of citizen scientists found 314 individual mussels of 14 native and one introduced species. According to Bales, only one species that was previously found there was not found by this group, and that species is rare. She also said that the range of sizes found indicates the mussels are reproducing and that the habitat had not been degraded significantly.
Environmental Almanac -
In September, the Illinois Natural History Survey said goodbye to longtime Entomologist/Insect Systematist Don Webb, who passed away on September 5th at the age of 73. Dr. Webb joined the survey in 1966 and was actively involved at INHS even after his retirement in 2007. Dr. Webb conducted research around the world and was an author on nearly 100 journal articles, book chapters, monographs and proceedings. In addition to his career in science, he was also a musician and an avid sports fan.
News Gazette
Society for Freshwater Science -
INHS Entomologist David Voegtlin reported that this year's soybean aphid population had its lowest recorded impact, starting early but then disappearing. The low trap numbers so far this fall indicate that there may be lower numbers of eggs overwintering and a smaller flight of aphids in the spring. -
Several people have reported seeing European Hornets attack and kill hummingbirds this year. INHS entomologist Chris Dietrich told "The Southern" that he had heard of this happening but that typically the hornets don't sting. “Hummingbirds can hold their own in most cases,” Dietrich said. “If there is a nest near the feeder, the wasps tend to be more aggressive around their nests."
The Southern -
Endangered riffleshell and clubshell mussels collected in Pennsylvania earlier this summer have begun being relocated into Illinois Rivers. The mussels were placed, one by one into the gravel of their new stream. Each mussel has a rice sized transponder attached to its shell to identify it, enabling scientists to non-invasively monitor their progress in their new environment.
Previous articles about collecting the mussels
News Release
News Gazette
News Gazette Photo Gallery
World Fishing Network -
Recent research by INHS Ornithologist and Parasitologist Kevin Johnson has found that bird lice have undergone convergent evolution, evolving different body shapes dependent on where they live on the bird. Despite the morphological similarities between lice from the wings of different bird groups, the species are more closely related to other lice species on the same bird group. The same pattern holds true for lice from the head and body.
Illinois News Bureau -
Illinois scientists worked with others from the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commision, the US Fish and WIldlife Service, and state agencies from Ohio and West Virginia to relocate federally endangered mussels from the Alleghany River in Forest County Pennsylvania. Approximately 3,900 federally endangered riffleshell and clubshell mussels were gathered from the Alleghany River to be relocated to sites in Illinois and Ohio in advance of the removal and reconstruction of the Hunter Station Bridge.
According to INHS malacologist Kevin Cummings, more than 70% of the 300 species of North American mussels are endangered or threatened with the greatest threat being loss of habitat. "Of the 300 species of mussels living in North America, 98 percent of them live in free-flowing rivers. And if you look at a map of large rivers in the United States, there are very few free-flowing rivers left. [Mussels] are a great indicator species and, when they start to wink out, you know you have an (environmental) issue."
Times Observer -
INHS Botanists have been involved in prairie reconstructions on the U of I campus. Currently, the area along Florida Ave and Orchard is being reconstructed, after having been designated a "No-Mow-Zone." According to Botanist Jamie Ellis, their approach to ecological restoration "is evolving and emerging" as they adapt to new challenges. One of the big challenges is that it's a large area that was lawn grass for a long time. Additionally, prairie plants can be slow to take hold in a new area.
News Gazette Article -
Hot, dry temperatures have been a devastating problem for some species. INHS Avian Ecologist Jeff Hoover was interviewed for an article about the impact of this year's drought on songbirds. According to Hoover, caterpillar populations have been impacted by the drought, which means less food for the nestlings and more time spent foraging by adults. Their monitoring has shown a failure of 37% of nests this year, compared to 22% in 2010.
The Southern -
INHS researchers tapped into the innovative nature of engineering students to design systems that would help address questions about North American River Otters. As part of their senior design projects, 4 groups of students set out to tackle different problems.
One device, the Otter Print Shooter, is a pressure and motion sensitive camera encased in clear box, under ground. When an otter steps on the box, the print shooter takes a photo of the paw. Otter paw prints are believed to have unique patterns, similar to fingerprints. The Otter Stalker System wirelessly connects multiple trail cameras, thereby increasing the field of view, allowing the researchers to capture more of the behavior of river otters.To read more about this interdisciplinary collaboration:
Electrical and Computer Engineering Media Center