Yesterday I returned from a trip to Huntsville, Texas. Not a horrible place considering it is a bedroom community for Houston. Sam Houston is prominent and so are prisons. Eight in all and people weren't quite sure why this level of density had graced this particular community. But we are off the subject.
The trip was part class project and part thesis project. Perhaps not really different. I was there to video tape an interview, conducted by me, of Dr. John Hilliard. Dr. Hilliard figures prominently in the world of orthopterophiles. That would be those interested in grasshoppers; a group into which I firmly fit. The majority of my MS thesis will focus on shifts in grasshopper distributions in Colorado during the past 60 years. This is where Dr. Hilliard comes in. His post doc was done under the guidance of Dr. Gordon Alexander. The two undertook a descriptive survey of the grasshoppers of Boulder, Colorado during the summers of 1958, '59, and '60.
The result is that the University of Colorado's Natural History Museum is now in possession of over 20,000 grasshopper specimens from this period of time. The goal of those involved is to re-sample a number of sites used by Alexander and Hilliard and determine what changes, if any, have taken place. With the help of an NSF grant we will be conducting this research and posting its results on the soon-to-be-updated museum website.
For more information check www.alexander.colorado.edu and stay tuned here for more information.
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