RMBL principal investigator Benjamin Wong Blonder, PhD, studies how quaking aspens (Populus tremuloides) respond to stress across the high country. This summer's drought and heat, he writes, are the latest chapter in a longer story: aspen decline that builds slowly, over years of accumulated stress, rather than arriving all at once. Below, he explains what [...]
RMBL Scientists Visit Expanding Youth Programs Driving into Gothic on a July afternoon, visitors immediately notice the crags of Gothic Mountain, chest-high monument plants, and roving researchers carrying nets and binoculars. As common as the deer grazing in the protected townsite meadows, a growing number of much younger scientists have brought their own questions to [...]
A ray of mid-May Gothic sun cut through a light snow shower in 2025 as I visited RMBL research scientist Ian Breckheimer, PhD, and Western Colorado University Paul M. Rady School of Computer Science and Engineering students just north of the Visitor Center. The Rady team had partnered with RMBL since 2024 to identify and [...]
Evolutionary Ecologist Diane Campbell and Design Researcher Eliza Collin Simulate the Future at RMBL Three years ago, during a residency at the Design Museum in London, design researcher Eliza Collin was developing a new project about olfactory evolution and looking for scientists studying how climate change affects the scent of flowers. Her search led her [...]
Josh Grinath and the power of place-based discovery On a summer morning near Gothic, before most of the valley stirs, ecologist Josh “Bear” Grinath is already thinking about questions that stretch far beyond any single field site: How do pollution and predators shape communities of plants and animals? What might those interactions portend for the [...]
On March 13, 2026, longtime RMBL scientist Paul Ehrlich, PhD, passed away in Palo Alto, California, at age 93. Paul was an eminent biologist who wrote or co-authored more than 1,100 scientific papers and articles and over 50 books, many with his wife, Anne. The following tribute, written by RMBL scientist and board member Dan [...]
The East River carves a perfect “S” just before it flows between the base of Gothic Mountain and a treehouse named “Bean Pod.” Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) scientists constructed this treehouse one year after the organization was founded in 1928. The 5-by-10-foot shack clings to a small hill on one end and two spruce [...]
A Late Fall On Nov. 14, 2025, I drove the short distance from my apartment in Mount Crested Butte to Dr. David Inouye’s cabin in South Gothic. At that point in this dry year, the Gunnison Basin measured 16 percent of average snowpack (a mere 4 inches total, according to billy barr; see gothicwx.org for [...]
This past October, RMBL closed on an 8,271 square foot former hostel at 615 Teocalli Avenue in Crested Butte. The three floors offer a large ground floor living room for scientific collaborations and community discussions, second floor bedrooms for scientists to use year-round and staff to use as offices in winter, a third floor with two different two-bedroom apartments for staff and scientists, and revenue-generating services like an [...]
Walking through Gothic after peak aspen season tunes the senses into what lies beneath the golden canopy—relationships. On October 6, I joined RMBL docent Emily LeClair a mile north of campus. LeClair educated me about the relationships underlying our citizen science programs, which the Association for Advancing Participatory Science now calls community or participatory science, [...]
Dr. Paul CaraDonna first arrived at RMBL on snowshoes at the end of the deep winter of 2011. Approaching Gothic Mountain for the first time proved personally and professionally transformative. “Amy [Dr. Amy Iler of RMBL’s plant phenology project], now my wife, met me on my way in. I had seen mountains before, but Gothic [...]
This summer, Dr. Ian Breckheimer has been busy with CHESS — not the game but the Colorado Headwaters Ecological Spectroscopy Study, a project funded by NASA with help from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy. It combines new remote sensing technology with field measurements to understand how plants and ecosystems in the [...]
Thirsting for Answers It’s a conundrum. According to the Desert Research Institute, the Colorado River (to which the Gunnison River is one of the largest tributaries) delivers water to 40 million people in seven states, not only for drinking but also to grow food for the entire country. The problem is that the river [...]
Docents out and about: The team's trip to Gothic this past winter In early March 2025, twelve RMBL volunteers and staff met at the Snodgrass trailhead, strapped on skinny skis and packs, and ventured three miles to Gothic for an overnight stay at RMBL’s Crystal Hut. We were mostly acquaintances yet bonded by summer volunteerism [...]
Behind the Scenes with RMBL Operations: The Heart of Gothic Katie Harper prefers to stay behind the scenes. As RMBL’s Administrative and Operations Manager, she was genuinely surprised when we asked to feature her in the e-newsletter. “Who cares about operations when we have such exciting science going on?” she said with a laugh. But [...]
Trees of knowledge – and benefit While Curtis Beutler and Austin Shirley dig snow pits measuring the snow’s density and temperature to predict how much water it will deliver to streams and soil in the East River basin, they’re also active in another study in the Taylor River basin. There, scientists and land managers are [...]
Exploring possibilities - Kevin and Lotte Roache, Explorer Club Members You don’t have to be a scientist to be an Explorer — a member of RMBL’s Explorer Club. Curiosity helps, though, because Explorers learn plenty about science that’s critically important, science that helps us understand and adapt to our changing Earth. Explorers support RMBL with [...]
Bird brainy Sometimes, all it takes to have your life changed by RMBL is to take a walk with a scientist. When she was a freshman in high school, Savannah Troy visited relatives living in Crested Butte. During her stay, the family decided to take a scientist-guided tour at RMBL. On the tour, Savannah held [...]
RMBL in the news In 2024, RMBL received over 200 media mentions spanning numerous media platforms. The most widely distributed story of the year was a piece on billy barr by the Associated Press. It covers billy’s curiosity-filled quest to observe the world around his remote mountain cabin and how these humble observations have become [...]
The future is here. RMBL has a new executive director. Meet Jenifer Blacklock, PhD. She comes with impressive credentials and achievements, and her enthusiasm for RMBL’s future is infectious. Yet she is quick to acknowledge that she has big shoes to fill. Dr. Blacklock wants it known that she has a deep respect for Ian [...]
A pearl like no other The success of RMBL's science can be attributed to the success of RMBL as an organization. The sum of RMBL's parts is great, which leads to the whole of RMBL being even greater. So, we've laid it all out. See below for a summary of RMBL by the numbers. Who [...]
Supporting science changes the world Rocky Mountain PBS spent the past year visiting Gothic to capture the sights, sounds, and voices of the RMBL community. It tells a story of scientific discovery, seasonal change, and connection to the natural world. Hear three of these stories by clicking on the links below. A family of scientists [...]
Grounded Corey Lawrence has a deep connection to the Earth. He’s always loved being outside, and having a career that allows him to do fieldwork in one of the most beautiful places in the country is a dream come true. He’s a biogeochemist at the U.S. Geological Survey, where he studies carbon storage in the [...]
Wolves welcome Eric Odell wasn’t raised by wolves, but he’ll be living with them, along with the other people who call western Colorado home. Eric is the Wolf Conservation Program Manager at Colorado Parks and Wildlife. He’s in charge of the agency’s plan to reintroduce and manage gray wolves (Canis lupis) in western Colorado. The [...]
Beetles and Benevolence Carrion beetles are like homicide detectives. They make their living off dead bodies. Dr. Rosemary Smith makes her living studying them, among other subjects. Specifically, she looks at things like how different habitats affect their breeding behaviors, how multiple species coexist in the same habitat, and how they’re adjusting to changing climate [...]
Small climates, big questions Dr. Kazenel first came to Gothic in 2013 as a student in RMBL’s Education Program. She did what nearly everyone else does when they first encounter RMBL. She fell in love — with the mountains, the science, and just about everything else. Then she came back in 2014 and 2015 to [...]
Great things happen when we work together Erik Hulm is one of those individuals who is often called upon to move projects forward. It’s what he does. He moves things forward. As implied in his title at RMBL, Director of Institutional Advancement, what he’s moving forward these days is RMBL. He joined the staff in [...]
Mining for marmots Taylor Bastian is a PhD student at University of California Los Angeles and part of Dr. Dan Blumstein’s lab. Last year, she spent her first summer at RMBL working on the marmot project. We caught up with Taylor as she was heading to RMBL for her second summer. What led her to [...]
Engineering the Future One of the qualities that sets RMBL apart from other field stations is its knack for encouraging multidisciplinary collaborations among scientists. Think of Dr. David Inouye’s over 50-year-old flower phenology project and the research that has sprouted from it, such as Dr. Rebecca Irwin’s study of native bees and Dr. Aimee Classen’s [...]
Force of nature Never underestimate the power of family vacations to shape a child’s future. For Dr. Pat Magee, Professor of Wildlife Biology and Conservation at Western Colorado University, childhood family trips always led to the great outdoors. Growing up in Littleton, Colorado, he and his six siblings would pile into his parents’ Volkswagen bus [...]
The price of nature It’s a common story. A family visits Crested Butte to ski, falls in love with the alpine wonderland, and returns again and again. Soon they discover the gifts that other seasons bring, like summer’s riotous explosion of wildflowers and fall’s golden blankets of aspens. Before long, they’ve bought a home and [...]
RMBL in the News With about 70 media mentions in 2023, RMBL attracted a lot of attention. Any summary (and apologies for paywalls) of RMBL media coverage in 2023 has to start with the National Geographic piece on the Phenology Project. Beautiful photographs and great writing, it captures the extent to which the RMBL Phenology [...]
The science of giving There is something about spending time in nature that ignites an appreciation for science. Char Carbone and Pete Rowland each carved an independent path from nature lover to science supporter. As a married couple, however, their journeys have both converged and become wider. Pete had a place on the mountain near [...]
Dr. Rebecca Irwin is a bee researcher. And tagger. And curator. She’s also, as of 2009, a collaborator in Dr. David Inouye’s Phenology Project. The 50-year study of the phenology of RMBL wildflowers Dr. Inouye founded has blossomed into a multifaceted exploration of flowers and their pollinators, particularly bees. While Drs. Brian Inouye and Nora [...]
I was pretty excited when Ian asked me to write a piece on the intersection of geology and biology for the RMBL newsletter. My scientific career in soil geomorphology places my research at that intersection and many of my friends and colleagues work in that intersection as well. As you can probably imagine, the boundaries [...]
Brianna Guijosa is an undergraduate who has spent the last two summers at RMBL studying how decomposition adds nutrients to the soil. The decomposing subjects are mice, and the creatures converting them to soil nutrients are carrion beetles and flies. While a student at East Los Angeles College, Brianna got a scholarship from the National [...]
Imagine that you’ve grown up a city kid in a concrete jungle. But at some point, a science class suddenly whets your appetite for aquatic biology, and the intellectual craving follows you to college. How do you find the path that leads to a career? If you have an educator like Dr. Susan Washko, you’re [...]
We all know it’s important to see the big picture. Dr. Ian Breckheimer can confidently say that he does. But he also doesn’t miss the details. With his spatial data platform, he and fellow scientists are building a digital twin of the Gunnison Basin, a highly detailed model of the watershed and its climate and [...]
Many of us humans complain about the disruption of daylight saving time, yet somehow we adapt. Imagine the clock shifting enough to throw whole seasons off by weeks or more. If all the species in nature set their clocks to synchronize with the new schedule, it might not be a problem. But they don’t. Seasons [...]
Brett Biebuyck grew up exploring Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the lush landmass flanked by three of the Great Lakes and filled with dense forests, diverse wildlife, and spectacular waterfalls, among other natural wonders. From a young age he became hardwired with wilderness wanderlust. Not surprisingly, after graduating from high school, he went straight to Alaska, where [...]
When we last talked with Dr. Jessica Lundquist of the University of Washington (Spring 2022 Newsletter), her team was setting up all the instruments needed to measure snow sublimation, the transformation of the snowpack (a solid) into vapor. Last October, the team installed the instruments at RMBL. Then winter came and generously dropped all the [...]
The life cycle of a research project begins with a question, something a scientist wants to know about the world. How do hummingbirds court? How do flower colors evolve? How are bumblebee populations changing? What are the tipping points in an ecosystem’s responses to climate change? And on and on. Permission granted The next [...]
RMBL has a unique talent for turning budding scientists into fully formed researchers whose scientific contributions resonate around the globe. Case in point: Rebecca Prather. Fresh from finishing her PhD at the University of Oklahoma, she took a postdoctoral position at RMBL with two objectives: One, to collect flower field data for the long-term phenology [...]
(Apologies in advance if you hit unexpected paywalls on any of the following articles.) Always charismatic, mammals got plenty of attention. Work by Drs. Gabriela Pinho and Dan Blumstein (both UCLA) caught the attention of both the Smithsonian and Discover Magazines for what marmots can tell us about human aging. The NY Times asked Blumstein [...]
Jocelyn Navarro grew up in Pomona, a city in southern California. She’s the daughter of Mexican immigrants whose highest level of education was elementary school. So who could have imagined that she would one day pursue a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology? Actually, her parents could. Highly attuned to nature, they nurtured Jocelyn’s fascination [...]
According to Doug Johnson, he and his sister Carol Johnson, along with their late brother Dan, won the parent lottery. Their parents, Dorothy and Chris (John C. Johnson Jr.) not only were loving to their children but were nature lovers who believed in letting their children explore the great outdoors. Doug built dams in the [...]
You may remember the story in our spring printed newsletter about two important studies at RMBL that are going to great depths, and heights, to improve the ability to predict water availability for the western United States. They are SAIL (Surface Atmosphere Integrated Field Laboratory) and SPLASH (Study of Precipitation, the Lower Atmosphere and Surface [...]
They are the longest continuous residents of Colorado. They have lived in the Rocky Mountains since time immemorial and are still here today. Their original territory was a massive landscape covering most of Colorado and Utah and parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming. They are the Ute Indians. A traveling exhibit [...]
For Karole Armitage, spending her childhood at RMBL was like growing up in utopia. In this remote Rocky Mountain wilderness, she says that she and her brothers roamed wild and free. They held skunk cabbage wars. They tried riding and were thrown off a donkey. They watched their border collie herd porcupines. At the same [...]
For decades, RMBL has hosted world-renowned scientists, supporting their research with field sites, lab facilities, housing, technological and logistical assistance, and access to historic data. We have achieved this as an independent, nonprofit field laboratory, not affiliated with an academic institution or the government. What keeps RMBL in operation is philanthropy. From the work of [...]
You don’t have to be a scientist to know that carbon is the key to life. Everything on Earth is fundamentally made from carbon, and since our planet itself is a self-contained environment, the amount of carbon stays the same. It simply moves around, cycling from the Earth to the atmosphere and back again. The [...]
There are three new members of RMBL’s Board of Trustees, and they’re bringing nothing less than a tsunami of scientific insights and practical experience. Let’s meet them. Dr. Susan Avery is well-seasoned in the art of guiding scientific organizations through board leadership. She is the president emerita of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She chairs [...]
Caroline McLean wears many hats, and they’re all Earth-friendly — biologist, teacher, nature photographer, RMBL volunteer, to name a few. As a volunteer for RMBL, she assists Dr. Rick Williams, curator of RMBL’s herbarium. She demonstrates a biologist in action for people who come through the Visitor Center. The action happens to be pressing plants [...]
RMBL’s winter caretaker program turns 50 this year; this is an account of how it started, and of our experience as the first caretakers in the winter of 1971-72 – myself, my partner Barbara and our seven-month-old son Sam. Barbara and I were a little burned out at what we were doing in Crested Butte [...]
It’s so easy to get overwhelmed with the problems our world faces, now that our generation is waking up to the possibility that we could cause our own extinction. But within this dark awareness lies a spark of hope because the generation on our heels is not only aware but ready to act. One example: [...]
The year 2013 was an auspicious one both for RMBL and for some new residents of Crested Butte. Jim and Doris Brogan had just purchased a second home in the Skyland subdivision and with their children — Daniel, Elizabeth, and Mairead — were looking forward to dividing their time between their new home near the [...]
It’s interesting how a scientist’s research trajectory can change over a summer. One minute you’re all about the deep blue sea, and the next minute you’re overturning river rocks to find insects. That’s one of the cool things about science. You never know where it may lead you, both geographically and intellectually. Brittney Cleveland is [...]
Benjamin (Benn) Schmatz has been hard for newsletter writers to get hold of lately. It’s not that he isn’t responsive. After all, responsiveness is a key requirement of his job on RMBL’s Work/Maintenance crew, and he’s nailed that qualification. In fact, he says one of his favorite things about the job is getting the call [...]
Scoop a fishing net into one of the ponds at RMBLS’s Mexican Cut Nature Preserve, and you can easily come up with more than one tiger salamander. But there’s no guarantee that any two individuals will look the same. From the beginning of their lives, tiger salamanders — the only salamander native to Colorado — [...]
Does RMBL produce better science because it’s family friendly? It wouldn’t be a stretch to make that claim. Time and again, scientists say that one of the best ways RMBL supports them, especially those that return year after year to work on long-term studies, is by welcoming their families. For decades, RMBL has understood that [...]
Bees are truly beautiful. At least they are to Dr. Jessica Forrest. And she’d love for you to appreciate their beauty, too. Yes, bees are becoming more popular as more people understand their pollination superpowers and importance to agriculture. But if you mention bees, what comes to mind for most people are honeybees. And they [...]
You don’t have to be a scientist to be pulled into RMBL’s magnetic orbit. Simply caring about the environment or history will do. Shelley Popke has a deep affection for both. As RMBL’s new director of development, Shelley feels that she and her job were made for each other. “It aligns with my values and [...]
One of our long-term RMBL scientists has submerged herself in research on streams for nearly 50 years. Dr. Barbara (Bobbi) Peckarsky came to RMBL in 1974 as a graduate student and took an aquatic ecology class from the late Dr. Stan Dodson and his wife Ginny of the University of Wisconsin. After getting her feet [...]
Most of us who aren’t scientists take water for granted. It comes from a faucet, but what is the source, really? Those in mountainous states know that rain and snowmelt supply rivers with the water we depend on. But it’s watersheds that help produce and deliver it. In fact, watersheds manage water resources worldwide. And [...]
Hundreds of scientists flood the hills of Gothic every summer to do research in one of the most-studied ecological sites in the world. But come winter, only one man is still standing. He’s made this abandoned silver mining town his home. He’s also made a name for himself without even trying. He’s billy barr.
First things first. Why is his name not capitalized? “Oh, it’s a stupid reason,” he says. “When I got here, I had two roommates. One of them signed his name with all small letters. I tried doing it, and it felt comfortable. A “b” is a big letter when you capitalize it; it’s not that big when it’s small. I just felt more comfortable with it.” Besides, he added, “It fit my personality better. I live a quiet little life, and it just fit me.”
Sixty to 90 percent of the world’s water comes from mountainous watersheds. And 100 percent of them are being affected by climate change. This is what makes environmental research at RMBL so critical. Without water, there’s no life. Without knowing how our water resources are changing, there’s no future. To get a deeper understanding of [...]
Lee R.G. Snyder spent many summers as a researcher at RMBL before his untimely death in 1985 at age 39. Having been an astute observer of nature since childhood and racking up a slew of national scientific awards even before graduating summa cum laude from Harvard, he would have contributed immeasurable insights to science had [...]
One summer at RMBL can change the direction of a student’s life. Take Daniel Novoa, who just finished his sophomore year at East Los Angeles College and a summer internship at RMBL. His biology professor, Dr. Jimmy Lee, who’s the undergraduate education program coordinator for RMBL, gave a presentation about a program funded by the [...]
There’s a place near Gothic that is one of the best kept secrets among RMBL field scientists. It’s the Mexican Cut Preserve. A cirque (bowl-shaped basin) on the side of a mountain, it was originally a site explored for gold and silver and later abandoned. Since then, it has remained a virtually undisturbed blanket of [...]
Want to know how to spark a kid’s fascination for science? Send them to RMBL summer camp. Case in point: Liam Atkins has been a regular in the summer education programs since he was just a little tyke of six. Now he’s 15 and has just finished the high school program. He’s loved every year [...]
Easily the main feature that brings people to Colorado, and especially to Gunnison Valley, is the breathtaking beauty of the landscape. Part of that is due to Gunnison County being 83 percent public land. The rest is due to ranchers — ranchers who have preserved the unparalleled beauty of the Valley simply by being there [...]
What do the words “wildlife at RMBL” bring to mind? Marmots? Fair enough, but there’s another member of the Tribe Marmotini that RMBL scientists have been studying for over 30 years. It’s the golden-mantled ground squirrel (Callospermophilus lateralis). And it might arguably surpass the marmot on the cuteness scale. But who’s keeping score? We love [...]
Ian Miller is one of the scientists on the front lines. He’s a PhD candidate at the Metcalf lab at Princeton University, and he’s studying a particular plant native to the Rocky Mountains, Lewis flax (Linum lewisii) and its enemy, a fungus called flax rust (Melampsora lini). Conducting his research at RMBL not only offers [...]
In a normal year, RMBL scientists return to their universities at the end of summer and, except for the fall youth program, things get quiet around here. But Gothic doesn’t go into hibernation. While everyone else is back home, there are a few hardy souls who stay in Gothic through the long, snowy winter.
They clean and manage the Nordic ski huts used for winter rentals. They shovel snow off the dining hall roof. They take care of all the ongoing maintenance that keeps RMBL functional. One of those caretakers is Rachel Dickson, a graduate of the University of Montana, who has spent the last three summers at RMBL. She began as a student in the undergraduate program and then worked as a research assistant for the next two seasons. This past winter was her first as a caretaker. The snowpack was below average, so she adjusted quickly. It was only when spring and a global pandemic arrived that things got weird.
We’re mad for marmots. What’s not to love? First, they’re adorable (especially the babies). You know the chubby, furry guy that emerges in February to predict the duration of winter? He’s a groundhog, which is one of the 15 species of marmots. And his close relative, yellow-bellied marmots, are found all over the mountainous western [...]
When you think of the RMBL community, it’s tempting to define it as the group of scientists and students who converge on Gothic every summer. Granted, that’s an esteemed, international group, but it represents only the scientific community. Widen that circle, and you must include the families of those researchers who return year after year, [...]
What happens when two scientists at RMBL fall in love, get married, and start a family? The result could be a baby scientist, or if not a scientist, an exceptionally curious child who grows up with an innate affinity for nature. Exhibit A: Dr. Amy Iler, Dr. Paul CaraDonna, and their daughter Zoe. Amy first [...]
When’s the last time you dug someone out of the snow? We hope you never need to rescue a companion from an avalanche. The thing is, in Colorado your odds of encountering an avalanche are higher than elsewhere. In a December 2019 article in The Salt Lake Tribune, the headline blared: “Colorado is the most [...]
For University of Tennessee undergraduate Gavin Belfry, the summer of 2019 was particularly seedy. He spent the summer assisting with Dr. Benjamin Blonder’s seed distribution research at RMBL. For six years, Dr. Blonder’s team has been looking at where plants are showing up at a series of plots on Mount Baldy. The point is to [...]
It’s hard not to admire burying beetles. They fly around, lured by the aroma of a small mammal’s fresh carcass (which they can smell from far away). When they find a carcass, they meet a date, hook up, and start preparing the carcass to feed their growing family. It’s quite a ritual. They strip off […]
When it comes to water behavior, what happens in mountain watersheds doesn’t stay in mountain watersheds. After all, water is everywhere. It’s packed in the ice or snow, it runs through streams, it’s transpired through plants, and it hovers in the air. But it’s always on the move and always affecting every living thing it […]
We don’t need to tell you how beautiful Colorado is. Beautiful places attract people. Lots of them. In the last 50 years our state’s population has grown from two million to nearly five and a half million. Most of those people use Colorado’s public lands — the parks, the recreation areas, the ski resorts — […]
Your parents were right. It’s good for you to get out of the house. Besides, you can learn things. Just ask the Pre-K through high school kids that show up for our nature and science camps every summer. We take them to lots of cool spots at RMBL. They participate in hands-on activities. And they […]
When you think of climate change, it’s likely you picture glaciers melting in the arctic, or massive wildfires scorching California hillsides. You probably don’t consider the thousands of little ponds tucked away in the Colorado Rockies, many of which can be found just up the Gothic Valley. But for freshwater ecologist Dr. Scott Wissinger, the relationship between climate change and high alpine ponds has culminated in thirty plus years of research at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL).
Dr. David Inouye first came to RMBL in 1971 and started his Ph.D. research there in 1972. “I was a graduate student studying hummingbirds and bumble bees, and I wanted to know what flower nectar resources are available for them, so I started counting flowers,”
If you’re a field scientist, having access to over 40 years of prior research in the precise location you want to study is a huge advantage. Having access to advanced technologies that allow you to analyze and add to that data is icing on the cake.
Scientists have been observing the effects of climate change on plants for decades. And most studies have treated all individuals in a species the same. But whereas most plant species are hermaphroditic – where individuals are both male and female – 10 percent of them are dioecious, meaning that, like most animals, individual plants are either male or female.
What’s it like to watch a tiny male hummingbird soar to about 100 feet in the air and dive at breakneck speed towards the Earth while snapping its tail feathers and flashing its iridescent throat patch in a breathtaking display of lust? Or, more to the point, what’s it like for a female hummingbird? Ask Dr. Cassie Stoddard.
To illustrate the power of place, each month we will share a story of science happening at RMBL.