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BioBlitz 2017

Millersville faculty and students will help bioblitz the Steinman Run Nature Preserve.

Bioblitz: an intense period of biological surveying in an attempt to record all the living species within a designated area. 

Millersville University’s biology department is partnering with the Lancaster County Conservancy to organize the 2017 Steinman Run Nature Preserve BioBlitz. The event will run from noon on Sept. 16 to noon on Sept. 17.

At a BioBlitz, scientists, families, students, teachers and other community members work together to get an overall count of the plants, animals, fungi and other organisms that live in a place. Over 250 BioBlitzes took place around the country in 2016.

BioBlitz-SAVE-THE-DATEEfforts at the Steinman Run BioBlitz will concentrate on the conservancy’s new and unexplored 44-acre Bunting Tract that has been added to the preserve. The inventory of flora and fauna resulting from the BioBlitz will be used to help the conservancy better manage the preserve.

“Millersville student Justin Lewis ‘17 and I are working together in the recruitment and organization of expert taxonomists who will comprise the various science teams that work to conduct the inventory of flora and fauna at the BioBlitz,” says Dr. Christopher Hardy associate professor of biology at Millersville.

Hardy and MU student Kevin Faccenda (‘19) will head the plants team, while MU professors Drs. John Wallace and Aaron Haines will lead the entomology and mammals teams, respectively. MU professors Drs. Julie Ambler (emerita), Dominique Didier, Brent Horton, Dave Zegers (emeritus), and Dan Yocom will also be lending their expertise to the science teams.

In addition to MU faculty and students, Hardy also collaborated on the project with faculty from Elizabethtown College and Franklin & Marshall.

For more information or to get involved in BioBlitz 2017, visit BioBlitz2017.

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