Projects

Partnerships

We've collaborated with Tadashi Fukami, Elizabeth Hadly, Kevin Leempoel, and Rodolfo Dirzo at Stanford, entomologists Merav Vonshak, Jack Owicki, Pierre Martineau, and Alejandro Merchan, Mid-Peninsula Open Space board member Yoriko Kishimoto, Grassroots Ecology Board Chair Jerry Hearn and Staff member Claire Grist, and Pacific Biosciences employees Joan Wong and Cheryl Heiner.

We've also worked with Brian Fisher and Chris Grinter (CalAcademy), Chad Jenkins (Thomas Scientific), Stuart Smith (Peninsula Open Space Trust), Alice Kaufman (Committee for Green Foothills), Angela Richman (City of Palo Alto), Evgeny Zakharov (Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding) in partnership with the Canadian Consulate based in San Diego, Garth Harwood (Hidden Villa), Manu Prakash (Foldscope Instruments, Stanford), Allegra Sachs and Tracy Rubin (WSGR), Melina Mendez (JP Digital Imaging), and Celia Whitman (BioQuip).

In the Eastern Sierra we've benefitted from partnerships with Santiago Escruceria (Mono Lake Committee), Brian Dowler (Tamarack Lodge), Ty Seay, Elisha Mistretta (The Lift), Nick Swiatek (June Mountain), Lynn Peterson, Judy Bornfeld, and Karen Ferrell-Ingram (Eastern Sierra Land Trust).

Thank you very much to Shannon McEntee and Terri Lobdell for advising us and assisting us in raising awareness about the importance of biodiversity. And a special thank you to the California Institute for Biodiversity for awarding us a research and education grant for the 2023 season.

Hypogean Pit Trapping

During the 2025 summer field season we deployed hypogean traps for two weeks at a time to sample soil-dwelling arthropod biodiversity at the termini of eight Eastern Sierra rock glacier and true glacier sites located between 10,000' and 12,000' elevations. Two traps were deployed in very similar ecosystems and a third was set up to a mile away in substantially different terrain. We collected 500 specimens, have selected 220 for barcoding, and anticipate a high yield of previously unidentified species. 

Hypogean traps are several foot long sections of PVC pipe perforated with dozens of holes. They are buried beneath the soil surface, covered at the top, and contain a small cup of sugar alcohol at the bottom to capture and temporarily preserve specimens. 

Longitudinal Malaise Trapping at Stanford's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve

In August 2025, we completed our second season of a longitudinal Malaise trapping at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve ('Ootchamin 'Ooyakma), yielding tens of thousands of specimens. We're collecting samples semiannually for 2-4 weeks in summer and 2-4 weeks in winter from 2024 through 2026. 

We anticipate comparing and contrasting species composition and population sizes at different sites and across time, especially before and after modification of Searsville Dam, and from a prior 2013 study by David Moreno Mateos which deployed SLAM Malaise traps exactly where we've deployed ours. We plan to compare insect weight, count, and taxa of corresponding traps and time windows. In addition, we intend to average data across all baseline years in our study prior to making this comparison to minimize the confounding effects of year-to-year variability.

Malaise Trapping Project

Our Malaise trapping portion of SVBOL is conducted in partnership with Dr. Paul Hebert, inventor of DNA Barcoding and director of the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics at the University of Guelph, the Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding in partnership with the Canadian Consulate based in San Diego, and the Global Malaise Program.

We're using multiple Malaise traps set in locations on the mid-Peninsula between the baylands and the coast to capture flying insects and generate thousands of DNA barcodes. We're also conducting Malaise trapping in the Mono Basin which is located to the East of Yosemite and bordered by mountains in all directions.

The Global Malaise Program is an international collaboration led by the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics. So far, GMP has established 158 sampling sites across 33 countries. We're enthusiastic about being part of this initiative and increasing the scale of our contribution to the BOLD biodiversity database by an order of magnitude.

We deployed our Bay Area Malaise traps at Hidden Villa Farm and Wilderness Center, Foothills Park, and in the Stanford Academic Reserve (in partnership with Dr. Tadashi Fukami), in 2021. In 2023 Garth Harwood deployed a malaise trap in Pescadero. These remained or will remain in the field for a full year. 

We set our Eastern Sierra Malaise traps at the Mono Lake Committee's Outdoor Education Center in 2021, at the Tamarack Lodge in 2022,  and at the June Mountain marsh and on private property in 2023. These traps were deployed from June or July through October or until first snowfall. We're negotiating permission for additional sites in the Bay and the Mono Basin. 

For our initial 17,861 malaise samples we processed, every 6.5 specimens sequenced resulted in a new BIN/species on BOLD systems. Roughly 36.6% of the species were unique to BOLD and had yet to be encountered across the entire database to date. Both of these numbers indicate that there is likely still a lot of diversity to be discovered.

Biodiversity at Hidden Villa: Farm and Wilderness Arthropod Life

Documenting, sequencing, and analysis of the Hidden Villa collection has been a substantial undertaking. We've learned many new skills and recruited necessary resources along the way. We've published a 150-page report of the project, Biodiversity at Hidden Villa: Farm and Wilderness Arthropod Life, divided into Introduction, Methods, Results, Recommendations, and Natural Histories sections. 

Collection at Mono Lake

Over a short period in the autumn of 2020, and in the 2021, 2022, and 2023 summer seasons, we hand collected 465 unique specimens from diverse biomes in the Mono Basin, located in the Eastern Sierra. Mono Lake, a central feature of the basin, is a saline lake with no outflow. The ecosystem within and immediately surrounding the lake is centered on planktonic algae, brine shrimp, and alkali flies, a vital source of food for the nearly two million migratory and nesting birds that visit annually. Eight species of nematodes thrive in the sediment of the lake.

In 1941 the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power began diverting water from Mono Lake’s tributary streams to meet the growing demands of Los Angeles. Over the next forty years Mono Lake dropped by 45 vertical feet, lost half its volume, and doubled in salinity. Mono Lake is on the rise, although climate disruption may change this. 

We completed this pilot project with support from the Mono Lake Committee. We're especially grateful to Santiago Escruceria of the Mono Lake Committee for his assistance in all aspects of the work. We're continuing to learn about and catalogue the biodiversity of this beautiful and unique ecosystem.

Collection at Jasper Ridge and Sequencing with the Hadly Lab

We're very grateful to have had the opportunity to participate in Stanford Professor Elizabeth Hadly's lab for two years beginning in early 2019. We worked with personnel in the Hadly lab to collect about thirty arthropod specimens at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, prepare them for sequencing (DNA extraction, purification, and amplification), edit sequences, and more. We're currently exploring further collection at Jasper Ridge.

Table and Collection at the Apricot STEM Fair

At the Los Altos History Museum's Apricot STEM Fair we engaged with several hundred individuals who stopped at our table. Some viewed our SVBOL audiovisual presentation, viewed our poster describing the "what, why and how" of DNA barcoding, and peppered us with questions. Some we taught how to view arthropods using Foldscopes generously donated to SVBOL by Manu Prakash. Some assisted us in collecting about one hundred arthropod specimens with a Malaise trap, several pitfall traps, and by hand.

Hidden Villa Bioblitz

In our first public fieldwork event we organized a bioblitz at Hidden Villa during which sixty volunteers and a dozen supervisors collected about 400 unique arthropod specimens. We processed them to serve as voucher specimens, and sent tissue samples of each to be sequenced by our partners at the Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding.