The Biological Survey is both a state agency and a research department of the University of Oklahoma. The Biological Survey includes the Oklahoma Natural Heritage Inventory, Oklahoma Natural Areas Registry, and the Robert Bebb Herbarium. Our faculty and staff are committed to providing the best available information on biodiversity in the state of Oklahoma. We do this through our surveys, inventories, and research on the state’s biodiversity. We also collect, curate, and share existing biodiversity data. We are committed to training students and the public in biodiversity science. To achieve our goals we work closely with other allied organizations throughout the state and region.
Congratulations to Eli Bridge, our interim director and BioSurvey ornithologist, on his publication in Science - "Spatial cognitive ability is associated with longevity in food-caching chickadees."
Summary: An association between cognitive ability and longer life has often been hypothesized, but it is difficult to test and has mostly been looked at across species in an evolutionary context. Welklin et al. used a long-term dataset on mountain chickadees to test for such an association across individuals. To characterize cognitive skills, they deployed a feeding apparatus that coordinated individual bird identity with food reward, thus requiring each bird to memorize the particular door that rewarded them. Birds with better spatial memory, in this case, those that made fewer mistakes before going to their “own” door, lived longer, thus facilitating potential increased reproductive output and fitness.
Owen Edwards, a herpetologist, is our newest research biologist. He has studied green tree frogs throughout the midwest and crawfish frogs in Oklahoma. We are excited to have him continue his field work as he looks for more rare herps in Oklahoma!
Dr. Caryn Vaughn has developed a new and comprehensive website about all the mussels found in Oklahoma.
65%
of mussel species are considered imperiled
10
gallons of water
can be filtered by an adult mussel in one day
60
mussel taxa are present in Oklahoma
