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California Beetle Project > Fieldwork
California Beetle Project Fieldwork California has had a long history of beetle collecting by many talented specialists, but many areas of the state are still poorly known. Most species are known from only a handful of localities, while a substantial number undoubtedly remain even to be discovered and described. Field work for this project is intended to develop complete beetle inventories for a small network of field sites. The first phase of this project focuses on sites in and near the southern Californian Transverse Ranges. At each site a great diversity of collecting methods, described on a separate page, are employed to sample as many species as possible. Our goal during the project is to visit each site for at least four one-week periods, scattered throughout the year, for intensive sampling. A smaller subset of sites close to home is being sampled for continuous periods of up to one year. Choose from the list below to read descriptions of each site, and to learn what beetles have been found at each site (species lists are in .pdf format). 1 UC Sagehen Creek Fld. Sta. (Nevada Co.) species list2 Big Basin St. Pk. (Santa Cruz Co.) species list 3 UC Big Creek Reserve (Monterey Co.) species list 4 Cuesta Ridge (San Luis Obispo) Co.) species list 5 Carrizo Plain Nat. Mon. (San Luis Obispo Co.) species list 6 UC Sedgwick Reserve (Santa Barbara Co.) species list 7 Arroyo Hondo (Santa Barbara Co.) species list 8 UC Coal Oil Point Reserve (Santa Barbara Co.) species list 9 Mt. Pinos/Pine Mt. (Ventura Co.) 10 San Gabriel Mts. (Los Angeles Co.) 11 San Bernardino Mountains species list 12 Mt. San Jacinto (Riverside Co.) species list 13 Santa Cruz Isl. 14 Southern Sierra Nevada |
UC Sagehen Creek Field Station
The Sagehen Creek field station is located in eastern Nevada County, about 10 miles north of Truckee, California. It is run by the University of California Berkeley. The habitats around the station are varied, with particular interest centered on wetlands including permanent stream and bog wetlands. Terrestrial habitats mainly include coniferous forest interspersed with open sagebrush flats. Elevations range from 6,000 ft. (at the station) to 8,300 (at the western most boundary of the watershed.
The station has a long history of hosting academic researchers, including a semiannual entomological field course from UC Davis. As with Big Basin above, much of the faunal data on the area's beetles will be gleaned from these existing collections, though the list presently available is based solely on a week (August, 2003) of my own fieldwork. See the species list. |
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Big Basin State Park Big Basin, California’s oldest state park, is located in the southern Santa Cruz Mountains, about 60 miles south of San Francisco. The area contains large expanses of moist native redwood forest, and many northern faunal elements reach their southern limit in the area. Many previous collectors have worked in the area, and many species will be found in existing collections that I have not yet personally found there (in my one late summer visit so far.) 74 beetle species have been found in the Park to date. See the species list. |
Big Creek Reserve
The U.C. Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve is located in coastal Monterey Co., 20 miles south of Big Sur. The Reserve encompasses much of the Big Creek and Devil’s Creek watersheds, abutting wilderness areas of Los Padres National Forest to the east. Its habitats include beach, riparian redwood forest, oak woodland, chapparal, and pine forest.
Big Creek has now been sampled during four one-week periods, during July, 2002, and February, June, 2003, and March, 2004. So far 520 beetle species have been found. While much of this material remains unidentified, undescribed species of Leiodidae, Scydmaenidae, Cryptophagidae, and Omethidae have already been confirmed. See more photos of this site. See the species list. |
UC Sedgwick Reserve
The Sedgwick Reserve, in the heart of the Santa Ynez Valley, offers a mix of grassland, valley oak woodland, coastal sage scrub, and gray pine woodland. It also has significant perennial streams and vernal pools. The Reserve has seen little invertebrate survey work, but its diversity of habitats promises a tremendous insect diversity.
Sedgwick was continuously collected from late October, 2004 through August, 2005. As expected, the Reserve exhibited great beetle diversity, resulting in over 700 species to date. Some highlights were a few genera not previously known from California, including the lampyrid, Paraphausis. See the species list. See more photos of this site. |
Carrizo Plain National Monument
The Carrizo Plain, located in eastern San Luis Obispo County, was designated a National Mounment in 2001, and is managed by BLM, Cal. Fish & Game, and the Nature Conservancy. The Monument’s 250,000 acres include grassland and salt flats in the valley floor, with semidesert scrub and juniper/oak woodland at higher elevations. It offers a rare glimpse of what native San Joaquin Valley habitats once were.
Carrizo was sampled heavily and continuously from November, 2003 through June, 2004. This collecting has uncovered 373 beetle species in the Monument. Some of the more interesting finds include several new Scydmaenidae (one in a genus previously unknown in the western US), new Leiodidae, and a couple of rare Meloids, Lytta morrisoni and Tricrania stansburyi. See the species list. See more photos of this site. |
Arroyo Hondo Preserve
This recently opened preserve, managed by the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County, extends from the beach to the mountains, where it meets Los Padres National Forest. This swath contains exceptionally well preserved riparian woodland, coastal sage-scrub, and chaparral habitats. The Preserve encompasses about 780 acres and is located at approximately 34°29’N, 119°09’W, along the Gaviota coastline.
Work at Arroyo Hondo began in April, 2002, with nearly continuous trapping through October, 2003, 626 beetle species have been documented, including at least 5 undescribed species. See the species list. See more photos of this site. |
Coal Oil Point Reserve
The Coal Oil Point Reserve, adjacent to the UC Santa Barbara campus, encompasses about 160 acres of well preserved beach, dune and salt marsh habitats. All of these habitats are subject to heavy use and development pressures through most of southern California, and Coal Oil Point represents an important refuge for many endemic plants and animals.Beetle survey work at the Reserve has entailed numerous day trips, as well as a continuous two-month period of Malaise and pitfall trapping. The species list also incorporates records from numerous student collections made in the Reserve. An online guide to all known Reserve insects has just been completed. See the species list. See more photos of this site. |
Mt. San Jacinto
The San Jacinto Mts. represent the eastern-most, and most isolated, of California's transverse ranges. Separating coastal zones of the greater Los Angeles area from the Colorado desert, the higher elevations of the range are an isolated outpost of relatively wet, montane habitats, surrounded by an ocean of desert. San Jacinto Peak reaches nearly 11,000 ft. and has subalpine coniferous forest at its summit. Just below the summit, habitats range from coniferous forest to montane meadow, to riparian woodland, all concentrated in a relatively small area.
The range has been collected sporadically by previous workers, but little beetle data is available. The San Jacintos, particularly the area around the UC James Reserve, was collected fairly intensively in 2005, resulting in about 450 beetle species. See the species list. See more photos of this site. |
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