Sagehen Creek Field Station (UC-Berkeley) – Insects

This collection represents an incomplete spectrum of insects collected at UC Berkeley - Sagehen Creek Field Station (and a few others). UC Davis' ENT109 has been taught at Sagehen in alternate years since shortly after Richard Bohart initiated the course in the late 1940's. Phil Ward has run the program in recent decades, and is undoubtedly the most knowledgeable expert on the insect fauna of Sagehen and the surrounding areas. ENT109 students must collect 200 families during their stay (of about 600 in all of North America). This challenging task is made possible by Sagehen's geographical position that spans from the Sierra Crest at the top, to the Great Basin where the creek joins the Little Truckee River. Sagehen is also positioned within day-trip distance of many additional ecosystems, including lakes, rivers and deserts, that support even more insect fauna diversity. Year-round flows from Sagehen's volcanic bedrock feed fen and meadow complexes that have been especially conducive to driving caddisfly speciation. Don and Nancy Erman have published extensively on these insects and ecosystems at Sagehen. Sagehen's insect specimen records were digitized by BNHM as part of a CAP-TCN grant in 2014. Those records were simply added to the museum's collection records, without any way of identifying them as Sagehen specimens, and with no way for Sagehen to manage that data. So, in 2020 we worked with the museums to finally separate out and upload the Sagehen data to SCAN-bugs.org.