Central Coast Naturalist

This week on Santa Cruz Naturalist, host Emily Donham introduces listeners to the hairy chiton, a common critter found in the intertidal zone in Santa Cruz.

This week on Santa Cruz Naturalist, Theadora talks about Great Horned Owls. They are one of the larger Owl species in North America, and have a wide range through all of North America and some parts of South America.

Great Horned Owls can be difficult to see as they roost quietly in trees during the day, but they are much easier to find by listening for their song at night. Listen in to hear their song, learn how to tell the males apart from females, and more!

This week on Santa Cruz Naturalist, Sara interviews Dan Abbott, the Central California Regional Manager for Reefcheck, a non-profit organization that monitors underwater reefs and kelp forests with help from citizen scientists. Reefcheck has been operating in kelp forests around the Monterey Bay area since 2006, and their data help to track important ecological and environmental events. Some of this information has been used to inform coastal policy to protect abalone and sea stars. Do you want to become a citizen scientist with Reefcheck and help monitor the health of our kelp forests? Visit their website at reefcheck.org to learn more.

Theadora follows up with Jessie Kendall-Bar, a Ph.D. student at UC Santa Cruz in the Ecology & Evolutionary biology department.

In two previous episodes, we learned about her research on sleep in marine mammals, including how elephant seals sleep underwater (here) and on migration (here).

Jessie is also a wonderful artist. This week on Santa Cruz Naturalist we learn how she uses art to turn research into a beautiful story, and how she is using 3D animation to display some fascinating new feeding behaviors discovered in humpback whales.

To see more of her art, including photography, woodburning, and animation, visit her website: www.jessiekb.com

And her Instagram: www.instagram.com/jessiekb_art

This week on Santa Cruz Naturalist, Sara interviews Azucena Lucatero, a Ph.D. candidate at UC Santa Cruz, about urban garden ecology. She tells us about the purpose of urban gardens and the interactions between plants and insects that occur there, and touches on how the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the practice of urban gardening.

This week on Santa Cruz Naturalist, Emily chats with graduate student Becca Nelson about a sometimes voracious herbivore, the tussock moth. Tussock moths are commonly found on live oak trees in Santa Cruz with their abundances fluctuating from year to year. Tune in to learn more!

This week on Santa Cruz Naturalist, Emily chats with UCSC PhD student, Clara Qin about how fires impact soil microbes.

This week on Santa Cruz Naturalist, Sara follows up with Yana Valachovic, UC Cooperative Extension forest advisor and director for Humboldt and Del Norte counties, talk more about forest resilience and fire management. She tells us about fire frequency, using fire management as a tool to preserve forests, and evaluating management outcomes. 

Theadora follows up with Jessie Kendall-Bar, a Ph.D. student at UC Santa Cruz in the Ecology & Evolutionary biology department. Last month, she told us about her research focusing on the neurophysiology of sleep in marine mammals, specializing in elephant seals. This week on Santa Cruz Naturalist, she tells us more about how elephant seals sleep on their long migrations.

Elephant seals sleep manage to sleep underwater, at depths of around 200 meters! For how long you wonder? Listen to find out more.

Jessie has more information about her research and other projects on her website: https://www.jessiekb.com/research

This week on Santa Cruz Naturalist, Sara talks with Yana Valachovic, who is the UC Cooperative Extension forest advisor and director for Humboldt and Del Norte counties, to help us understand the ecological effects of forest fires. She describes what happens to the ecological community of a forest after a fire, and the process of renewal afterwards.