Sonoran Insect Biodiversity and Land Use Change in Sonora, Mexico

Sonoran Desert Insect Biodiversity (SIB) Project was founded in 2001 at the University of Arizona.    The SIB Project includes a two-week, research-oriented course, “Sonoran Insect Biodiversity and Land Use Change,” presented in Guaymas, Sonora (Mexico), for students from Mexico and the United States.  During the course, students work in teams to quantitatively collect insects from three land-use types (native desert, agricultural, and urban settings), curate, identify, and database specimens in one of four project target orders (Coleoptera, Hemiptera, Hymenoptera, Diptera).  The students then calculate biodiversity indices to compare diversity found in different land use types.  Today the SIB Collection contains nearly 40,000 insect specimens representing more than 1800 species, all of which are databased and georeferenced.  Approximately 92 percent of these specimens have been identified to family and 20 percent to species.

Association with this project provided me with an opportunity to organize a logistically complicated field and collection oriented course and fine-tune my leadership skills through interactions with students and peers.  The project has taught me to appreciate the value of field-based, multidiscipline, multicultural educational experiences and the appeal this type of work has to many people once they are exposed to it. In the case of the SIB course, comparative insect biodiversity has proven to be an especially powerful way to inspire students in the area of conservation ecology.  It has also proven to be a great way to build collections and teach at the same time.