John and Kendra Abbott are two very talented photographers, they hold workshops all over the world. They are also entomologists, ecologists, writers, researchers and work at the University of Alabama as Curator of Collections and Research for the University of Alabama Museums. This week they were working on fireflies in Paint Rock and generously allowed use of some of their images to let you know we have lots of different kinds of synchronous fireflies, the  primary species may be Photuris tremulans (Christmas Lights).

They are also doing research here including insect biodiversity surveys and an experiment using metabarcoding techniques to identify bulk insect samples.

You can find out more about them and their work here:

AbbottNature.com
AbbottNaturePhotography.com
flickr.com/abbottnaturephotography
facebook.com/AbbottNaturePhotography
youtube.com/AbbottNature
www.odonatacentral.org 

The Alabama Forestry Commission – Rick Oats, Jason Dockery, Dana Stone and Dan Chappell – visited Paint Rock at the invitation of Cindy Ragland, one of our board of directors. The forest humbled us all. We had lots of questions, they were patient and very informative. Wish we had some of their tools to work with.