Flora and Fauna
These juvenile insects eat a lot of leaves and are one of the major food sources for the nestlings of many bird species.
What are caterpillars?
This category of tiny toxic "forever chemicals" are disproportionately found in water supplies served to communities of people of color.
What are per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)?
Eusociality, a type of social behavior considered to create the "superorganism", a level of biological organization higher than the organism, is found in this group of animals. (answer any one of the eusocial groups)
What is Hymenoptera (ants, bees, and wasps), the termites, or naked mole rats (or any of the even more obscure answers)?
This legendary primatologist passed away last October after a life spent building relationships with and understanding of chimpanzees.
Who is Jane Goodall?
This powerful greenhouse gas, which has caused about 30% of recent global warming, is produced both by natural gas systems and cattle farts.
What is methane?
These plants, native to eastern North Carolina, have a taste for blood.
What are Venus fly traps?
This U.S. federal agency established an Environmental Justice program in 1992 to address disproportionate environmental impacts on vulnerable communities.
What is the EPA?
We often think of biodiversity as being the diversity of species, but this kind of biodiversity is the most important for the evolutionary process.
What is genetic diversity?
Tree scientists often use this harmless yet seemingly damaging sampling method to determine the growth history of forests.
What is tree coring?
These are the largest carbon sink in the world, reabsorbing 30% of our annual CO2 emissions.
What are the oceans?
This is the third largest species of the order of salamanders in the world and the largest in the Americas.
What is the eastern hellbender?
Aliyah Griffith made history as UNC’s First Black Ph.D. in Marine Science in this year.
What is 2025?
Bald eagles bore the brunt of DDT pesticide health effects in the 40's due to this process in which fat-soluble pollutants increase in concentration up trophic levels as organisms eat.
What is biomagnification?
Some ecologists survey for creatures of this phylum (or class) that might be dwelling or feedingon the leaves when they hold a sheet under a branch and hit the branch with a stick.
What are arthropods (or insects)?
This is about how much has the global temperature risen since 1850.
What is 2 degrees F (give or take half a degree)?
These flowering plants, including grasses, onions, and corn, have seeds that contain only one embryonic leaf, distinguishing them from dicots, such as most woody trees.
What are monocots?
This type of land use has disproportionately impacted Black communities across NC, polluting waters, creating waste lagoons, attracting flies, and damaging community property values.
What are hog farms/CAFOS/swine farms?
Many of the species in this group of insects have developed a parasitic lifestyle, often injecting their eggs into other arthropods.
What are wasps?
These are species sensitive to environmental changes that can provide information on the quality of an ecosystem’s health, such as caddisflies.
What is a bioindicator?
Besides its warming effects, much of the damage caused by CO2 occurs through this process, which makes it harder for calcifying organisms such as molluscs and corals to build their exoskeletons.
What is ocean acidification?
This animal, the loudest in the world, can make up to 230 decibel vocalizations believed to be able to shock or kill prey.
What are sperm whales?
This northern NC county is where a grassroots movement, often cited as the birth of the modern environmental justice movement, began.
What is Warren County?
This easily observed but not fully understood phenomenon describes the greater biodiversity of ecosystems nearer to the equator.
What is the Latitudinal Diversity Gradient?
A type of peat-accumulating, permanently saturated wetland fed by mineral-rich ground water.
What is a fen?
This large region of cold, rotating air is contributing to the exceptional cold winter due to destabilization.
What is the polar vortex?