We had a wide variety of research users in the spring and fall of 2002.
        Several graduate students were active at Hastings. Maria Soares (UCB, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology) worked on voles. Maria maintained about 2 ac. on the northeast side of Haystack Hill as a vole study site, ringed by an electric fence to keep the pigs from digging up the voles nests and eating them. Other graduate students from UC included Alan Krakauer, who continued his study of the introduced turkeys. Alan lived in Fanny's Cabin and had two interns/assistants who lived in the Red House. Lauryn Benedict, a graduate student at UCB, MVZ, helped Joey re-arrange the Bunk House. Lauryn resumed the long-term studies of sparrows in the old fields of Hastings, banding many towhees.

   Craig Moritz, Director of MVZ, UCB, visited Hastings on several weekends. Craig met with the resident staff and others on various continuing projects. In the fall of 2002, Craig and John Thompson (UCSC), along with Hastings staff, began to explore the possibility of working with the complex, and widespread agency and private land managers to conduct a thematic study of the genetics and ecology along the gradient from Big Creek (the Big Sur coast) to the inland dry highlands of the Santa Lucia which include Hastings.

     Catherine Graham, UCB, MVZ, spent a week at Hastings in the spring to help us get ArcView installed and to convert a number of older GeoNavigator files to ArcView. Catherine and Janis Dickinson worked closely together in this project.

     Kathryn Horjus, from UCSC (John Thompson's lab) visited in the spring several times to sample the moths and the flowers on Lithophragma, the forest star. Most of the populations Kathryn studied at Hastings were found along the entry lane.

     Thomas Knight, Princeton, stayed at Hastings for several days while he explored nearby sites for populations of the Yellow-billed Magpie for study. He found a treasure trove of magpies at the Pinnacles National Monument and some at Fort Hunter Liggett.

      Kerry Steenwerth, UC Davis (Louise Jackson's Lab) continued her graduate studies of the microbial soil community in restored and native grasslands. Dr. Louise Jackson was successful in getting additional funding and her new post-doctoral fellow from Germany, Dr. Martin Potoff. Martin spent several days at Hastings in September and October, starting a study of carbon sequestration in our native grasses. He did determine that Muhlenbergia rigens (Deer Grass) is indeed a C4 grass. He set up experiments to be monitored over the winter of 2003-2003 in Corral Field.

Bill Wagner, faculty at the University of Nebraska, visited for a week in spring to make recordings of the native crickets.

Louise Jackson, faculty at UC Davis, spent a week at Hastings in March, and then visited again with Kerrie in April for a week.

Eric Seabloom, UCSB Postdoctoral fellow at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, sent his field assistant Toshi Yoshida, to collect native grass seeds in May, and in September, Eric and four others set up three planting experiments to see if simply adding native grass seeds to the annual complex of non-native weeds on our old fields will produce any adult, native grasses.

Amber Budden, a postdoctoral student from UCB, ESPM worked with Janis Dickinson to take data on color (reflectivity) on various parts of western bluebirds in an attempt to link color to behavior and social status of the birds. Amber was has Hastings over the spring and into the summer and may return for a few more observations in 2003.

Walter Koenig sent samples of leaves from various potential hybrid oak trees to Mary Ashley at the University of Illinois. They published a paper on the number (very few, actually) of blue oak and valley oak hybrids that can be determined from DNA studies.

Dr. Joey Haydock, Gonzaga University faculty, spent several months over the spring at Hastings, living in the Bunk House. Joey and Walter continued their studies of the cooperatively breeding acorn woodpeckers. Joey had two assistants, and he did some exploratory work with Mark Stanback (Davidson College) on the DNA of eastern bluebirds.

Jean Knops, University of Nebraska, visited Walter Koenig to conduct the annual statewide acorn survey in 2002. For a detailed account of the 2002 expedition, read the Annual Acorn Report.

Paul Neal, of various University affiliations, returned to add another year to his long-term studies of acorn flower development. Paul was only here a week or so, in the Bunk House.

Matina Kalcounis, now on the faculty at Cal. State Sacramento, visited several times to sample the population status of deer mice. Matina brought her mammalogy class to Hastings in the fall of 2002.

Erica Hersch, of the University of Oregon, spent a week in May looking at Castelleja (a plant, "Indian Paintbrush") here at Hastings, and nearby. She will return much earlier in 2003, as much of the flowering was done by mid-May.

Paul Opler (right, in photo), faculty at Colorado State University and working for USGS, visited in June along with Jerry Powell, to count butterflies. Paul was excited to find many fine samples of butterflies, and he was pleased to see his photos of butterflies used on the Hastinsg web site. Paul donated several copies of a USGS summary of the biology and ecology of California for our library.

Patricia Moehlman, of the Conservation Trust, visited with Mark Stromberg and stayed a couple of days in the Hastings Cabin. Patricia lives in Africa and was briefly touring California after a sabbatical at the UC Santa Barbara National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.

In October, Dr. Havore, from southern California, set up UV light traps to catch the rain beetle, Pleocoma. (see photo). This beetle lives underground for most of the year and the adults don't even feed. Once the rains start, they come above ground, breed, lay eggs and die in a day or so. He suspects that we may have three species living closely....one here, one on Laureles Grade and another form just south of Carmel. If you see any of these beetles, put one in the freezer and let us know. We will collect it for Dr. Havore.