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Job openings at Tremont:
Program Specialist
Great Smoky Mountains Photo Contest winners have been announced. Click here to see the winning photos!
Evaluating Tremont's Impact
Learn why your school's visit to Tremont will be "more than just a field trip."
Did you know that scat is a microcosm for a whole world of fascinating insects? As part of the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory (ATBI), we are assisting with an inventory of dung beetles in the park. The goal is to learn more about the distributions of dung beetles throughout the park and their associations with different kinds of mammal scat. The very simple protocols involve watching for scat on the trails and surveying it for beetles. Any beetles found on the scat are collected and sorted to family or subfamily here at Tremont and then passed along to experts for further identification. Students are involved in identifying the kind of scat, marking the exact location with a GPS unit, and finding and collecting the beetles using forceps and bug suckers (aspirators).
View background information about dung beetles
Read an interesting story about dung beetles in Australia
View Tremont’s Dung and Aquatic beetle data from 2004-2005
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