Fieldwork in Texas, 2026

By Diego Souza, Abigail Magland, and Patrick Gorring

Fieldwork in Texas, 2026

Dates: April 18 to 29, 2026

Team: Diego Souza (Field Museum), Abigail Magland (Field Museum/University of Chicago), and Patrick Gorring (Florida State Collection of Arthropods). Collaborator: Dan Heffern (longhorn beetle specialist, Houston).

Purpose: To collect fresh weevils in Texas, one of the most diverse states for insects in the US, focusing on groups central to our ongoing phylogenomic work: Baridinae, Conoderinae, Cossoninae, Curculioninae, Dryophthorinae, and pine flower weevils (Nemonychidae). Longhorned beetles (Cerambycidae) were a secondary target.

Permits: Big Bend National Park, Scientific Research and Collecting Permit BIBE-2026-SCI-0009 (PI: L. Chamorro); Lake Houston Wilderness Park, permission from the City of Houston Parks and Recreation Department; Bamberger Ranch Preserve, permission from Drew Neyland, Research Coordinator, Selah, Bamberger Ranch Preserve; Burkeville and Gold Mine Canyon, private lands, with access arranged by Dan Heffern with the landowners.

Funding: Field Museum 2026 Negaunee Field Work Grant. Pest survey funding from the Florida Department of Agriculture.

Summary

Our original plan was to spend two weeks in the Piney Woods of East Texas, where we have well-documented target groups. As we worked out permits and local contacts, the trip grew into something different: an area spanning more than 1,000 miles from east to west, from the pine forests near the Louisiana border to the Chihuahuan Desert in Big Bend National Park. Much of this was possible thanks to Dan Heffern, a longhorned beetle specialist based in Houston, who opened doors to private properties through his network of friends and joined us in the field, and to Lourdes Chamorro, who added us to her research permit for Big Bend.

We collected at five sites, in this order: Burkeville, Lake Houston Wilderness Park, Bamberger Ranch Preserve, Big Bend National Park, and Gold Mine Canyon. During the day we beat vegetation, swept, and searched flowers, cacti, and dead wood by hand. At night we ran UV (Entoquip) and mercury lights over white sheets and portable LED panels, powered by a generator or power banks depending on the site. We also set flight interception traps and pheromone-baited traps for longhorns at all sites.

In total we brought back more than 600 specimens, including over 200 weevils and over 100 longhorned beetles. The weevils included leaf-rolling weevils (Attelabidae) and several subfamilies of Curculionidae: Baridinae, Conoderinae, Cossoninae, Cryptorhynchinae, Curculioninae, Entiminae, Molytinae, Platypodinae, and Scolytinae. Most specimens were preserved in 100% ethanol, with a subset in DNA/RNA Shield, and all material has been accessioned at the Field Museum or the FSCA.

Map of Texas showing the five collecting sites, from Burkeville in the east to Big Bend National Park in the west.

The team at Burkeville, from left to right: Patrick Gorring, Dan Heffern, Abigail Magland, and Diego Souza.

Burkeville, Newton County (April 18 to 19)

30.96862° N 93.57123° W

We flew from Chicago to Houston on April 18, picked up a 4x4 rental, and met Patrick, who drove in from Gainesville, and Dan. Our first stop was private land near Burkeville owned by one of Dan's friends, in the Piney Woods habitat close to the Louisiana border, a mix of open pasture and pine forest edge. Weevils made up most of what we collected there. Beating pines and the surrounding trees and shrubs was very productive for leaf-rolling weevils, Eugnamptus (Attelabidae), and also produced broad-nosed weevils (Entiminae) and several other weevils. On milkweed flowers we found Odontocorynus salebrosus (Baridinae), one of our target groups, and Coreopsis flowers held a few more small weevils. Cows grazing in the pasture were very friendly and herded behind us as we collected!

Lake Houston Wilderness Park, Montgomery County (April 20 to 22)

30.12443° N 95.16904° W

Next stop was Lake Houston Wilderness Park, a large City of Houston park with mature pine and hardwood forest, well-kept trails, and lakeside cabins with a full kitchen that made a comfortable base for three nights. The pine forest looked promising for pine flower weevils, but we were a bit late in the season: the male pine cones had already shed their pollen and were lying on the forest floor. The weather did not help either, as it rained all day, every day we were there. We hung flight interception traps in the canopy, ran a light trap, and beat the understory, but collecting there was slow, with just nine beetles. The only two weevils were a broad-nosed weevil (Entiminae) on flowers and a bark beetle (Scolytinae) at the light. We also collected oak branches girdled by the twig girdler, Oncideres cingulata (Cerambycidae), and some wood-boring weevils later emerged from them as well.

Bamberger Ranch Preserve, Blanco County (April 22 to 25)

30.19195° N 98.46015° W

Moving west into the Hill Country, about a four-hour drive from Lake Houston, we spent three nights at Bamberger Ranch Preserve (Selah), a private preserve near Johnson City dedicated to land restoration and conservation. We arrived at a great moment, with meadows full of wildflowers and prickly pear (Opuntia) in bloom. This was by far our most productive site, with 95 samples, 41 of them weevils. Engelmann prickly pear (Opuntia engelmannii) was especially good: we found cactus weevils, Gerstaeckeria (Cryptorhynchinae), on the pads, and small weevils inside the flowers, which they shared with the longhorned Batyle ignicollis. Beating oak, dogwood, and hawthorn and sweeping the meadows added many more weevils, including Baridinae, Curculioninae, and Molytinae. On the longhorn side, we found Typocerus on flowers and Sternidius on American smoke tree (Cotinus obovatus), and our light trap and light sheet brought in a potentially undescribed population of Goes variegatus.

Big Bend National Park, Brewster County (April 25 to 27)

29.32786° N 103.20672° W

From the Hill Country we drove about seven hours west into the Chihuahuan Desert. Big Bend was a complete change of scenery, with the Chisos Mountains, open desert scrub, and the Rio Grande marking the border with Mexico. We collected near Panther Junction, the Lost Mine Trailhead, the Chisos Basin, and Rio Grande Village. There longhorns clearly took over: of the samples we collected, over 30 were longhorns and only 9 were weevils. The weevils were few but interesting: the agave weevil Peltophorus polymitus (Conoderinae) on agave, Baridinae beaten from mimosoid legumes, a cossonine, and a single beating sample from mesquite at Rio Grande Village that produced 17 weevils. At night, prickly pear (purple and Engelmann prickly pear) and tree cholla (Cylindropuntia imbricata) were covered with the cactus longhorn beetle, Moneilema armatum. Chasing Peltophorus and Moneilema left us with many wounds from the sharp plant spines and one of us nearly impaled an eye! We also ran a light sheet at Rio Grande Village, which mostly attracted longhorns, and a light trap in the Chisos Mountains. Pheromone traps near the Lost Mine Trailhead brought in Tylcus hartwegii.

Gold Mine Canyon, Val Verde County (April 27 to 28)

29.80221° N 100.93490° W

On our way back to Houston, our last stop was Gold Mine Canyon, private land owned by a friend of Dan's, about an hour's drive from Del Rio. The landscape is rocky, dry scrubland with yuccas and other desert plants, and we stayed in a cabin tucked into the canyon. We ran a light sheet and a light trap next to the cabin at night and collected by hand and beating during the day. Gold Mine Canyon yielded 39 beetles, 16 of them weevils. Most weevils came from beating Senegalia shrubs, including several Baridinae, and baridines were also common at the light sheet. Longhorns were well represented too, mostly Elaphidiini at the lights, and we found Moneilema armatum again, this time on Agave lechuguilla. We found Cossonines and longhorn larvae in dead desert plant stalks. The cabin was also a good place to process samples before the long drive home. From there, the Field Museum crew drove about ten hours back to Houston and flew home to Chicago on April 29, while Patrick drove on to Gainesville.

The cabin at Gold Mine Canyon.

Light sheet next to the cabin at Gold Mine Canyon.

Diego Souza and Patrick Gorring processing samples in the cabin at Gold Mine Canyon.

Acknowledgments

We thank the Field Museum for the 2026 Negaunee Field Work Grant; Dan Heffern for his help planning the trip, arranging access to sites, and joining us in the field; the landowners at Burkeville and Gold Mine Canyon for access to their properties; Lourdes Chamorro for including us in her Big Bend research permit; Phillip Varela and the staff of Big Bend National Park for processing our research permit; Brad LaCour and the staff of Lake Houston Wilderness Park for processing our research permit; Drew Neyland of Bamberger Ranch Preserve for arranging our visit; and Bruno de Medeiros and the Florida Division of Plant Industry for their support of the project.

Last updated 14 October, 2026