Category: Projects

Re-establishing a federally threatened species in habitat where it’s been locally extinct since the 1980s. 2017–present.

Scroll down for more pictures, people, and details!

Client U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Implementing partners: NPS, Monomoy NWR, Massachusetts’ NHESP, New Jersey’s Division of Fish and Wildlife ENSP, and the Elkinton & Andersen Labs at the University of Massachusetts.

The OpportunityThe Northeastern Beach Tiger Beetle (Habroscelimorpha dorsalis dorsalis), federally listed as Threatened in 1994, was historically widespread, but exists today only in narrow bay-beaches of the Chesapeake and broad ocean-beaches in Massachusetts. Sandy Hook, New Jersey (a barrier-island spit near Brooklyn, NY)- is one of the last available habitats.

What ABC Is Doing.

• ABC leads the most significant conservation actions for this species in the past 20 years.
• Invented “TechGrass” — carbon fiber filaments with colored tips that raised larval collection rates to nearly 100% per attempt.
• Designed experimental adult translocations using tent constraints, exploring pre-release conditioning and in-tent oviposition.

Outcome.First successful translocation completed May 2020, with continued releases; project ongoing through 2028. Press coverage across regional outlets including UMass News & Media, Asbury Park Press, and Cape Cod Times.

For Projects Like This. ABC takes on translocations and recovery actions where the logistics are as hard as the science. We’re a good first call when a listed species needs to be moved across states, seasons, and partner agencies.

A view of the species, and locations

Above, views of two adults seen at Sandy Hook ~2001. Below, 3rd instar larvae on Monomoy NWR ~May 2019.

Views of the translocation areas. Left is view of historic and extant habitat, indicating the relative location of Sandy Hook. Seen in an aerial view at right. North is in the general direction of the tip.

Collections on Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge

Travel to NBTB habitat on Monomoy NWR requires a 30+ minute (one way) boat ride highly subject to wind, weather, and tide. All of which can quickly vary during the ride. Collecting larvae in May is still cold in coastal Mass, and the field crew must wear protective orange Mustang suits for the trip; modeled here by Neil Kapitulik.

A typical view of NBTB habitat on Monomoy NWR. These vast stretches of sand are where the larvae live. And it requires an expert eye to see their small ~2-3mm burrows amid the sand and debris.

A 3rd instar larval burrow mouth, on Monomoy NWR 2019. Dime for comparison. These are the tiny black dots experts are searching for among the vast dunes.

Experts spy the burrows, and place orange flags (tape, on a wood kebab skewer) for diggers to collect the larvae.

Left, Neil Kapitulik shows off old and new tools used to collect larvae. Conventionally beach grass stems were lowered into burrows to mark their vertical location to dig down to find larvae. At right, Advanced BioConsulting invented what we’ve called “TechGrass”. These are carbon fiber filaments with protective colored tips that increased larval recovery per attempt, to nearly 100%.

NBTB larva burrows can be over two feed deep. Burrow depth generally increases with instar, but depth within an instar varies for reasons we don’t yet understand. So to collect any one, the depth is like Forest Gump’s proverbial box of chocolates.

Above – NBTB expert Chris Davis demonstrates the correct method for safely, and successfully collecting NBTB.

Larvae are held individually in damp-sand vials. Held together, they’ll cannibalize each other. Yes, these vials are the same 19 dram pop tops you get at a cannabis dispensary. Ideal for transporting tiger beetles.

 Habroscelimorpha dorsalis media larvae in the Carolinas are known to display “wheeling” behavior to use their bodies and the wind for rapid circular transport. We were delighted on Monomoy during May 2019 to discover H. d. dorsalis also wheels in the wind!

Releases at Sandy Hook, New Jersey.

Translocations need to occur as quickly as practical to limit transport time for larvae. Two teams were always used: 1) a collecting team in Massachusetts, and 2) a receiving team in NJ. Two drivers would carry the larvae from MA to NJ in separate cars in case one car had mechanical trouble, the 2nd car could go the distance (fortunately we never had trouble). The above picture is the receiving team in New Jersey in 2020 releasing larvae from their collection vials among several plots, spread across sandy hook.

The 2020 translocation (the first!) took place in May – at the start of the Covid19 Pandemic. From left to right are field crew Rich Weddle, Rodger Gwiazdowski, and C. Barry Knisley showing proper social distancing.

For the 2021 and 2022 translocations we experimented with translocating adults by temporarily constraining them in open-air tents. Conventionally, translocated adults rapidly disperse. Whereas pupating larvae show site fidelity. However, the logistics of translocating adults are far easier than larvae. Consequently we’re advancing these early successful trials using tents in two directions 1) optimizing diurnal conditions, and duration of constraint prior to release; 2) permanent constraint, with food supplementation, for oviposition inside the tent.

Media stories:

2020 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, News & Media relations: Researchers to Fan Out on Seaward NJ Beach in July to Seek Tiger Beach Beetle Larvae Relocated from Cape Cod; June 30. https://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/article/researchers-fan-out-seaward-nj-beach-july

2020 The Asbury Park Press: Meet the beetles! Sandy Hook aims to bring back vanishing tiger beetles; May 28. 

https://www.app.com/story/news/local/land-environment/2020/05/28/sandy-hook-tiger-beetles/5261149002

2020 The Cape Cod Chronicle: Tiger Beetles From Thriving Monomoy Colony Transferred To New Jersey Beach; May 20.

https://capecodchronicle.com/en/5521/chatham/5852/Tiger-Beetles-From-Thriving- Monomoy-Colony-Transferred-To-New-Jersey-Beach-Monomoy-National-Wildlife-Refuge-Conservation.htm

2020 The Cape Cod Times: Monomoy beetles used to help preserve rare species; May 18.https://www.capecodtimes.com/news/20200518/monomoy-beetles-used-to-help-preserve-rare-species

2020 Insider NJ: Rare beetles returned to North Jersey shores; May 13. https://www.insidernj.com/press-release/rare-beetles-returned-north-jersey-shores/

2020 The Monmouth Journal: Northeastern Beach Tiger Beetle To Be Reintroduced At Sandy Hook; May 11.

https://themonmouthjournal.com/northeastern-beach-tiger-beetle-to-be-reintroduced-at-sandy-hook-p9146-1.htm

Building a recovery program from scratch across federal, state, academic, and community partners. 2016–2021.

Our work was featured in the NY Times, and NPR.

Scroll down for more
pictures, people, and details!

The Client: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (via competitive grants beginning 2015).
The Partners: Numerous federal and state agencies across the Northeast, NGOs, private companies, subcontractors, scientists, artists, landowners, students and volunteers.

The Opportunity. The Puritan tiger beetle (Ellipsoptera puritana), is federally Threatened, state Endangered and reduced to remnant populations in the Connecticut River Valley and Chesapeake Bay. No tiger beetle species had been reared at scale, and no agency had a recovery strategy for tiger beetles.

What ABC Did.

• Secured USFWS funding to launch the program, developed a multi-agency strategy to achieve it, and coordinated multi-year release operations across state and federal partners.
• Designed and custom-built the world’s first laboratory for captive rearing of tiger beetles, repurposing a post-WWII Atlantic salmon hatchery in Sunderland, Massachusetts.
• Directed and scaled the program, including media outreach. Coordinated partners using a Team-of-Teams approach.

Outcome. Hundreds of larvae released across multiple seasons on the Connecticut River augmented, and established new populations. Pioneering program shared publicly in national Tier-1 Media.

ABC is partnered with the Andersen Laboratory at UMass, Amherst, and the UMass Foundation Relations Team, building donor support to climate-proof this species’ presence in New England.

For Projects Like this. ABC builds and runs recovery programs that span federal, state, academic, and community partners.
We’re a good first call when a species needs a recovery program reviewed, revitalized – or created.

* Early support by the Elkinton Lab – made this project possible *

This project constructed the world’s first custom-built lab for rearing tiger beetles. Artist Ariel Martinez poses by the PTB she drew on the lab’s door, greeting every visitor with a view of the lab’s purpose. 2017.

Photographer Sloan Tomlinson shows dorsal, and ventral images of male and female adults used in the rearing program, at left (red paint is used to mark males. And a view of all three larval instars, at right, from larvae reared in the lab. 2018.

The laboratory was repurposed from a 25′ salmon tank (it had a great central drain), in a building built just after WWII as an Atlantic Salmon rearing facility. The lab was bisected with support and storage in the front (picture above), and a SCADA controlled rearing facility in the back.

In the climate controlled rearing section of the lab, mated pairs of PTB were kept in clear containers with petri dishes of sand to oviposit in. Eggs from each pair were collected and counted daily, and placed in individual sand filled tubes to grow as larvae.

Staff and Volunteers collect larvae that were “mass reared” in larger containers. The larvae burrow to the bottom, so containers rapidly overturned were quickly searched for larvae at the top. The remaining sand would be smoothed out, and subsequently checked the next day to find fresh burrows, to collect any larvae missed.

T-shirts. We had t-shirts made in everybody’s favorite color. It was a helluva lot of fun. Art came from the species’ federal recovery plan, and superstar staff member Sara Wisner.

A sweeping view of a beach along the upper Connecticut River in northern Vermont, identified as a likely location to make a new population of PTB.

Cicindela repanda (left), and Ellipsoptera puritana (right, found as recently deceased) shown together during a population survey on the Connecticut River, in western Massachusetts, 2021.