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Without the Dexter National Fish Hatchery and Technology Center, several desert fish species might have disappeared from our region. What is this unique facility?

Learn about the Pipevine Plant and its importance in the West Texas ecosystem.

Heat and dryness are facts of existence in West Texas. Every living thing must either evade these conditions or adapt to them. Humans, through technology, attempt to create our own environment. We live in air-conditioned houses and drive an air-conditioned car to our air-conditioned offices. But what about other creatures? How do they cope with the West Texas heat?

In many of the supermarkets and drugstores of the southwest, many medicinal plants are sold in plastic bags with Spanish-name labels. Some of these plants are native, while others were brought to the New World by the settlers of the colonial period. In San Antonio, Laredo, and many other towns in Texas, a person can visit a botanica, a shop which specializes in herbal medicines as well as religious figurines, incense, “milagros,” and other necessities of the Hispanic “curanderismo” tradition.

The Kingbird is one of many species of Flycatcher, famous for catching their insect prey on the wing. Have you watched the kingbirds along the streets of your town? Do you find them annoying or superbly entertaining?

Do you know how to identify plants of the Solanaceae family with their five petals?

Tarantulas are scary looking. Many people kill them on sight, certain that the fuzzy spiders will jump onto them and bite, injecting a deadly poison. Nothing is further from the truth.

Earthstars are fungi, a close relation to puffballs. Most people have seen puffballs - irregularly shaped ball-like mushrooms that are just dry spore sacks that make a satisfying "pop" when stepped on.

After the rains, "rain bugs” or “Santa Claus bugs” appear, tiny velvety red plush cutie-pies. Even though they are called “bugs”, they are not insects at all, but arachnids, related to spiders.

A Chihuahuan desert arthropod that looks ferociously dangerous is the big, black, whip scorpion, or vinegaroon. Normally they’re found in rocky country, only after significant rain events.