If you ever want to experience a different world, climb a mountain in the desert. Here in southern Arizona, you’ll see an immediate shift from low desert plants like saguaro, cholla, and creosote to intermediate elevation plants like yucca, juniper, and oak, all the way to high-elevation plants like Ponderosa pine and aspen. Adaptations to…

One of the many living things you usually don’t notice in the desert – a specimen of the leaf-footed bug in the genus Chelinidia (family Coreidae; identification courtesy Joe Cicero at the University of Arizona). On a hike this past weekend, a middle school student found this beetle inside the stalk of a dead agave…