A blue and white striped canopy housed Aviva Liebert’s study of the division of labor and reproduction in polistes paper wasps. Peter Nonacs, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCLA, was Aviva’s advisor. Her project was funded in part by a Mildred E. Mathias Graduate Student Research Grant. Other research projects at the Reserve include: stream ecology; seed germination in fire-adapted annuals; post-fire successional processes in chaparral plant and animal communities; effects of slope and vegetation in post-fire erosion; fire modeling using remote-sensing digital imagery from NASA; ant distribution and interaction; scrub jay communication and caching behavior; and signal variation and categorization by wrentits.

Clearly, the loss of the site's facilities in the 1993 fire has not kept investigators from continuing or initiating research projects at Stunt Ranch Reserve. Nevertheless, planned reconstruction will greatly enhance the reserve's capability to serve the needs of the users - among them, instructors and their students, researchers, and local environmental education programs.

As a site for research activities, Stunt Ranch Reserve benefits from its location in the heart of an extensive area of protected lands, including state and federal parklands and areas managed for conservation purposes by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and the Mountains Restoration Trust. While protected from development, these lands lie adjacent to a densely populated urban area, and recreational use is heavy in much of the Santa Monica Mountains. This situation presents exciting opportunities for research on resource management issues and the impact of nearby urbanization on natural ecosystems.