Between 2000 and 2010, Bartels and his students at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa completed one of the largest systematic inventories of tardigrades ever conducted as part of the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory project in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Our own Dr. Paul Bartels, professor of biology, is featured in the Asheville Citizen Times​ as a leading expert in the study of tardigrades, or “water bears.”
Together with students, Bartels completed one of the largest systematic inventories of tardigrades ever conducted, with about 900 samples across the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and over 16,000 separate specimens. When he got started, there was only one published paper that had reported just three species, and now they’ve documented up to 85 species including 11 species new to science. Their work highlights the rich, hidden biodiversity all around us, and it will have lasting impacts in the park and far beyond.