By: JulieF,
on 8/9/2016
Birds do it. Bees do it. Microbes do it, and people do it. Throughout nature, organisms cooperate. Humans are undeniably attracted by the idea of cooperation. For thousands of years, we have been seeking explanations for its occurrence in other organisms, often imposing our own motivations and ethics in an effort to explain what we see.
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By: JulieF,
on 8/7/2016
As my family gazed down on the stratified color bands of geological history in the Grand Canyon, snow and ice lined each ridge, and made each step on the path going down a dangerous adventure, highlighting the glorious drama of the miles-deep gorge. It was dizzying and frightening and awe-inspiring.
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By: JulieF,
on 8/14/2015
Many of us involved in teaching botany feel a sense of urgency in our profession. Botany departments, botany majors, and botany curricula have gradually disappeared from most colleges and universities in the US,
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By: JulieF,
on 8/13/2015
Imagine the thrill of discovering a new species of frog in a remote part of the Amazon. Scientists are motivated by the opportunity to make new discoveries like this, but also by a desire to understand how things work. It’s one thing to describe the communities of microorganisms in our guts, but quite another to learn what causes these communities to change and how these changes influence health.
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By: JulieF,
on 8/12/2015
The agents of natural selection cause evolutionary changes in population gene pools. They include a plethora of familiar abiotic and biotic factors that affect growth, development, and reproduction in all living things.
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By: Julie Fergus,
on 8/15/2014
For the most part, Buddhists have historically been less concerned with explaining the world than with generating personal peace and enlightenment. However, the emergence of “engaged Buddhism” — especially in the West, has emphasized a powerful commitment to environmental protection based in no small part on a fundamental ecological awareness that lies at the heart of Buddhist thought and practice.
People who follow ecological thinking (including some of our hardest-headed scientists) may not realize that they are also embracing an ancient spiritual tradition, just as many who espouse Buddhism — succumbing, perhaps, to its chic, Hollywood appeal — may not realize that they are also endorsing a worldview with political implications that go beyond bumper stickers and trendy, feel-good support for a “free Tibet.”
Biologists readily acknowledge that living processes are connected; after all, we breathe and eat in order to metabolize, and biogeochemical cycles are fundamental to life (and not merely to ecology courses). Nonetheless, biology — like most Western science — largely seeks to reduce things to their simplest components. Although such reductionism has generally paid off (witness the deciphering of DNA, advances in neurobiology, etc.), ecologists in particular have also emphasized the stunningly complex reality of organism-environment interconnection as well as the importance of biological “communities” — which doesn’t refer to the human inhabitants of a housing development.
Although “community ecology” and complicated relationships among its living and nonliving components has become a crucial part of ecological research, recognizing the existence — not to mention the importance — of such interconnectedness nonetheless requires constant struggle and emphasis, probably because the Western mind deals poorly with boundary-less notions. This isn’t because Westerners are genetically predisposed to roadblocks that don’t exist for our Eastern colleagues, but simply because, for reasons that no one seems as yet to have unraveled, the latter’s predominant intellectual traditions have accepted and embraced the absence of such boundaries.
In The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling captured the power of such recognition in the magical phrase by which Mowgli the human boy gained entrance into the life of animals: “We be of one blood, you and I.” Being of one blood, and acknowledging it, is also a key Buddhistic concept, reflected as well in the biochemical reality that human beings share more than 99% of their genes with each other. At the same time, there is no reason why Mowgli’s meet-and-greet should be limited to what transpires between human beings. After all, just as the jungle-boy interacted with other creatures — wolves, monkeys, an especially benevolent snake, panther, and bear, as well as a malevolent tiger — everyone’s relationship to the rest of the world, living and even nonliving, is equally intense. Thus, we share fully 98% of our genes with chimpanzees, and more than 92% with mammals generally; modern genetics confirms that we literally are of one blood, just as modern ecology — along with modern Buddhism — confirms that the alleged distinction between organism and environment is an arbitrary error of misperception, and not the way the world really is.
The interpenetration of organism and environment also leads both ecologists and Buddhists to a more sophisticated — and often paradoxical — rejection of simple cause-and-effect relationships. Thus, the absence of clear-cut boundaries among natural systems, plus the multiplicity of relevant factors means that no one can be singled out as the cause — and indeed, the impact of these factors is so multifaceted that no single “effect” can be recognized either. Systems exist as a whole, not as isolated causative sequences. Are soils the cause or effect of vegetation? Is the prairie the cause or effect of grazing mammals? Is the speed of a gazelle the cause or effect of the speed of a cheetah? Do cells create DNA or does DNA create cells? Chickens and eggs, anyone? “Organism” and “environment” interconnect and interpenetrate such that neither can truly be labeled a “cause” or “effect” of the other.
It has long been known, for example, that organisms generate environments: beavers create wetlands, ungulates crop grasses and thereby maintain prairies, while lowly worms — as Darwin first demonstrated — are directly responsible for creating rich, loamy soil. On the other hand (or rather, by the same token) it can equally be concluded that environments generate organisms: the ecology of North America’s grass prairie was responsible for the existence of bison genes, just as causation proceeds in the other direction, too. Even as ecologists have no doubt that organism and environment are inseparable, ethologists — students of animal behavior — are equally unanimous that it is foolhardy to ask whether behavior is attributable to nature or nurture, i.e. environment or genotype. Such dichotomies are wholly artificial … something that Buddhists would call maya.
Western images are typically linear: a train, a chain, a ladder, a procession of marchers, a highway unrolling before one’s speeding car. By contrast, images derived from Indian thought (which gave rise to both Hinduism and Buddhism) are more likely to involve circularity: wheels and cycles, endlessly repeating. Although there is every reason to think that evolution proceeds as an essentially one-way street, Eastern cyclicity is readily discernible not only in ecology — a discipline that is intensely aware of how every key element and molecule relevant to life has its own cycling pattern — but also in the immediacy of cell metabolism, reflected, for example, in the Krebs cycle, or the wheel of ATP, the basic process whereby energy is released for the metabolism of living cells.
At the same time, and as we have noted earlier, there is no single entity labeled “Buddhism,” just as there is no single phenomenon identifiable as “Christianity,” “Judaism,” or “Islam.” And certain schools of Buddhism (e.g. Zen) are more sympathetic to ecological ethics than are others (e.g. Theravada, which remains more committed to personal enlightenment). To be sure, the science of ecology is partitioned as well, to some extent between theoreticians (fond of mathematical models) and field workers (more inclined to get their hands dirty in the real world), but also between ecology as a hard science and ecology in the broader sense of ethical responsibility to a complex natural world. Most spiritual traditions have some sort of moral relationship to the natural world built into them, from Christian stewardship to shamanic identification. Yet another reality, and a regrettable one, is that for the Abrahamic religions in particular (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), separateness — of soul from body, individuals from each other, heaven from hell, human beings from the rest of the natural world, and so forth — is the primary operating assumption. This is assuredly not the case with Buddhism.
For me (and I assuredly am not alone in this), Buddhism is not a religion but rather, a practice system and philosophical perspective. And it is with pleasure and optimism that I point to the convergence between Buddhism and biology generally — and ecology in particular — as something that is not only fascinating but also deeply reassuring.
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By: Julie Fergus,
on 8/14/2014
It is well known that many of the permanent inhabitants of caves have evolved a bizarre, convergent morphology, including loss of eyes and pigment, elongation and thinning of appendages, and other adaptations to conditions of complete darkness and scarce food. These species include the European cave salamander, or olm, studied since the time of Lamarck.
Sometimes, the extremes of morphology of cave animals strain credibility, as is the case of a springtail from a Cambodian cave, with antennae several times the length of its body.
The adaptations shown by the olm and the springtail illustrated make sense in an environment of constant darkness and scarce food.
Species with morphologies like the olm and the Cambodian cave springtail, occur in and have evolved in habitats that only share the physical feature of darkness with caves. There are seven different kinds of dark habitats that occur close to the boundary of lighted and dark habitats:
All of these habitat harbor de-pigmented and eyeless species, even though there is often abundant organic matter present, and there are strong seasonal and sometimes daily fluctuations in temperature and other environmental conditions. Except for lava tubes, none provide the allure and adventure of caves.
The first of these categories, the fauna of seepage springs and the associated groundwater, epitomizes the ecological and evolutionary conundrums these shallow subterranean habitats pose. The habitat itself consists of a mixture of rocks and leaf litter underlain by a clay layer. The habitat is relatively rich in organic matter (both dissolved and particulate) and nutrients. Essentially, these are miniature drainage basins, that typically cover a few thousand square meters, and appear to be little more than wet spots in the woods.
These seepage springs and their fauna were first described from sites on Medvednica Mountain in Croatia in 1963 by Milan Meštrov, in several papers that are largely forgotten.
What he did leave is a tongue-twisting name for the habitat—hypotelminorheic, perhaps not surprising for a French word with Greek roots first coined by a Croatian. Unlike deep caves, the hypotelminorheic is high variable, and in many places the seepage spring dries up during the summer months, and most of the water is retained in the colloidal clay. The habitat is so shallow that there are daily temperature fluctuations. In spite of all this, these seeps harbor a number of amphipod, isopod, and snail species with the characteristic long antennae and absence of eyes and pigment characteristic of the deep cave fauna.
In one case, there are enough species of one genus of amphipods (Stygobromus), that relative size of antennae can be compared, and no differences between cave and hypotelminorheic species were found. What was different among the different subterranean habitats, was body size. A repeated pattern of small animals in habitats with small dimensions (soil and the upper layer of limestone) and large animals in habitats with large dimenions (lava tubes and deep caves). The conclusion is that absence of light and habitat size, not availability or organic matter or environmental variability, drives the evolution of the convergent morphology of subterranean animals. In fact, divergence as well as convergence occurs in subterranean habitats. Cene Fišer and his colleagues from the University of Ljubljana, have shown that when three or more species of the amphipod genus Niphargus are present in a subterranean site, their morphological divergence is greater than expected by chance. The task for biologists studying the subterranean fauna is to tease out the convergent and divergent aspects of adaptation.
The post Living in the dark appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Julie Fergus,
on 8/12/2014
It pays to be nice. One of the most absolutely, emphatically wrong hypotheses about the oceans was coined by one of the most carefree and amiable people in nineteenth century science. It should have sunk his reputation without trace. Yet, it did not. He thought the deep oceans were stone cold dead and lifeless. They’re certainly not that. Even more amazingly, it was clear that the deep oceans were full of life even before he proposed his hypothesis — and yet the idea persisted for decades. He is still regarded as the father of marine biology. There’s a moral in that somewhere.
Edward Forbes was born a Manxman who early developed a love of natural history. He collected flowers, seashells, butterflies with a passion that saw him neglect, then fail dismally in, his studies: first as an artist (he had a fine talent for drawing) then as a doctor. He drifted into becoming some kind of itinerant naturalist who naturally shook things up around him. Going to the British Association meeting in Birmingham, he reacted to the formal atmosphere by decamping to a local pub, the Red Lion, and taking a good deal of the membership with him. There, fueled by beef and beer, they debated the great scientific ideas of the day. They expressed agreement or disagreement with debating points not by a show of hands, but growling like lions and fluttering their coat-tails (Forbes’s technique with the coat-tails was held up as a model for the younger Lions).
In 1841, Forbes was on board a surveying ship, the HMS Beacon, in the Mediterranean. He noticed that as they dredged in deeper waters, the dredge buckets brought up fewer types of marine organism. He extrapolated from that to propose the “azoic hypothesis” — that the deep oceans were dead. It seemed not unreasonable — as one climbs higher up mountains, life diminishes, then disappears. For it to do the same in the oceans would show a nice symmetry. The azoic hypothesis took hold.
The trouble was, even then, commercial ships — with sounding lines far longer than the Beacon’s dredge buckets could go — were occasionally pulling up starfish and other animals from as much as two kilometers down. That should have killed the azoic hypothesis stone dead. But it didn’t. As luck had it, the first reports of such things happened to be sent in by ship’s captains who were either known for telling tall tales or who were plain bad-tempered. They couldn’t compete with Forbes’s eloquence or charm.
It took quite a few years before the weight of evidence finally dragged down the azoic hypothesis. We now know that the Earth’s deep oceans are alive, the thriving communities sustained by a rain of nutrients from above. Edward Forbes’s brainchild is simply one of many of the ideas through which we have gained — tortuously — a better understanding of the Earth’s oceans.
There have been other extraordinary characters, too, involved in this story. The scientists who concocted the inspired lunacy of the American Miscellaneous Society (AMSOC), for example, where every member automatically became a founding member, and where one of the rules was that there were no rules. Crazy as it was, AMSOC led to the Ocean Drilling Program, which revolutionized our knowledge of the deep ocean floors, of the history of global climate and of very much else. It’s also one of the great unsung revolutions of world science — but then there’s much that concerns the oceans that deserves to be more widely known.
There are extraordinary characters involved, too, in the new frontier of ocean science: the oceans that exist, or once existed, on other worlds. There’s the unfortunate Giordano Bruno, who imagined far-off worlds like our own — and who was burned at the stake for expounding these and other heresies. There’s Svante Arrhenius, who, a century ago, got Mars exactly right (no chance of canals, or water, he said) — but got Venus quite wrong (a thoroughly wet planet, he thought, and not the dry baking hell we now know it to be). There’s the wonderful mistake, too, of the contaminated detectors on a spacecraft on Venus — that led to the discovery of the oceans that likely once existed there.
We discover seas on other planets and moons, even as we still try to understand our own Earthly oceans. Just how have they lasted so long? And how will they change — in the next century, and in the next billion years? The story of oceans is really, truly never-ending.
Jan Zalasiewicz is Senior Lecturer in Geology and Mark Williams is Professor in Geology, both at the University of Leicester. They are also co-authors of Ocean Worlds: The story of seas on Earth and other planets.
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Images: Underwater sea life – Public Domain via Pixabay. Jellyfish – Public Domain via Pixabay
The post The life of oceans: a history of marine discovery appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Julie Fergus,
on 8/11/2014
It is likely that most ecologists have their own stories regarding the annual meetings of the Ecological Society of America (ESA), the world’s largest organization of professional ecologists. Some revere it, whereas others may criticize it. There is, however, truth in numbers—growth in attendance has been seemingly exponential since my first meeting in the early 1980’s. So, it is without debate that the annual ESA meeting remains an integral part of the professional life of many ecologists throughout the world.
This year’s ESA meeting will take place in Sacramento, CA. Image credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
My first ESA meeting was at the Pennsylvania State University (note: we were small enough to meet on college campuses then) in 1982 while still a Ph.D. student at Duke University working with Norm Christensen on herb-layer dynamics of pine forests of the southeastern United States. I was understandably wide-eyed at seeing the actual human forms of ecologists walking around, giving talks, drinking beer—all of whom had only been names on papers and books I had read as I was writing my dissertation. Despite logistical errors regarding my talk (the projectionist insisted on placing my slides in the tray, rather than allowing me to do so; then promptly put them in backwards), my first ESA was an unmitigated success, allowing me to meet folks who would become lifelong friends and colleagues. Small surprise that I not only attended the next year, but have attended all meetings since then, save two—1991, when I could not afford to travel to Hawaii, and 2012, when my son was entering the United States Naval Academy.
Although I still recall high points of virtually all meetings through the years, the ones that stand out the most for me are those when I collaborated to organize symposia. There have been three of these: 1993 (University of Wisconsin—Madison), 1998 (Baltimore, Maryland), and 2006 (Savannah, Georgia). Although they were of somewhat contrasting themes, I took the same approach to all of them—I always thought that topics/presentations worthy of an ESA meeting were also worthy of some type of formal publication, whether in a peer-reviewed journal or a book.
My old Duke office mate/best friend/collaborator, Mark Roberts, and I organized a symposium on the effects of disturbance on plant diversity of forests for the 1993 meeting. Highly successful at the meeting, with very high attendance and vigorous question/answer periods following each talk, this symposium resulted in the publication of a Special Feature in Ecological Applications in 1995.
Mark and I used that first symposium as a kind of template for the one which was part of the 1998 meeting, well into the period where the number of attendees had outgrown college campuses, relegating ESA to convention centers. The 1998 symposium was on the ecology of herbaceous layer communities of contrasting forests of eastern North America. We had assembled what we felt was a very good group, including the late Fakhri Bazzaz, who was actually the first person I had contacted prior to writing the proposal for the Program Committee, also very successful in terms of attendance and questions. We were also pleased with our efforts on this topic following the symposium.
For the 2006 meeting, another friend and colleague of mine, Bill Platt, and I organized a symposium on the ecology of longleaf pine ecosystems. This experience was especially rewarding in that it was so closely connected with both the meeting theme of that Savannah (Uplands to Lowlands: Coastal Processes in a Time of Global Change), and the meeting’s geographic location in the main region of natural longleaf pine—the Coastal Plain of the southeastern United States. We published these talks in a Special Feature in Applied Vegetation Science.
Oh, there was another high point for me—one not related to symposia. It was with great pride that I accepted the nomination to become the Program Chair for the 2010 Annual Meeting of ESA in Pittsburgh, PA. I chose the following for the scientific theme: Global Warming: the Legacy of Our Past, the Challenge for Our Future. At a time when eastern US venues were not nearly as popular for attendance as were western ones, attendance at this meeting was surprisingly high. I was especially pleased to be able to thank the Society publicly and collectively when I addressed them at the beginning of the meeting.
Since my arrival in 1990 here at Marshall University—a public school small state (West Virginia ranks 38th among the 50 United States) and with limited direct access to colleagues doing similar research—annual ESA meetings have provided me a lifeline, if you will, connecting me with ecologists, especially biogeochemists and vegetation scientists, from throughout North America and, indeed, the world. Most of my contributions to the field of ecology, including peer-reviewed publications, book chapters, and books, have been products of this event that has not only become an annual summer tradition of mine, but also has been invaluable to my career as a plant ecologist.
It’s 2014, folks—see you in Sacramento!
Frank S. Gilliam is a professor of biological sciences, teaching courses in ecology and plant ecology, at Marshall University. He is also the editor of the second edition of The Herbaceous Layer in Forests of Eastern North America.
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