Dr. Ignacio Moore (BIOL) and Dr. William Hopkins(FWC) are offering “Tropical Ecology & Conservation BIOL 3954/FIW 3954 (6 credits)” in Spring and Summer I 2016. The course is open to all majors. The Spring course will be taught on campus.
During Summer I, the class will travel to Ecuador where students will traverse multiple ecosystems, from the Amazonian lowland rainforest to the high altitude Andes. Students will visit one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, and visit with local indigenous people to learn about conservation challenges in the region. The course is reading- and writing-intensive, physically demanding, includes an independent research project (*includes proposal writing and scientific research paper writing), and requires enrollment during both semesters. The last time we taught the class, one of the undergrads published a peer-reviewed paper on her findings.
Over the past two weeks, first-year IGC fellows in the Global Change Seminar talked about denialism in science. The discussion concluded last week by discussing how scientists can use better science communication techniques to mitigate denialism.
Fellows in our class participated in a few activities to practice more effective science communication. One activity was to think about words that we use every day within our disciplines that might be interpreted differently by the average person or even by scientists in other disciplines. Here is what some of our fellows came up with! Can you think of other words that have different meanings for scientists and the public?[/vc_column_text][karma_builder_content_box style=”saffronblue” type=”fontawesome” title=”Words that can muddle your message”]
Theory Error Landscape Sign Scale Organic Invasive Radiation Scheme Outlier Anomaly Manipulation Aquifer Green Values Normal distribution Richness Uniform Respiration Ecosystem Services Riparian Models Regulations Sequestration Biocontrols Bias Infrastructure Sign Hypothesis Confidence
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IGC fellows will continue to learn effective communication strategies next week as they participate in the Alan Alda Center’s Science Communication Workshop!
BMC Evolutionary Biology recently published work on the adaptation of tree swallows to challenging environmental conditions. When Mother Nature turned the focus of their experiment to this, they were surprised by what they found. Read more from the co-authors in this guest blog (October 19, 2015).
By Jenny Ouyang & Adam Lendvai, former post-docs from Ignacio Moore’s lab at Virginia Tech.
“Field work is hard. It’s hard because you have to get up early, work long hours in the burning sun or pouring rain, but the hardest is that you cannot predict what is going to happen. In 2013, when we went to the Biological Station of Queen’s University near Kingston, Canada to work on wild tree swallows, we didn’t know that the experiment that we had carefully designed and had discussed over and over would ultimately fail miserably because of forces much greater than us.
Mother Nature decided not to approve our study, but instead, to teach us something else. And although we still regret that our plans didn’t work out, we think we might have been lucky to learn something about the life of these birds that we wouldn’t have otherwise.
The species we studied
Tree swallows are small (~20g) birds that live in socially monogamous pairs and (like many other passerine birds) work very hard to raise their kids that grow very fast: usually 4-6 chicks hatch from tiny eggs smaller than a penny and grow to adult size within three weeks.
As a consequence, the chicks are always hungry, and the parents need to fly around a lot to catch enough flies to feed their hungry chicks. So what makes them able to do that?
One hypothesis is that the glucocorticoid hormone, corticosterone, fuels the increased energetic demands during reproduction. A previous study in the same population found that when the number of chicks was experimentally increased, the mothers also increased their corticosterone levels, probably as a response to the increased demand.
However, corticosterone is also known as a ‘stress hormone’; therefore, high levels of this hormone will cause parents to abandon reproduction completely and divert energy to themselves. Thus, animals need a careful, internal balance that also responds to outside conditions.
What did we do?
To test whether corticosterone is causally related to the intensity of parental effort, we increased corticosterone levels of female tree swallows whose chicks were four days old. To do so, we implanted a tiny hormone-containing biodegradable pellet under their skin. Our goal was to see if they would change their reproductive effort. So this was the plan, but that was literally washed out by the rain.
To put it simply, the summer of 2013 in Canada was terrible. The temperatures were way below the seasonal averages, it was raining a lot, and when we saw some snowflakes during the middle of the breeding season, we knew it was going to be hard for the swallows.
Tree swallows feed exclusively on flying insects, so the cold, windy, rainy weather is the worst that you can imagine for these birds. There are no flying insects in this weather and even if the parents are doing their best to find some, the babies are left in the nest and they are cooling down very fast.
So what did we discover?
Not surprisingly, the repeated, cold temperatures and heavy rains caused most of the birds in our population to abandon reproduction. Almost all nestlings in our study population died during these days, resulting in population-wide mortality rates reaching over 90%.
However, these cold bouts gave us an opportunity to test how environmental conditions interact with the hormone treatment to influence the survival of the young. We found that when the weather was especially cold and rainy, corticosterone treated and control treated nests had similar brood survival rates.
However, when the weather was better, corticosterone treatment hastened brood mortality. In fact, control treated nests’ survival followed the weather patterns exactly, whereas corticosterone treated nests showed a mismatch with environmental conditions.
Temperature and brood mortality
Ouyang et al., 2015
In the graph above, the black lines show the brood mortality and the blue dotted line shows the temperature (note that the scale is reversed on the right axis, so the highest peaks show the lowest temperatures). The brood mortality in the control group follows the temperature closely, whereas the corticosterone implanted group (solid black line) is mainly disconnected from the weather. In cold weather, the lines of the two groups overlap, whereas in warm weather they are more distinct.
Moreover, we found that how much parents invested into their offspring before the implantation also mattered, in an interesting and unexpected way. High female feeding rates before implantation meant that the brood would survive longer.
Surprisingly, however, even though we only manipulated females, males also responded to their partners’ altered states. High male feeding rates prior to implantation increased survival only in the control group, the reverse was found in the males whose partners received the hormone treatment.
It seems that males that were investing the most effort early on are more sensitive to changes in weather, and less able to persist with their high level of investment after their partner was hormone-implanted.
Adapting to challenging conditions
These results showed us that the effects of hormone levels on reproductive success are context dependent. Although we were not able to test whether an increase in corticosterone makes the parents work harder, it seems that they became more susceptible to lose their chicks when the environment turned against them. Increasing the corticosterone levels to boost your parental effort might be a risky game.
Tree swallows are declining rapidly in the area where we studied them. As the occurrence of unpredictable weather is likely to increase with climate change, disturbed populations, with individuals that are already undergoing many stressors and have higher levels of glucocorticoids, may not be able to respond adaptively to even more challenging conditions.”
IGC Graduate Fellows gain a strong feeling of pride, ownership, and commitment to the program thanks to the integral role students are asked to play in shaping the program as it develops. Global Change Center Director Bill Hopkins and IGC Interdisciplinary Graduate Education Program co-Director Jeff Walters recently met with second and third year fellows to gain feedback on what is working well and what may be improved—and to share ideas on how to best manage program growth.
Participants brainstormed ways to best integrate new fellows and maintain the strong sense of community that currently exists. Multiple trips to the white board were needed to help chip away at the challenges of structuring seminar and capstone coursework to ensure each fellow builds a key knowledge base while maximizing interactions among cohorts!
Future meetings-of-the-minds are planned to discuss supplementary course requirements in our continuing effort to contribute to the development of our vibrant and inspiring Global Change Center community!
By Heather Govenor
IGC GSO President [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row]
How exciting would it be to find a species thought to be extinct? Click play to listen to this recent radio spot featuring Ignacio Moore’s research on the Pinocchio lizard.
I’m interested in developing an integrative understanding of how animals function in their unique social and physical environment. I focus on investigating free-living animals, primarily reptiles, amphibians, and birds in habitats ranging from the Arctic to the Tropics. In our lab we use a variety of techniques from disciplines such as physiology, neuroendocrinology, ecology, evolution, and behavior.[/karma_builder_imagebox_2][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Photo credit: “Anolis proboscis” by Santiago Ron from Quito, Ecuador – Wikimedia Commons
BLACKSBURG, Va., Oct. 21, 2015 – Virginia Tech has increased its capacity to study forests and how such landscapes influence climate by adding Thomas O’Halloran to the forest resources and environmental conservation research faculty in the College of Natural Resources and Environment.
O’Halloran, formerly assistant professor of environmental science at Sweet Briar College, brings access to the land-atmosphere research station he founded at Sweet Briar. The move to Virginia Tech was facilitated by Quinn Thomas, assistant professor of forest dynamics and ecosystem modeling at Virginia Tech since 2013, who had begun collaborating with O’Halloran at the research site in February of this year.
“The facility offers a new perspective on forests, enabling them to be viewed from the atmosphere’s perspective,” Thomas said.[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”11240″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” style=”vc_box_outline” border_color=”black” title=”Sweet Briar Land-Atmosphere Research Station” link=”http://sbc-lars.blog.sbc.edu”][vc_column_text]
O’Halloran originally designed the site to quantify the role of forests in regulating climate, particularly trees’ production of aerosols, which contribute to haze and interact with clouds. “This new collaboration with Quinn Thomas and Virginia Tech has significantly increased the scope and impact of the processes we can study at the site,” O’Halloran said.
Thomas and O’Halloran are interested in similar questions and instrumentation but have different backgrounds — Thomas in ecosystem science and O’Halloran in meteorology — which they combine to study land-atmosphere interactions.
The Sweet Briar Land-Atmosphere Research Station features a 120-foot tower with an array of instruments to measure forest-atmosphere interactions across a 67-acre pine plantation. Measurements include the movement of carbon, water, and energy between the forest and the air above, which affect climate.
For example, forests alter how dark the Earth is, which influences how much heat is absorbed or reflected — the energy balance. Whether forests make the Earth hotter or cooler is one of the questions being studied. Forests also absorb carbon, another factor in the energy balance.
“We are looking at the combination of these influences to answer questions on how forests influence climate,” O’Halloran said.
When it appeared in early 2015 that Sweet Briar College would close, the project’s future was uncertain, so Virginia Tech stepped in.
“Everything is still moving forward as it was,” Thomas said. “And Virginia Tech has strengthened its role at this exciting research site that combines forestry with micrometeorology.”
Now that Sweet Briar College remains open, work at the site continues as a collaboration between the two schools.
“The site is busier than ever. It makes me pleased to see undergraduate and graduate students from both schools working together,” O’Halloran said.
The research station contributes to an international network of “flux towers” — sites that measure exchanges of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and energy between large landscape areas, such as forests, and the air above them.
“These sites are in many ecosystems across the globe, including large networks in the U.S., Europe, and China,” Thomas said. “No site is exactly like ours but a lot are similar so that we can contribute to research at the global scale.”
Thomas describes “a few of the exciting ongoing research activities” at the atmosphere research station.
“There is a camera at the site that tells us to the day when the leaves fall. It is one of a chain of cameras, called PhenoCams, nationwide that monitor when leaves come on and off,” he explained. “Over time, these types of measurements help us determine the seasonality of plants and the effect of climate change. The research station also allows the study of the influence of cloudiness on plant growth and how much carbon dioxide is being absorbed by the forest.”
Instrumentation on the tower measures the properties of forests similar to ways they can be seen from space, so ground-based measurements can be linked to satellite measurements.
It will be another year before the first results are in. Meanwhile, in addition to gathering data, the atmosphere research station continues to be a resource for graduate student projects and undergraduate classes at both Virginia Tech and Sweet Briar College from several disciplines, such as forest resources, environmental informatics, and meteorology.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][karma_builder_imagebox_2 type=”fontawesome” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-leaf” box_bg_color=”#ffffff” icon_bg_color=”#505966″ icon_color=”#ffffff”]
Quinn Thomas
Dr. Thomas is an assistant professor of forest dynamics and ecosystem modeling in the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation at Virginia Tech.
Research in his lab focuses on the interactions among ecosystem dynamics, climate change, and air pollution, with a particular emphasis on carbon cycling in forests.[/karma_builder_imagebox_2][/vc_column][/vc_row]
BLACKSBURG, Va., Oct. 19, 2015 – Antibiotic resistance is a growing global public health threat causing an estimated 23,000 deaths in America each year.
One historically overlooked avenue by which antibiotic resistance can spread is through contact or consumption of contaminated water. For example, recent news articles have raised questions about human sewage tainted water at some of the venues for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics and the potential spread of resistant ‘super-bugs’. Unfortunately, the Brazilian Olympics is just one example of the growing scale of this problem.
Within the U.S. alone, antibiotic resistance is reportedly responsible for $20 billion in excess health care costs, $35 billion in societal costs, and over eight million extra days in the hospital. At the global scale the costs of resistance are difficult to quantify, but may be an order of magnitude larger.
Vikesland, an expert in the optimization of drinking water disinfection practices, is the principal investigator for a new five-year $3.6 million Partnerships in International Research and Education (PIRE) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) that is aimed at mitigating this global threat.
The continually climbing global population “requires expanded water reuse, which tightens linkages between wastewater and drinking water,” Vikesland said. At least 43 countries reuse treated wastewater for the irrigation of parks, golf courses, crops, and other purposes. In some countries, including parts of the United States, treated wastewater is increasingly looked at as a potential drinking water source.
The challenge is that wastewater treatment plants are rich in ingredients that are not desirable in drinking water. In particular, communities of microbes — some beneficial and others less so — thrive in wastewater treatment plants.
“Wastewater effluent and sludge discharges are often enriched in antimicrobial drugs, antimicrobial resistance elements, and resistant organisms, and these constituents can contaminate receiving environments,” Vikesland explained.
The scenario for antibiotic entry into the water system is disarmingly easy.
When an antibiotic is consumed, researchers have learned that up to 90 percent passes through someone without being metabolized. Consequently, drugs can leave the body almost intact through normal bodily functions. Both humans and animals excrete both the drugs and the bacteria resistant to the drugs, allowing these pollutants to enter wastewater treatment plants or as agricultural runoff into bodies of water such as streams and rivers.
The NSF PIRE project that Vikesland and his international colleagues are undertaking seeks to halt wastewater derived antimicrobial resistance dissemination. They recognized that societal use of antimicrobial drugs and wastewater treatment processes collectively affect the fluctuations of pharmaceuticals, antimicrobial resistant organisms, and antimicrobial resistance elements. These patterns will vary across the world. They want to globally understand these scenarios.
Additionally, they propose to determine how receiving environment characteristics and wastewater treatment practices synergistically affect resistance dissemination, and then develop and test some novel approaches as to how to stop antimicrobial resistance dissemination.
There is “an urgent need to tackle this international grand challenge in multicultural settings,” Vikesland added. “Antimicrobial resistance is a worldwide public health crisis … and is one of the greatest threats to human health of our time.”
Through the NSF PIRE award, both graduate and undergraduate students will have the opportunity to address this global challenge by traveling to 16 globally distributed wastewater treatment plants. At these plants, the project team will interact with and learn from an internationally recognized team of scholars that was put together to address this issue. All of the Virginia Tech graduate students involved in the effort will participate in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Education Program (IGEP) and will earn certificates in International Research Abroad.
Other U.S. collaborators include: Pedro Alvarez and Qi Lin Li of Rice University; Diana Aga of the University of Buffalo; and Krista Wigginton of the University of Michigan.
Internationally, six universities from Asia are working with Vikesland’s team: Tong Zhang of the University of Hong Kong; Xiangdong Li of Hong Kong Polytechnic University; Yong-Guan Zhu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Yi Luo from Nankai University; Giselle Conception of the University of the Philippines; and Indumathi Nambi of Indian Institute of Technology-Madras.
From Europe, four universities are involved: Tamar Kohn of Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne of Switzerland; Juliane Hollender and Helmut Bürgmann of the Swiss Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Switzerland; Celina Manaia of the Universidade Catolica Portuguesa, Portugal; and Joakim Larsson of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Kathy Laskowski, of Virginia Tech’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, will assist with project administration and finances. Additional support from Virginia Tech’s Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science will enhance this global effort.
October 8, 2015- MILLIONS of Americans once wanted to smoke. Then they came to understand how deadly tobacco products were. Tragically, that understanding was long delayed because the tobacco industry worked for decades to hide the truth, promoting a message of scientific uncertainty instead.
The same thing has happened with climate change, as Inside Climate News, a nonprofit news organization, has been reporting in a series of articles based on internal documents from Exxon Mobil dating from the 1970s and interviews with former company scientists and employees.
Dr. Naomi Oreskes
Had Exxon been upfront at the time about the dangers of the greenhouse gases we were spewing into the atmosphere, we might have begun decades ago to develop a less carbon-intensive energy path to avert the worst impacts of a changing climate. Amazingly, politicians are still debating the reality of this threat, thanks in no small part to industry disinformation.
Government and academic scientists alerted policy makers to the potential threat of human-driven climate change in the 1960s and ’70s, but at that time climate change was still a prediction. By the late 1980s it had become an observed fact.
But Exxon was sending a different message, even though its own evidence contradicted its public claim that the science was highly uncertain and no one really knew whether the climate was changing or, if it was changing, what was causing it.
Exxon (which became Exxon Mobil in 1999) was a leader in these campaigns of confusion. In 1989, the company helped to create the Global Climate Coalition to question the scientific basis for concern about climate change and prevent the United States from signing on to the international Kyoto Protocol to control greenhouse gas emissions. The coalition disbanded in 2002, but the disinformation continued. Journalists and scientists have identified more than 30 different organizations funded by the company that have worked to undermine the scientific message and prevent policy action to control greenhouse gas emissions.
Hellbenders! The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (VDGIF) tagged along with Cathy Jachowski and Bill Hopkins to learn more about how these unusual animals live and how they guard their eggs. This VDGIF video features some rare footage of hellbender egg collection and underwater use of artificial nest boxes!
A new Geography course exploring Water and Hazards will be offered Spring semester by Dr. Luke Juran. This undergraduate/graduate seminar explores the contradictory nature of water as both a conduit for life and a threat to life.
Spring 2016, 3 credits
T/R 8:00-9:15 AM
Click on the image to open the course flyer (PDF).
