Planet Bob – What's on your planet?

Hugh Downs explains why biodiversity (and taxonomy and natural history museums) matter. “Taxonomy is only important if you live on this planet.”

Courtesy of Planet Bob(alias the Arizona State University Institute for Species Exploration).

In case you're wondering, Erik Holsinger (one of the producers) and I share an unusual last name, but we're not (closely) related.¹

¹We are both humans and both &ldqup;Holsingers”, but I have no idea where Erik sits in my family tree.

Invasive specie

I've posted notes on species invasions. There's a long section on zebra mussels included, but that's what Dave Strayer is talking about in the EEB seminar on Thursday, so I probably won't have a lot to say about that.

Notes on re-wilding

I've posted a brief summary of the Donlan et al. re-wilding proposal along with a few suggested discussion questions. I expect to spend about half an hour wrapping up some observations from Wednesday's lecture at the start of class, but I'd like to spend the last 45 minutes or so talking about this proposal.

As I mentioned briefly at the end of lecture on Wednesday, when you first here the proposal, it sounds completely preposterous. After you start to dig into it a bit, though, it becomes less and less easy to dismiss. That's not to say that I agree with it, but it is a proposal that can't be dismissed out of hand.

Re-wilding North America

I've decided to juggle the lecture schedule – again. As I mentioned at the end of lecture on Wednesday, I have a little more I'd like to say about landscape change. Probably enough to fill about half an hour. But then, rather than just telling you about Josh Donlan's re-wilding proposal, I suggest we have a "mini case study" discussion. I've posted links to two papers that describe the ideas. Please read them and come prepared to discuss them. As I said, the idea sounds pretty preposterous at first, but the people proposing it are well-respected scientists and when you start to dig into it, the idea is less easy to dismiss than you might imagine.

I'll post a brief summary of the ideas and some points for discussion by Saturday night, if not sooner.

Project #2

I've posted project #2 and links to the necessary files. As I note in the web page where you'll find the assignment, Chaprter 4 had some problems with the scanning. I'm having it re-scanned, and I hope to have a corrected version available soon.

Landscape change and conservation objectives

I've posted the notes for Wednesday's lecture. It took me a little longer to revise them than I expected, so I didn't get the Project #2 assignment written. With a little luck I'll have it posted by tomorrow afternoon.

Case study outline and questions

I just posted the case study outline and questions. Sorry for not getting them up sooner, but Thursday and Friday turned out to be crazy.

I won't be assigning Project #2 until Wednesday. I was having chapters from a book scanned and turned into PDFs. That was supposed to be done by Friday afternoon, but it wasn't. I've adjusted the due date accordingly.

Case study

I've posted readings for Monday's case study – An Integrated Scientific Assessment for Ecosystem Management in the Interior Columbia Basin and Portions of the Klamath and Great Basins. I'd like to focus especially on their analysis of ecosystem integrity in chapter 4, but I suggest reading the executive summary and the introduction as well. Please also read the two papers that are listed as suggested reading. I think they raise issues that we'll want to consider during our discussion.

I will try to have a brief summary and some suggested questions posted by Friday afternoon.

Conflicts between people and endangered species

You may have heard about the severe drought that the southeastern United States is suffering. Lake Lanier, which supplies much of the water for metropolitan Atlanta, has only about a 120-day supply. What does that have to do with endangered species? Read on.

Georgia's entire congressional delegation introduced legislation Tuesday intended to relieve drought conditions in the Atlanta area.

...

Georgia's entire congressional delegation introduced legislation Tuesday intended to relieve drought conditions in the Atlanta area. (source)

If you were a member of Congress, how would you vote on the proposed amendment?

Update

I made a small change to the habitat fragmentation notes. If you've printed them before, you'll see that the only change is on the last page right before the literature cited. Don't print the whole thing again (unless you print on the back side of what you've already printed to save paper).

I've also added a couple of references on habitat fragmentation under the link for Wednesday's lecture, and I've indicated that I expect to start talking about species invasions tomorrow. I won't have the notes posted until later – possibly this weekend –, but you can find notes from two years ago if you go to the notes page. (Just don't print them yet. They will be changed.)

Habitat fragmentation notes; schedule juggled again

I've just posted the notes for habitat fragmentation. After looking at how much we have left to cover on ecosystem management and how much I'd like to say about habitat fragmentation, I've moved the case study discussion on ecosystem management to a week from Monday. Barring unforeseen circumstances, it won't be moved again.

EEB departmental seminar

I just added tomorrow's EEB departmental seminar to the lecture schedule for several reasons:

• It's being presented by John Volin, the new head of the Department of Natural Resources Management & Engineering.
• The topic involves the Florida Everglades, which we'll be talking about today in lecture (and probably on Monday too).
• The topic also involves the effects of an invasive plant, and we'll be talking about invasion ecology in a couple of weeks.

I encourage you to attend. It should be very interesting. Unfortunately, I won't be able to attend, because I will be out of town.

Grading finished, schedule juggled

Each of you should receive an e-mail from me with the subject line “Project #1” and an empty body. If you don't, let me know, and I'll resend it.

I've juggled the schedule a bit, moving the case study to Wednesday instead of Monday. I hope to have notes on ecosystem management posted before I go to bed tonight. With any luck, by the time you check the site tomorrow morning you'll find them. I'll post a note if they're not there yet.

Grades for Project #1

I didn't quite manage to finish grading all of the Project #1 assignments today, but I only have a few left. I'll finish them sometime tomorrow, probably in the evening, and e-mail each of you with a copy of your paper with a numerical grade embedded in bold red type. I'll talk about how to interpret the numerical scores in lecture tomorrow.

A new paper on diversity & stability

I may or may not have time to read and digest this before Monday, but a very interesting paper appeared in today's issue of Nature. Here's the abstract:

Understanding how complex food webs assemble through time is fundamental both for ecological theory and for the development of sustainable strategies of ecosystem conservation and restoration. The build-up of complexity in communities is theoretically difficult, because in random-pattern models complexity leads to instability. There is growing evidence, however, that nonrandom patterns in the strengths of the interactions between predators and prey strongly enhance system stability. Here we show how such patterns explain stability in naturally assembling communities. We present two series of below-ground food webs along natural productivity gradients in vegetation successions. The complexity of the food webs increased along the gradients. The stability of the food webs was captured by measuring the weight of feedback loops of three interacting 'species' locked in omnivory. Low predator-prey biomass ratios in these omnivorous loops were shown to have a crucial role in preserving stability as productivity and complexity increased during succession. Our results show the build-up of food-web complexity in natural productivity gradients and pin down the feedback loops that govern the stability of whole webs. They show that it is the heaviest three-link feedback loop in a network of predator-prey effects that limits its stability. Because the weight of these feedback loops is kept relatively low by the biomass build-up in the successional process, complexity does not lead to instability.

Neutel, A.-M., et al. 2007. Reconciling complexity with stability in naturally assembling food webs. Nature 449:599-602. (link)

Re-shuffling the schedule

I got to looking at the schedule of assignments that's coming up and decided to rearrange them a bit. I've added a case-study discussion to the scheduld on the 15th of October. As a result, I've pushed the assignment and due dates of Project #2 and Project #3 back a bit. Let me know if this causes any problems.

On a related note, don't forget that the assigned projects count for only 45% of your grade. Another 45% will come from a longer term project on a topic of your own choosing. The paper should be 15-20 pages long, with a thorough survey relevant literature. Don't put off starting the long paper for too long, and be sure to check with me on the topic before you get into it too deeply. Not only do we need to agree that the topic you've chosen is appropriate for this course, I might be able to provide a head start on finding some references.

If you get your final project to my by 5:00pm, Friday December 7th, I guarantee you that I'll get your grade turned in on time. If it comes in after that, I may or may not make it. You might end up with an incomplete on your transcript.,

Biodiversity accounting

I mentioned Shahid Naeem and the idea of “biodiversity accounting” in lecture this morning. I wasn't able to put my hands on any published papers in which he discusses the idea, but then it dawned on me that he spoke about it at the 2006 annual meeting of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. Follow this link and scroll down to his presentation to watch it on line.

Diversity and stability

I've posted the notes on diversity and stability. You'll notice that I've scheduled two lectures for the topic, Wednesday the 3rd and Monday the 8th. It's received a lot of attention, and it's pretty controversial. I'm pretty sure that some of the ecologists in the course know more about the debate than I do, and I hope that one or more of them will challenge the things I get wrong and set me straight. Depending on how much of that there is, we may spend part of Wednesday the 10th's lecture on this topic, too.

Also, don't forget that Michael Bean is giving the Teale Lecture on Thursday at 4:00pm. He'll be speaking on “Endangered species conservation: an assessment and prognosis.” Now that you're all experts on management of endangered species and the ESA, I'm sure you'll find his take on the problems quite interesting.

References for diversity and stability

I've posted some suggested readings for the diversity/stability lectures.¹ I had hoped to have the notes available by tonight, too, but that's not going to happen. I'll get them posted by sometime tomorrow (probably tomorrow night). Sorry for the delay.

¹Yes, lectures. I modified the syllabus a little after I started revising my notes. A lot has happened in the last couple of years that I need to take account of.