Recently in Ecology Category

Update: La Nacion has an article featuring the work (en Español).

Normally I wouldn't make a big deal about one of my own papers, but I'm making an exception this time because it involves a really nice piece of work by a graduate student for whom I served as an associate advisor. Uzay Sezen collected seedlings of the palm Iriartea deltoidea in Costa Rica from two secondary forest plots that his major advisor, Robin Chazdon, has been using for long-term studies of forest regeneration. He genotyped the seedlings and all reproductive trees in the plots using AFLPs, and he inferred the parentage of the seedlings. From these data was able to determine the spatial pattern of recruitment into the secondary forest.¹

Like many animal-dispersed trees, seedlings of Iriartea deltoidea tend to be found in clumps. Such clumps are often centered around reproductive I. deltoidea individuals, suggesting that the clumps represent seeds derived from the closest reproductive individual.

Well, you can probably guess where this is going from the way I set that up. That's not what we found at all. Instead (quoting from the abstract)

Few seedlings were offspring of the closest reproductive trees. Seedling patches observed beneath reproductive trees originate from dozens of parental trees. Observed patterns of seedling distribution and spatial genetic structure are largely determined by the behaviour of vertebrate seed dispersers rather than by spatial proximity to parental trees.

If you'd like to read more, here's a link to a copy of the paper at the website of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B.² Enjoy!

OK. I'll admit it. I don't think about parasites much. In fact, I probably wouldn't think about them at all if it weren't for my friend and colleague, Janine Caira, who right now is in Borneo collecting tapeworms from sharks, skates, and rays and who just received a grant from the NSF Planetary Biodiversity Inventories program for a survey of worldwide tapeworm biodiversity. Why do I mention this? Because I suspect I'm pretty typical. We all know that most plants and animals have parasites, but we tend to forget about them. When we do think about them we tend to think that they don't matter that much (so that we can go on ignoring them). Well, I don't think I'll be able to do that any more.

One of Janine's students, Maria Pickering, is a co-author on a paper that just appeared in Nature. The authors found that "parasite biomass exceeded that of top predators". They show that parasites matter and that they matter a lot.

I mentioned a few days ago that the Subcommitte on Investigations and Oversight and the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment of the House Committee on Science and Technology held hearings on the closing of the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. They held more hearings today.

“The Savannah River Ecology lab served the Department of Energy, the communities affected by the [Savannah River] site and the Nation for more than 50 years,” said [Brad] Miller [(D-NC), Chair of the Investigations and Oversight Commitee]. “It was, by any financial measure, a very inexpensive lab to operate. It would be hard to find a better return on investment anywhere in the federal science complex.”

“There is simply no reason for DOE to discontinue funding for SREL. There are funds available. There is work to be done. SREL has the personnel and the experience to do the work,” said [Nick] Lamspon [(D-TX), Chair of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee]. “The laboratory has the support of the scientific community broadly and of the local community who rely upon the independent voice that SREL represents.” (press release from the subcommittees)

Here's what Clay Sell, Deputy Secretary of Energy had to say in his opening statement:

In summary, we value the work done by the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. It was the hope and expectation of the Secretary, me, and all involved, that the Laboratory would develop a plan to secure outside funding to become self-sustaining, as is the practice of other research institutions and as they themselves had committed to doing in both May 2005 and December 2006. Since that initial agreement, the Lab has had nearly two years to plan for the point at which DOE would no longer provide direct operational support on a non-competitive basis. It is unfortunate that the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory has been unable to do so and that the University has not responded with a plan for how they intend to transform the Lab into a thriving, self-sustaining institution. We at the Department of Energy have kept and will continue to keep our commitments to this Lab under the terms of the Cooperative Agreement.

The full text of opening statements from Miller and Lampson, the statements from those invited to testify, and other related materials are available at http://science.house.gov/publications/hearings_markups_details.aspx?NewsID=1929.

A little over a week ago, on the 17th of July to be exact, the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee and the Energy and Environment Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Technology held hearings on the Department of Energy's decision to withdraw funding from the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory.¹ The subcommittees currently have another hearing scheduled for next Wednesday, the 1st of August.

Here are a couple of paragraphs from the subcommittee's press release after the July 17th hearing:

Dr. Ward Whicker of Colorado State University, a radio-biologist and the winner of DOE’s prestigious Lawrence Prize, testified today about the importance of SREL’s research to a wide scientific community.

“I fully believe that shutting down the SREL is a serious mistake that is not in the national best interest,” said Dr. Whicker. “I sincerely hope that this is realized before it is too late, and that funding for the laboratory can be restored.”

The subcommittees also provide links to additional press releases, DOE responses to requests for information about SREL, letters from Nick Lampson (D-TX) and Brad Miller (D-NC) to DOE officials about SREL, and a letter from Brad Miller to the President of the University of Georgia.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution carried an Associated Press report on the hearing.

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¹Links to previous posts:

• 20 May 2007




• 23 June 2007




• 12 July 2007

From SaveSREL:

Approximately 40 SREL employees were terminated on 30 June and the appointments of six UGA-tenured faculty are being transferred to the Athens campus. The few employees who remain at SREL will work toward completing outstanding commitments on the Lab's 40+ active external grants, and then will close the facility.

Interestingly, just as UGA was moving to close SREL, they announced the opening of the Eugene P. Odum School of Ecology on the University's Athens campus. UGA President Adams stated “The creation of the School of Ecology is a historic commitment by the university to this essential field of study. Environmental issues are key as we think about economic success and sustainability for our children and grandchildren.” There was no mention in the press release about the closure of SREL, which was one of Gene Odum's greatest legacies....

About a month ago I noted that the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory might be forced to close its doors. It's now official.

The future of SREL is uncertain no longer. In a 15 June 2007 letter from UGA President Adams to DOE Secretary Bodman, Adams has committed to closing SREL within about one year. Approximately 40 SREL employees will be terminated effective 30 June. Six UGA-tenured faculty will have their appointments transferred to the Athens campus. The few employees who remain at SREL will work toward completing outstanding commitments on the Lab's 40+ active external grants, and then will close the facility.

Adams' letter states that SREL employees have been notified about the terminations, but in fact NO SREL personnel have received any information about whether they are included on the list of those to be terminated. It's hard to understand how an organization can treat dedicated employees in such a manner--to have them learn that they may be losing their jobs by reading it in the newspaper. As of today, many SREL personnel STILL do not know if they are to be terminated or whether their jobs will be saved for the time being. (source; emphasis in the original)

The letter from University of Georgia President Adams includes a few particularly important facts.

• The budget of the Environmental Management Division of the Department of Energy has been cut from $400 million to under $20 million in recent years.

• The University of Georgia received verbal assurances from DOE officials that SREL would receive $4 million in funding for fiscal year 2007. Only later did they learn that the officials involved did not have the authority to issue such commitments.

• Approximately half of the staff will be terminated on 30 June 2007.

• Dr. Paul M. Bertsch has resigned as Director of SREL, effective 15 June 2007, but the President writes: “Dr. Bertsch, a distinguished research scientist himself, should [not] be faulted for taking positions he believed to be in the best interests and in support of his staff and laboratory.”

If you want more information, visit www.SaveSREL.org

The Department of Energy reduced funding to the Savannah River Ecology Laboratoryso severely that Laboratory officials say that they will have to close its doors by the end of the month (source, SREL statement). SREL has been a very important site for a variety of ecological studies, since it was established by Eugene Odum in 1951 (source).

I did a quick search on JSTOR to get a sense of the amount of research that refers to SREL. A full text search of JSTOR holdings from 1992-2002 (the most recent year for which Ecological Society of America journals are available) in biological sciences, botany & plant sciences, ecology & evolutionary biology, general science, and zoology retrieved 105 articles. For comparison, the same search on Hubbard Brook experimental forest produced only 49 articles. Closing of SREL will be a real loss. I hope it can be avoided. It seems especially tragic to lose it just at the time that the National Ecological Observatory Network seems to be getting its legs.