Protea obtusifolia in the De Hoop Nature Reserve, Western Cape, South Africa Photograph by Kent Holsinger Click on the image for a high-resolution image in a new window.
The Dimensions of Biodiversity project that Carl Schlichting, Cindi Jones, John Silander, Andrew Latimer, Justin Borevitz, and I are working on is featured in a recent Discovery article on the NSF website. Here are the first couple of paragraphs of the article:
Climate change is on your porch and in your backyard and living room--anywhere you bedeck with flowering plants.
Global warming affects favorite flowers of garden and vase. This is true of plants around the world, including the proteas and the pelargoniums native to South Africa.
Head over to the NSF site if you'd like to read the whole thing.
Mediterranean island lizards are important pollinators and seed dispersers, but adults also cannibalize eggs and young lizards.1 This video won the 2011 NESCent Film Festival.
Regular readers will remember that I spent most of July and August in South Africa measuring plants and collecting specimens as part of a large, NSF-funded Dimensions of Biodiversity project. The project focuses on the plant genera Protea and Pelargonium, and we seek both to understand functional trait variation within these and to relate it to the community context in which the plants are embedded.
We are now seeking new post-doctoral research associate to join us on the project. The person we hire will be required to spend a long period of time in South Africa starting in June or July 2012 and will be responsible for design, implementation, and analysis of field and greenhouse experiments that explore the relationship between leaf traits, leaf physiology, and leaf longevity. (See the job ad for a more detailed description of the position and the project web page for more information about the project. Click on the "Dimensions of biodiversity" tag at the bottom of this post or in the tag cloud for some blog posts about the project.)
We'll start reviewing applications in late January. Please pass this ad along to anyone you know who might be interested.
Dan Sperduto and Ben Kimball wrote a beautiful book, The Nature of New Hampshire published by the University of New Hampshire Press. I've been meaning to give it a plug for several months, because it's been sitting on my desk that long. I am sorry to confess that I haven't had time to look at it carefully yet, but just looking at the table of contents makes me drool.
It describes community assemblages and characteristic species for each of the eight broad community types found in the state: alpine and subalpine, rocky ground, forests, peatlands, swamps, marshes, river channels and floodplains, and seacoast. It's filled with beautiful photographs and line drawings that illustrate the features being described.
It's clear that when I finally find the time to sit down with this book and especially when I find the time to compare what I read with what I see when I visit natural communities in New Hampshire that I will learn a lot. Anyone who's interested in New England's natural heritage should get themselves a copy as soon as they can.
Today is the first day of Fall into Phenology. What's that? It's part of Project BudBurst at NEON, Inc. Still confused? Just head over to the website, register for Project BudBurst, pick a plant, make an observation, and report it.
Why would you want to do that?
Because scientists want to know when plants are losing their leaves, when they're flowering, and many other things. And we want to know it about as many different kinds of plants from as many different places as we can. There are too many plants and too many places for us to do it ourselves, so NEON is asking for your help. It will only take a few minutes, and your data will be very valuable. Please join in.
Jane uploaded several photos from our field work to iSpot, and I've added my photo of Protea compacta. I plan to upload more photos over the weekend -- if Irene doesn't knock out my power and Internet connection. You'll be able to locate all of the photos from this summers fieldwork either by following the Photographs link from the project wiki or by going directly to the Dimensions research trip 2011 page on iSpot.
I'll post this link again when I've sorted through and posted all of my plant photos that are worth posting. There will also be a separate Picasa or Flickr album that has other photos, and I'll post a link to that when it's ready for viewing.
Protea compacta from the hill behind Kleinmond, 14 August 2011
After I've had time to sort through all of the photos I took on this trip, I'll post links to several galleries. We will also be setting up a Picasa web album for the whole project. It will include photos from many of those who were part of the Protea and Pelargonium teams as well as photos from the community ecology team.
Twelve hours from now I'll be on a plane from Cape Town to Johannesburg. About 37 hours from now I'll be landing at Bradley. It's hard to believe that this trip is coming to an end. Even though I know I've been away for nearly 4 weeks,1 we've been working so hard and getting so much done that it seems like just yesterday I arrived. So far the database for this part of the project has data from 28 species of Protea at 29 sites and 55 species of Pelargonium at 47 sites -- and there are at least 3 species of Protea and another 3 species of Pelargonium that haven't even been entered yet. And there's the collections that will happen later this week and next week in the Cederberg. By the time all is said and done, we'll have data from nearly 40 species of Protea and 70 species of Pelargonium. It's been a very successful trip.
I've even had time to run some preliminary analyses of the data, and the results look pretty interesting. We find relationships between weather variables and stomatal conductance in both genera, but they're generally stronger in Pelargonium, and we find strong relationships between leaf thickness and specific leaf area. Neither result is terribly surprising, but the comparisons between the genera (and probably among clades within each genus) promise to be very revealing. Stay tuned.
And if you're reading this on the main page of Uncommon Ground, click through to the next page to see another nice Protea flower.
I arrived in Cape Town almost three weeks ago, on the 22nd of July. I leave for home next Monday (the 15th) and arrive at Bradley on the 16th. It's been a busy and very productive trip so far. After a day of shopping for groceries and organizing in Cape Town, we left for De Hoop. From there we went on to Baviaanskloof, took a day off to look at animals at Addo National Elephant Park, and drove back to Oudtshoorn for a night on our way to Prince Albert (through Swartberg Pass). On our way to Riversdale, where we are now, we drove through Meiringspoort. The Pelargonium team stopped to sample in Huis River Pass, while the Protea team went on through Seweweekspoort to sample Protea sulphurea.
In addition to helping with the Protea team, I've been in charge of getting data entered into the computer. At this point, I'm actually caught up. But I'm informed that there are a bunch of data sheets with the last information being entered that I'll be handed when we get to Kleinmond later today. Here are some numbers to give you a sense of how many plants we've sampled. Keep in mind that these numbers are only for completed data sheets. My guess is that there are at least a couple of hundred more individual plant measurements, at least five or six additional species, and at least ten additional sites between the two teams. We have been busy.
Protea
200 individual specimen records
20 species
17 sites
Pelargonium
333 individual specimen records
40 species
30 sites
If you're reading this page on the main page of Uncommon Ground,1 be sure to click through to see photos of a couple of my favorite Protea we've encountered on this trip.
I catch a plane from Bradley International later today. About 25 hours later (after connections at Dulles and Johannesburg and a stopover in Dakar), I'll land in Cape Town. Then I'll be in the Western Cape (getting into the Eastern Cape briefly at Baviaanskloof) for the next month.
I'm part of the team collecting samples and measuring traits of Protea and Pelargonium as part of our Dimensions of Biodiversity project (see also the project wiki for more information). The community ecology team has been "in country" (at Baviaanskloof) since early July.
For most of the time we're in South Africa, we'll be staying in self-catering cottages. I haven't checked, but I doubt that any of them have Internet access. I will have my Blackberry, but I can't make blog posts from it. I will post an occasional tweet, which you can either find by following me (@keholsinger) or by searching for the hastag #dimensionsSA.
If I have time when I find an Internet cafe, you may find one or two posts here between now and when I return to the U.S. on August 16th. But don't count on it.
Jane uploaded several photos from our field work to 
