Don't Leaf Me Behind!
in Diversity of Organisms and Biological Populations Change Over Time
An Instant Classic: Hey, Aesop, what if I told you Mr. Hare won the race?
Courtesy Milo Winter
You’re probably familiar with Aesop’s classic fable The Tortoise and the Hare: Mr. Hare challenges Mr. Tortoise to a foot race. Mr. Tortoise accepts. Mr. Hare dashes from the start line, but stops just before the finish line to take a nap. In the meantime, Mr. Tortoise plods along to win the race!! The moral of the story? University of Minnesota professor and Institute on the Environment resident fellow, Dr. Peter Reich’s award-winning take on the fable may surprise you.
Dr. Peter Reich: This guy studies leaves for a living.
Courtesy Regents of the University of Minnesota
Dr. Reich studies leaves. In particular, Dr. Reich has discovered three characteristics of leaves that allow researchers to identify where and how plants live: longevity, productivity, and nitrogen content. Longevity measures how old a leaf lives. Did you know leaves in the tropics live only 5-6 weeks whereas Canadian spruce leaves can live up to 18 years old? Productivity measures how much sugar the leaf makes (yes, leaves make sugar called “glucose,” which nearly every animal uses to fuel their body – that’s why your momma tells you to eat your vegetables!). Finally, nitrogen is like a vitamin for plants: they need it to grow big and strong. How much nitrogen a leaf has is important because it determines how much energy a plant can make.
Canadian Spruce: If these leaves were human, they could be legal adults!
Courtesy Steven J. Baskauf
Tropical Leaves: These guys may look BIG, but they are not going to be around for long.
Courtesy Flickr
What about the moral of The Tortoise and the Hare? Dr. Reich’s research says there are basically two types of leaves: ones that are like Mr. Tortoise and ones like Mr. Hare. Tortoise-like leaves work slowly, but steadily. They’re the marathon runners of the leaf world. Hare-like leaves work really fast! But they can’t keep it up for long. They’re sprinters. Could you run a marathon at your top sprinting speed? Probably not, and neither can leaves be both ultra-fast and long-lasting at the same time. Instead, leaves “tradeoff” speed for endurance. Like human runners, leaves don’t have to be all fast and short-lived or all slow and long-lived; they can fall somewhere inbetween and be medium speed and medium-lived.
So who cares about marathon and sprinting leaves anyway? Lots of people! Dr. Reich just won the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in recognition of this important research. Being able to group the thousands of plants out in the world into a handful of groups is allowing scientists to do incredible research that can be used around the world.
For example, Dr. Reich’s newest research is looking at the different responses of tortoise-leaves versus hare-leaves to changing environments, such as higher levels of carbon dioxide in the air caused by climate change. As each generation of leaves reproduces, new genetic combinations are created. New genetic traits that are helpful to the plant’s survival are passed on to the next generation. The more genetic combinations created, the better chance a species has of “finding” the right traits in a changing environment. This is where Dr. Reich’s interpretation of the moral of The Tortoise and the Hare may surprise you: because hare-leaves have fast, short lives, they reproduce more genetic combinations and are better able to deal with change. Tortoise-leaves will struggle more to adapt. That is, for leaves, slow and steady does not always win the race!
Want to know more?? Dr. Reich recently gave a lecture as part of the Institute on the Environment’s Frontiers on the Environment series. You can hear it here.
Tags : We post plenty of stories here on the Buzz telling the sad stories of impending, or completed, animal extinctions. Here's a great story on how over the past 50 years, Minnesota's surplus bear population has helped bring back Arkansas's nearly extinct bear population back from the brink. No word on what, if any, role Bill Clinton played in this effort.
Carolina Parakeet: A photo of a Carolina Parakeet researchers named "Coqueta" now living in captivity in Honduras.
Courtesy John Heldee, Cornell UniversityHuge news in the bird world today as the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology announced the re-discovery of a small isolated population of the "extinct" Carolina parakeet. This news comes hot on the heels of an announcement this month by National Geographic that another extinct species the Worchesters Buttonquail was photographed.
The news from Cornell, as detailed in this press release is a far greater story. The Carolina Parakeet was the only member of the parrot family found in the United States. It was thought they were extinct but a small non-migratory population was found in the Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve in the Mosquitia region of northeastern Honduras.
Full details will come out in an article in Science magazine this month but lead researcher Hubin Tubbs has said, "The bird we currently have in captivity, the individuals we have seen in the wild and the male we are tracking through telemetry are absolutely the Carolina Parakeet. We know from historical data that the Carolina Parakeet was migratory to this general region. There must have been individuals that did not migrate and they have formed a small but viable non-migratory population all this time."
It's a little on the long side, but the video below shows amazing footage of a sea turtle hunting down a tasty snack. The camera work is with the same technology – the Critter Cam – that's given us awesome views of penguins, falcons and other predators at work.
Climate change causing wind change in Antarctica changing Antarctic food chain
Krill: a link in the food chain.
Courtesy Wikipedia (Photo by Øystein Paulsen)The above title is a bit clumsy but it conveys what some scientists claim is going on around the south polar region due to climate change and warming temperatures. Changes in wind patterns across Antarctica are not only affecting the composition and levels of phytoplankton in areas there but rising temperatures are also causing sharp changes in the Chinstrap and Adelie penguin populations that feed on the krill that feed on the phytoplankton. The ecosystem appears to be going out of whack. Read more...
“Lost World” is like my bedroom: cold, damp, poorly lit.
in Life Science, Diversity of Organisms, and The Water Cycle, Weather and Climate
The entrance to my bedroom: Inside you'll find an Xbox, dirty dishes, and something like a bed.
Courtesy Rita WillaertUnlike my bedroom, however, the Russians are frantically trying to get to the Lost World. Unless…
Oh, God! Do you think the Russians might be drilling into my bedroom? They probably want my natural resources! The thought of the Reds, bursting through my coal chute, snatching up my… clean socks, or something. Brr. It hardly bears thinking about.
But, yes, I live in a basement. “Tiempos Finales” I call it, and it bears some striking similarities to the “lost world” I read an article about recently.
There are a few key differences. The main difference, I suppose, is that the lost world the article describes is buried beneath about two miles of ice in Antarctica. Tiempos Finales is buried under 2 layers of wood flooring (and some linoleum in the bathroom) in St. Paul. Also, while a healthy person can survive almost indefinitely in the basement (assuming they have the proper protective equipment), you would suffocate, or freeze to death, or both, in Antarctica’s lost world, because it consists of sub-glacial lakes.
And while Tiempos Finales is teeming with mysterious creatures (largely arthropods—there’s rarely more than one chordate present at a time), Antarctica’s lost world only may be teaming with mysterious creatures.
But if there is anything down there, under the ice… it would be a very mysterious creature indeed. And that’s why the Russians are drilling away.
Russians and Brits are both drilling, in fact, but not together. A team of British scientists intends to drop probes into Lake Ellsworth, which they believe to be about 300 feet deep with a bottom covered in thick sediment. The Russians are drilling into the much larger Lake Vostok. Both lakes (and about 150 others) were discovered relatively recently thanks to ice-penetrating radar.
Many scientists think that it’s likely that the Antarctic lakes could hide living organisms (probably microorganisms). If that is the case, those organisms will have been isolated from the rest of the world for somewhere between 400,000 and 2 million years—ever since the ice sheet above the lake was formed. That’s a long time to spend by yourself, evolving in the cold and dark…
Cool. If any organisms are found, they’d likely be pretty different than anything else on the planet (remember my post a few weeks about aliens living among us? I knew you would. This is like that—isolated, extreme environments, etc). Also, the presence of life beneath the Antarctic ice would raise the odds that life could exist elsewhere in our solar system. Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter is the main analogy here. Europa is a frosty little moon (it’s a little bit smaller than our moon). Its surface is entirely covered with ice, but many scientists believe that a liquid water ocean could exist beneath the icy crust. The water could be kept liquid by heat generated by tidal and tectonic activity.
Organisms in the Antarctic lakes would be living under very similar conditions. With no light reaching that far into the ice, they would have to survive by consuming nutrients accumulated in the sediment millennia ago. Life on Europa might be nourished by heat and nutrients from mineral-rich hot water vents on the sea floor.
The British scientists don’t expect to break through the glacier until the Antarctic summer of 2012-2013, and when they finally do they’ll have just 36 hours to drop their probes through the 14-inch hole before it seals up again. They plan to get two probes into Lake Ellsworth. The first probe will capture video, and sample the water for living organisms, or for chemical evidence of them, and it will grab some sediment from the surface of the lakebed. The second probe will be sunk deeper into the lakebed, and will hopefully bring back several feet of sediment.
The Russians don’t plan on putting any probes into Lake Vostok—they just intend to tap into the lake to sample the water. The Russian project is somewhat controversial because their equipment is lubricated with kerosene, and is non-sterile (the British use a sterile, hot water-based drilling technique). There’s a good chance that the Russian equipment could contaminate the otherwise completely pristine lake, which, you know, slightly defeats the purpose. The Russians have had trouble with their equipment, however, and when they will break through the ice is much less certain.
So what do y’all think? Are they going to find anything? If Ellsworth and Vostok are anything like Tiempos Finales, whatever they find will be pretty depressing. Still, this is pretty cool stuff.
That wasn’t a pun.
Measuring to detect changing climate
Jack-in-the-pulpit: photo taken May 3, 2004
Courtesy ARTiFactorOne way to measure climate change would be to keep records of when different species of plants first come up or when they first flower. I often do this with my camera which automatically records the time and date.
The National Phenology Network
The National Phenology Network is recruiting people across the U.S. to record when trees bud, flowers bloom and migrating animals return. I heard the project's executive director, Jake Weltzin, explain how tracking these trends can help scientists better understand climate change on National Public Radio Friday (click link to listen to the broadcast).
Become a phenology observer
Click this link to learn how to monitor plant phenology and sign up to contribute new observations to the USA-NPN national phenology database.
The USA National Phenology Network brings together citizen scientists, government agencies, non-profit groups, educators and students of all ages to monitor the impacts of climate change on plants and animals in the United States.
Select a plant
I especially liked the "select a plant" data base. In addition to telling you how and what to measure, it also tells why a particular plant is important. Click here to see information about my jack in the pulpit.
As the owner of more than a few tie-dyed shirts, I have found my new favorite fish with the recent discovery of the psychedelic fish – the VW van of the aquatic world. Here's National Geographic video of this groovy fish find.
Add it to the list! Barreleye fish edition
Don't like the face?: Wait until you see the rectal pouch.
Courtesy Brauer, A.Welcome to another edition of “Add it to the list!” Buzzketeers. Or… is this the first edition? It feels like “Add it to the list!” has been a regular feature on Buzz for a couple years now, but, then again, I’ve been suffering from frequent and vivid waking dreams lately. So I might not be the best judge of what “actually exists” (to quote my therapists) right now.
Whatever.
As you possibly know, here on “Add it to the list!” we feature an animal, theory, vegetable, etc. that disgusts me or blows my mind. Such objects and constructs must be added to the list. That way I can keep mental tabs on them. And when the revolution comes, I’ll be able to sort all listed items into the “first against the wall” and “promotions all around” categories with confidence.
Previous items on the list (which may or may not have been featured on Buzz, and may or may not be featured in the future) include electric eels (tagged “Not actually an eel”), hagfish (tagged “Keep your lips off that thing!”), Schrödinger’s Cat (tagged “Please don’t say ‘quantum’ when I’m in the room”), and anglerfish (tagged “nobody wins the battle of the sexes”).
You get the idea, I’m sure.
So what do we learn today? Well, The Telegraph has alerted me to the existence of the barreleye fish. It seems that this singular creature has tubular shaped eyes to gather all available light in its native deep-sea habitat. Do you know what other light-gathering adaptation it has? A freaking see-through head!
OMG! These deep-sea fish! Somebody add that thing to the list!
Check it out:
It was thought that barreleye fish could only stare straight up, so that they might catch the silhouettes of prey swimming above them. Researchers from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, however, have recently observed the fish looking forward. Seeing a fish looking forward is hardly big news, I suppose, but… it’s sort of looking through it’s own head, you know? Yuckers.
Also, some species of barreleye have bioluminescent internal organs (their guts glow). And one species has a glowing rectal pouch.
I’m not sure if this fish is first against the wall, or deserving of a promotion, but, either way it must be recognized and dealt with. So, for glob’s sake, add it to the list!
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