University of Michigan
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Professor Annette Ostling and graduate student Susanna Messinger worked with a small group of 7th and 8th grade girls for a week this summer in late June to early July as part of a new ecology focus group for a U-M Women in Science and Engineering – Girls in Science and Engineering (WISE-GISE) summer camp.

The students explored and took part in hands-on lab and computer activities in Ostling’s lab, at the Museum of Zoology, and outside on the Diag and at the Nichols Arboretum.

The focus group was part of Ostling’s three-year NSF grant titled "Niche versus neutral structure in populations and communities.” Part of aim of the project is to encourage the participation of women in mathematical biology by running a focus group on topics related to the research at this camp. The grant award began September 15, 2010. She plans to run the focus group for at least the next two years of her grant.

Messinger took the lead on organizing the camp, creating the week-long program for the girls, and designing and digging up from a variety of sources the vast majority of the activities for the students.

The group went on an ecology scavenger hunt, experimented with yeast, toured the bird and mammal collections at the museum thanks to Janet Hinshaw (birds) and Steve Hinshaw (mammals).  They toured the labs of Professor Liz Tibbett's (via graduate student Mike Sheehan), Ray Barbehenn, and Professor Chris Dick (via graduate student Brian Sedio). Graduate students Sheehan and Brian Dorsey accompanied the camp at the Arboretum as fellow naturalists. Dr. Jeffrey Lake, a former postdoc in Ostling’s lab, also assisted with the focus group.

At the museum they learned what biologists use museum collections for, such as to try to understand how environmental gradients influence the characteristics of organisms. They also learned how samples are preserved in museum collections so that they can be the most useful to biologists later.

“Our primary goal was to instill in the girls a love of ecology and an appreciation of how we can understand the neat organisms we find in nature through science,” said Ostling. “I think this goal was achieved, as their favorite activities were finding organisms out on the Diag and our ‘day in the field’ at the arboretum, as well as our lab experiment on yeast, in which we found the optimal conditions for yeast population growth by seeing what temperature and pH produced the biggest balloons on top of the beakers in which the yeast were growing.

“Another key goal was to instill an appreciation of mathematics and computer simulations of mathematical models as incredibly useful tools in ecology and all sciences. Although women are increasingly better represented in ecology, they remain underrepresented in mathematical ecology. Studies show girls lose interest in mathematics around middle school. Our hope was to reverse this trend for these girls by explaining how mathematics has been instrumental in understanding ecological phenomena, and getting them to work in groups playing ‘video games’ that help them understand some of those interesting phenomena, like competitive exclusion and coexistence, and the existence of keystone species. We were a little nervous about how this would go, but the girls got really into it. We eventually had to pull them away from the computer simulations to move on to the next activity. We can report a very positive impact to report back to the NSF, whose funding through the Advancing Theory in Biology program helped support this focus group.  

“An additional key goal was to introduce the girls to the relevance of ecology for the environmental challenges we face as a society. To do this we built a model of the carbon cycle using plastic containers and water, and played a ‘murder mystery’ game about the factors contributing to a die off of big horn sheep, a threatened species. These activities lead to exciting discussions about climate change and the loss of biodiversity, and the role that ecology plays in enabling us to face these challenges.

“Overall, Susanna and I found doing the focus group to be incredibly rewarding. It is a great feeling to inspire girls at this age. I told them to e-mail me if they decide to become ecologists in case I can be of some help, and one girl immediately asked for my e-mail address.”  

On the questionnaires filled out after the focus group, one student who had previously been interested in being a veterinarian became interested in learning more about ecology. Another wrote, "I really liked the experiment with the yeast because it was fun to work in a lab and do an experiment and see the results." Overall, the focus group got them excited about ecology. Another wrote, "I enjoyed the ecology focus group and I learned more about the environment. I would recommend it to my friends because I think learning about our environment is very important."

Others who deserve credit for helping out include: Rosalyn Rael, a recent postdoc in Ostling’s lab, and graduate students Rafael D'Andrea, Gyuri Barabas and Tory Hendry. Hendry facilitated the loan of essential lab materials from Professor Paul Dunlap’s lab. Other WISE-GISE focus groups included chemistry, gaming for girls, engineering, human genetics and physics.

See the U-M Engineering website for more photos and a short video, hit "next" to see more images.

Pictured in back from left to right: Fei Chen, Olivia Adams, Jayleen Rossi, Anna Mae Crowley, Emily Sedgeman, Jillian Beemon, Caitlin Meadows. Front: Maria Brown, Abigail Glad.

Professor Timothy James and Rich Rabeler, assistant research scientist, have been awarded grants from the National Science Foundation as part of an initiative to integrate and digitize information for biologists, policymakers and the general public.

To respond to the need for greater accessibility of biological collections data, NSF has awarded grants through its Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections (ADBC) program. The program is expected to result in more efficient and innovative ways to provide access to information in biological research collections, and to speed up the process of integrating diverse information on the genetic, ecological, organismal, and molecular biology of specimens in collections.

James, assistant curator of fungi at the U-M Herbarium, was awarded over $210,000 for “North American Lichens and Bryophytes: Sensitive Indicators of Environmental Quality and Change.” Researchers will image about 2.3 million North American lichen and bryophyte specimens from more than 60 collections to address questions of how species distributions change after major environmental events, both in the past and projected into the future. 

Lichens and bryophytes (mosses and their relatives) are among the most sensitive indicators of environmental change, and are dominant organisms in arctic-alpine and desert habitats, the vanguard of climate change. Large-scale distribution mapping will help identify regions where such changes are imminent, fostering proactive initiatives to protect these organisms. 

“The value of every biological collection lies in the information attached to the specimens,” said James. “By enhancing the information attached to the moss and lichen specimens through photographs, geographic coordinates and collection notes we can use the latest technology to leverage the rich legacy left by past botanical pioneers. By comparison of historical collections to present distributions we have a window into how habitat loss and climate change have affected the distribution of these often overlooked organisms.”

Rabeler, U-M Herbarium collections manager, received over $190,000 for “Plants, Herbivores, and Parasitoids: A Model System for the study of Tri-Trophic Associations.” Researchers will unify some eight million records in 34 collections to answer how the distributions and phenologies of the plants, pests, and parasitoids relate to each other, in a tri-trophic databasing and imaging project. Data from this approach will benefit basic scientific questions and practical applications in the agricultural sciences, conservation biology, ecosystem studies, and climate change and biogeography research. 

“The ADBC project is a great boost to efforts to digitize specimen data,” said Rabeler. “I am excited that the University Herbarium is represented in two of the first three funded thematic networks.”

A warm welcome to Anna Cihak who joined the undergraduate Program in Biology in mid-April 2011 as the new student administration manager. Her main job responsibilities are to manage the undergraduate students services (such as the advising program) for seven Program in Biology concentrations and three minors; oversee biology, MCDB, and EEB course and schedule maintenance, including the appointment of graduate student instructors; assist with curriculum management and communication.

Cihak is looking forward to organizing the existing student support programs and introducing new ones, improving service and efficiency, including bringing as many processes online as possible.

Cihak brings seven years of experience in student affairs, the last four in the U-M College of Engineering (Computer Science and Engineering), overseeing undergraduate student services. Previously, she worked in the legal field in child and family law and leading background investigations for the federal government. In her free time, she likes to travel, read, and spend time with family and friends.

Professor L. Lacey Knowles was awarded a National Science Foundation grant of just over $330,000 called “Identifying the utility of species-tree approaches for deep radiations.”

According to Knowles, the unprecedented amount of DNA sequence data made available by recent technological advances is changing how biologists approach questions. Such data have great power to reveal the history of species diversification by improving estimates of species relationships. However, the opportunities for improving estimates of species relationships are at risk because data collection is outpacing the development of analytical methods to handle the data. 

This project explores the power and limitations in recently developed methods to infer the history of “deep radiations” (events of rapid species diversifications that occurred in the distant past), which may be hampered by conflicting historical signal from different genomic regions. It will use computer simulations to not only evaluate key data properties affecting historical reconstructions, but also identify what combination of data and methodological practices are likely to improve estimates of species relationships. These simulations will be informed by examples from nature, assuring that biological realities, not just theoretical ideals, are jointly considered.

Deep radiations are of particular interest because they have had a major impact on present day diversity. Our inability to accurately infer the species relationships that define these events impedes our ability to link diversification with global events such as climate change and movements of the earth’s continents. By identifying methodological properties and types of analyses that effectively utilize the genomic data now becoming available, this project will improve the foundation that many evolutionary and ecological questions depend upon – a resolved history of species diversification. The two-year grant began July 1, 2011.

Professors Deborah Goldberg and Bill Currie of SNRE have received a three-year grant of almost $500,000 from NASA titled “Linking remote sensing and process-based models to better understand the influence of land use and climate changes on Great Lakes ecosystems.”

Researchers from Michigan State University and Michigan Technological University are also part of this project to forecast rates of invasion of exotic plants into Great Lakes coastal wetlands as a function of both eutrophication (very high nutrient levels typically due to fertilizer or sewage input), and climate change. Because elevated nutrient transport results from land use and land management in the watersheds, changes in upland land use are a critical component in eutrophication and its ecological consequences. The project will integrate remote sensing, ecosystem and hydrological modeling, and field experiments and monitoring to test hypotheses about the complex interactions among land use change, climate change, and invasions and consequences for the key wetland ecosystem services of biodiversity maintenance and nutrient retention.

Reeve Maclaren Bailey of Ann Arbor, Mich., age 100, died Saturday, July 2, 2011. Bailey received his bachelor of arts degree in herpetology and his doctorate in ichthyology from the University of Michigan. As an undergraduate he was on the 1933 Big Ten Championship swimming team.

He began his teaching career in 1938 at Iowa State University. In 1939, he married Marian Kregel; she predeceased him in 2009. In 1944 Reeve returned to U-M as curator of fishes at the Museum of Zoology. Over the course of a distinguished scientific career, he conducted extensive field research in the U.S., Bermuda, Guatemala, Bolivia, Paraguay, Zambia, and Thailand. He presided over the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists (ASIH) and the American Fisheries Society (AFS) and published more than 150 articles and books.

Particularly interested in nomenclature, he served for nearly 50 years on the AFS Common Names Committee, which issued a series of reports that helped standardize the common and scientific names of fishes of the United States and Canada. He retired from his academic posts of curator and university professor of zoology in 1976 but remained active as an emeritus professor. For decades he was a member of the Flounders, a water polo and swimming club, and until his death was a steadfast supporter of U - M sports teams. He is survived by his four children, Douglas, David, Thomas, and Susan (Buckheim); three grandchildren and two great-grandsons.

Read more in this University Record article on Bailey's 100th birthday celebration.

Copeia, biography of Reeve Maclaren Bailey by Margaret M. Stewart and Gerald R. Smith.

Recent Ph.D. graduate Meg Bakewell is an instructional consultant at the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) at U-M. She consults with university faculty, especially in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, regarding the use of technology in teaching, among other responsibilities. Bakewell worked part-time at CRLT as a graduate teaching consultant since 2009 and was excited to join them full-time in late May 2011.

Recent Ph.D. graduate Ryan Bebej will be an assistant professor of biological sciences at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Ill. this fall. He'll teach introductory biology, anatomy, physiology, and advanced zoology courses.

Professor George Kling has received almost $960,000 from the National Science Foundation and the Marine Biological Laboratory.

Kling and his team of researchers will be working on the overall direction of the land-water component of the Long Term Ecological Research Network (LTER) project. They will perform biogeochemical sampling in soils, lakes and rivers, and integrate their results with various modeling components. Kling will do chemical analyses for cations, anions, alkalinity, dissolved gases, and dissolved inorganic carbon. He will work with other component leaders and the lead principal investigator to synthesize and publish the findings. Kling will also coordinate the land-water research with other NSF projects funded to work at the same sites, e.g., NSF-Long Term Research in Environmental Biology and NSF-OPP Arctic System Science. The grant was awarded in March 2011 for six years.

Incoming graduate student Katherine Crocker recently spent 20 months as a sustainable agriculture Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal, Africa.  Her main role was to distribute improved seeds to local farmers in efforts to increase their food security and crop yields while improving the nutritive value of their food.  She also worked with farmers on more effective and environmentally friendly farming techniques. 

Her secondary projects focused on education. “I taught mothers how to make a more nutritious and digestible porridge for their babies, and helped paint three world maps on schools in the area,” she said. She worked as a translator for Right to Sight, an American organization of eye surgeons who travel to developing countries to perform affordable eye surgeries for locals while teaching the techniques to surgeons in the area.

During her freshman year at Cornell University, she attended a Peace Corps information session and knew from then that this was something she wanted to do. “It just became part of the plan.”

Being in the Peace Corps was an incredible growing experience, she said.  “I learned a lot about myself and the U.S. culture, as well as learning a lot of near-universal things about people and the new culture in which I lived. It is the hardest thing I've ever done, but one of the most rewarding.  It's an eye-opener about policy, too.  Once you see the problems that we only read about here, and once you participate in the initiatives that seem like such wonderful ideas in the newspaper, you realize that development and aid work is much more complicated than it's made out to be, and that we can't just pursue ideas that make us feel better if we really want to see any sort of sustainable improvement."

Crocker’s favorite part of the whole experience “was probably getting to know and love the family she lived with, and seeing how generously they accepted me into the family.”

She is happy to discuss development work, email crockerk@umich.edu.

Image: Crocker fords a small river with her Peace Corps-issue mountain bike, which was her primary transportation during her service.