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Research and Field Notes — Page 34

For now, forget biofuels in reserves

Ethanol as the next generation of alternative fuels has stirred significant controversy. While some tout its lower-than-gasoline greenhouse-gas emissions and its usefulness in creating carbon sinks in its agricultural fields, many other ecologists call ethanol production the most inefficient of alternative fuel options. Even the most optimistic scenarios still show that using current technologies, it can take years – in…

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Climate change may reorganize Western fauna

Bioclimatic models attempt to draw correlations between species distributions and climate patterns.  As ecologists and climatologists hone these models, they become a useful tool for predicting future species distributions based on projected climate patterns. In the March issue of Ecology, Joshua Lawler of the University of Washington and his colleagues undertook a huge task: using a bioclimatic model, they estimated…

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Ecosystems and the public good, Darwin style

This week there has been no shortage of Darwin-related events to attend about town in Washington, D.C., as science and environmental  groups have clamored to put on talks, events and celebrations commemorating Darwin’s legacy. Today I attended a symposium sponsored by the National Academies , titled “Twenty-first Century Ecosystems: Systemic Risk and the Public Good.”  The session I attended on…

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All hail the founding father

Charles Darwin was a great thinker, philosopher and naturalist who spent 20 years observing, tracking and analyzing the natural world. His collected data resulted in what is probably the most influential book in all of biology: his abstract about organismal evolution, “On The Origin Of Species”.* Today the theory of evolution by natural selection is the cornerstone of biology. The…

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Finding the hottest of the hotspots

Biodiversity hotspots are geographic areas that have both high endemism and high risk for species extinctions. Since the inception of the term two decades ago, these areas have been the focus for conservation projects attempting to save their disproportionally high numbers of endangered species. With science funding on the decline and a shortage researchers available, however, the support and manpower…

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Carbon doesn’t ‘sink’

Oceans are a reliable carbon sink in scientists’ climate change models because they absorb so much of the atmosphere’s excess carbon dioxide. But this good news for climate change is bad news for ocean life:  dissolved carbon is making the oceans more acidic, which threatens the balance of the marine food chain. That dissolved carbon (and a slew of other…

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Reflections on light pollution

In a paper published online this month in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, ESA member Bruce Robertson and his colleagues in biology and biophysics explore the concept of polarized light pollution. They synthesize work that shows how light reflected off of human-made surfaces can confuse animals and alter their behavior, leading to injury or even death. The American Museum…

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How fence lizards got their shimmy

Eastern Fence Lizards are rampant across the American southeast but, in recent years, they’ve begun to coexist with invasive red fire ants from South America. Because the lizards and the ants have similar requirements (terrestrial areas with abundant sunlight), they often find themselves occupying the same space. And the ants don’t like it. Tracy Langkilde of Penn State University studies…

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Climate change doubles tree deaths

Tree deaths have more than doubled in the western U.S. in the past 20-30 years, and the culprit is climate change, according to a paper published Friday in Science. Warming has all kinds of consequences for species ranges.  Changes in temperature can narrow a species’ range or move it latitudinally through changes in average yearly temperatures and alterations of the…

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Cleaner, better biofuels?

The promise of biofuels – fuel made from plant material – has taken a nosedive as scientists predict its generation could cause far more greenhouse gas emissions than it would make up for in preventing the use of fossil fuels.  But a Michigan State chemist has asserted in a paper in Environmental Science & Technology online that if sustainable management…

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Embracing invasive species: A murder-mystery tale

Here’s a story of species introduction, invasion and trophic cascades to boggle the mind of even the most seasoned community ecologist. Macquarie Island is a 60-mile square piece of paradise in the southwest Pacific Ocean, south of Australia and New Zealand where one can find four species of seals and five of penguins. In the early 19th century, feral cats…

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The ecology within

The concept of biological control is no new idea in ecology – people have been transporting living things to control other living things since the late 18th century. The most famous examples seem to be the big failures, where biocontrols become invasive themselves – such as mongooses introduced to Hawaii to control rats but that instead decimated populations of native…

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