Ecology

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You’re Not the Only One Stressing About Climate Change

Tuesday, August 28th, 2018

By Philip Kiefer

Stress is universal – possibly the most constant aspect of life on Earth. And it’s not just for things with a brainstem. Plants are constantly reacting to their environments; they’re just more private about it. They’re constantly adjusting internal chemical signals, redistributing sugar and water, and sometimes jettisoning unneeded bits in the name of survival.

Lyntana Brougham, a visiting scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC), is using these stress responses to look inside a salt marsh. By understanding how marsh plants like cordgrasses and sedges respond to higher temperatures, she hopes to develop a clearer picture of how climate change may stress the marsh as a whole.

Cordgrass illuminated by a flash of light.

Cordgrass at the GCREW marsh. (Philip Kiefer/SERC)

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For The First Time, Biologists Track Cownose Rays to Florida and Back

Thursday, August 23rd, 2018

by Kristen Minogue

Every summer, cownose rays stream into Chesapeake Bay to mate and give birth to their pups. When autumn comes, they disappear—presumably to migrate south, but no one knew for certain where they spent the winter. Now, after a three-year tagging study published Aug. 23 and led by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC), scientists have solved the mystery. Cownose rays all along the Atlantic winter near Cape Canaveral, Florida, and it’s likely they return to the same spots each summer. Click to continue »

Posted in Ecology, Fisheries | 1 Response »

The Secret Orchids of Palau

Friday, July 20th, 2018

Three orchids found only on Palau: Dendrobium brachyanthum (white), Crepidium calcereum (purple) and Dipodium freycinetioides (yellow with red spots). Photos by Benjamin Crain/Smithsonian

by Kristen Minogue

Most visitors to Palau don’t come for its forests. The chain of 300-plus Pacific islands is more famous for its coral reefs, giant rays and hundreds of flamboyantly-colored fish species.

“It’s known as one of the top dive sites on the planet,” said Benjamin Crain, a postdoc at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC). Crain is the exception. He’s visited Palau twice in the last year. Naturally fair-skinned, with a dark blond beard and ponytail, Crain has earned plenty of suntans and callouses trekking across the islands’ uneven terrain. He was seeking some of Palau’s forgotten gems on land—its rich diversity of orchids. Click to continue »

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“Orchids In Classrooms” Turns Sixth-Graders Into Citizen Scientists

Monday, July 9th, 2018

By Hannah-Marie Garcia, science writing intern

Think back to your early childhood science classes. Was there
ever a time you had to watch a plant grow? Your first natural sciences teacher may have used plant growth to explain basic concepts of plant biology. The process is a rewarding learning experience for students to observe their hard work pay off as those first few leaves sprout from the soil.

Walker Mill Middle School sixth-grade students and their orchid experiments.
(Credit: Hannah-Marie Garcia/SERC)

Now, imagine the work you did was part of a larger scientific project, with real-world applications. That is exactly what four sixth-grade classes are doing this year at Walker Mill Middle School. Located in a Capitol Heights neighborhood of the Prince George’s County school system, Walker Mill is one of seven schools in the Maryland area working with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) on a project called “Orchids in Classrooms.”

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800 Million Tons of Blue Carbon May Lie Buried in U.S. Tidal Wetlands

Thursday, June 21st, 2018

by Kristen Minogue

Man with muddy clothes in grassy wetland

Smithsonian ecologist James Holmquist explores a wetland in Humboldt Bay, California. (Credit: Lauren Brown)

It’s a true story of “grassroots science.” A team of over two dozen researchers set out to estimate how much carbon tidal wetlands across the U.S. can store. But the official datasets didn’t give them much info to work with. So they pooled their resources, creating a new dataset of nearly 2,000 wetland soil cores.

Their final estimate: Nearly 800 million tons of carbon may lie buried in the tidal wetlands of the contiguous U.S. The team published the discovery June 21, in a new study in Scientific Reports led by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. The study also leaves another major legacy. The 1,959 soil cores they compiled could help finally unlock some secrets of wetlands, ecosystems that have been overlooked for centuries.

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Understanding Sharks One Tag at a Time

Thursday, June 14th, 2018

by Mollie McNeel

Smooth dogfish shark (Mustelus canis), one of four species Smithsonian scientists are tagging and tracking along the Atlantic. (Mollie McNeel)

Sharks. They’re everyone’s favorite underwater enemy. Between nerve-wracking dramas like Jaws to stories about prehistoric mega-sharks, we have all but made the shark species a completely fictionalized being. But scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) are hoping to change that.

Charles “Chuck” Bangley, a marine ecologist at SERC, travels up and down the East Coast catching and tagging four species of sharks found in the Chesapeake Bay and along the Atlantic: smooth dogfish sharks (Mustelus canis), bull sharks (Carcharhinus leucas), blacktip sharks (Carcharhinus limbatus) and dusky sharks (Carcharhinus obscurus).

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Confessions of a Real Life Scientist: Grasslands of the World

Friday, May 25th, 2018

Kim Komatsu stands in a grassland at Konza Prairie Biological Station, in Manhattan, Kansas.
(Credit: Cynthia Chang)

by Kim Komatsu,
ecosystem conservation ecologist

One of the unexpected perks of my life as a scientist has been the opportunity to travel for work. As a grassland ecologist, my studies have taken me to South Africa and Tanzania to investigate the roles of fire, grazing, and nutrient availability in determining plant growth and species diversity. In these exotic field sites, I would drive by impalas, zebras, elephants, giraffes, cheetahs, lions, and leopards before arriving at my experimental plots. Then I would spend my day working in the hot sun to survey the plant communities in my plots, all the while guarded by a park ranger with a loaded rifle to protect me from the very animals I marveled at on the way to the field site. (Thankfully those rifles were never fired during my trips.) With grasslands all over the world, I have many more grassland types on my research wish list, including the Mongolian steppes, the Pampas of South America, the Cerrado of Brazil, and the rangelands of Australia and Europe. Click to continue »

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Wetlands of the Warmer World

Tuesday, May 22nd, 2018

SERC researchers race to find out how higher temps will affect coastal wetlands

by Mollie McNeel

Genevieve Noyce collects a blade of marsh sedge to measure in lab, in the Smithsonian’s “wetland of the future.”
(Kristen Minogue/SERC)

Wetlands are typically filled with the sounds of crickets chirping, bees buzzing and frogs croaking. But at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC), those are all accompanied by the whirring of motor-powered pumps. These pumps are driving air from hexagonal carbon dioxide chambers to a greenhouse gas analyzer, helping scientists create a “wetland of the future.”

Scientists at SERC are attempting to predict how the warming climate and rising carbon dioxide levels will impact coastal wetlands with an experiment called SMARTX—Salt Marsh Accretion Response to Temperature eXperiment. It’s one of many futuristic experiments on the center’s Global Change Research Wetland.

“Wetlands are a really important part of our planet in terms of storing carbon, and we’re hoping to get an idea of how higher temperatures will affect them,” said Genevieve Noyce, an ecology postdoc at SERC, as she moved among grass-covered warming plots, measuring gas exchange over five-minute intervals.

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Wanted: The Hunt for Chinese Mitten Crabs Is Back On

Tuesday, May 15th, 2018

Chinese mitten crab held in outstretched hand

A Chinese mitten crab found in Chesapeake Beach, Md., in 2007. Chinese mitten crabs are most recognizable by their brown, spiny shells and furry “mittened” claws. (Credit: SERC)

by Kristen Minogue

An army of invading crabs has disappeared. But scientists are skeptical about whether they’re gone for good, or just hiding. As warmer temps lure people onto the water, Smithsonian scientists are asking boaters to report any sightings of the elusive Chinese mitten crab.

In 1992, a team of fishermen unexpectedly caught a Chinese mitten crab while trawling for shrimp in southern San Francisco Bay. From there, sightings of the brown, furry-clawed crustaceans exploded. In 1998, nearly three quarters of a million appeared in the North Bay alone. The mitten crabs threatened to collapse river banks with their burrows and made fishing nearly impossible in some places, as they clogged gear, stole bait or ate trapped fish.

“It was spectacularly abundant. A true outbreak,” said Greg Ruiz, a biologist with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC). “And it clogged the water intakes. Water is the economy in California.”

Mitten crab numbers remained high through 2005. And then they vanished. Chinese mitten crabs haven’t been seen in California since 2010. Click to continue »

Posted in California, Ecology, Invasive Species | 2 Responses »

Is Your Plant Dead or Just Dormant?

Thursday, May 10th, 2018

by Mollie McNeel

Pink lady’s slipper (Cypripedium acaule), an orchid that can remain dormant for over 20 years. (Credit: SERC)

If a gardener told you that her plants had died and had come back to life years later, you might think she had gone crazy. But actually, she may be on to something.

Some fully-grown plants can “hibernate” in the soil for up to 20 years, researchers from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) discovered in a study published in the May issue of Ecology Letters.

The so-called “Rip Van Winkle” plants, nicknamed after the fictional character who slept for two decades, include many species of orchids and some ferns. Click to continue »

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Shorelines

Life and science at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center

Ecology

...now browsing by category

You’re Not the Only One Stressing About Climate Change

For The First Time, Biologists Track Cownose Rays to Florida and Back

The Secret Orchids of Palau

“Orchids In Classrooms” Turns Sixth-Graders Into Citizen Scientists

800 Million Tons of Blue Carbon May Lie Buried in U.S. Tidal Wetlands

Understanding Sharks One Tag at a Time

Confessions of a Real Life Scientist: Grasslands of the World

Wetlands of the Warmer World

Wanted: The Hunt for Chinese Mitten Crabs Is Back On

Is Your Plant Dead or Just Dormant?