Interviews
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Friday, June 16th, 2017
by Kristen Minogue
Kim Komatsu in Konza Prairie, Kansas, home to one of the first Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) programs. (Credit: Arjun Potter)
Kim Komatsu does big-picture ecology. The newest senior scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Komatsu is leading the center’s Ecosystem Conservation Lab. But while working on large-scale global experiments, she also delves into the microscopic world of bacteria. In this Q&A, discover how bacteria give certain plants an edge, and how she blends the very large and the very small.
This is the first of three profiles about the young scientists heading SERC’s newest labs. Edited for brevity and clarity.
You’ve done a great deal of work with legumes—plants in the bean and pea family. Can you talk about their weird relationship with rhizobial bacteria?
The [legume] plants and bacteria are in a mutualism where the plants fix carbon into sugar and give it to the bacteria, and the bacteria are able to take nitrogen from the atmosphere and give it to the plants. This is a source of nitrogen that no other plants have access to. Most plants have to take [nitrogen] up from the soil. Because of this mutualism, legumes can get nitrogen from another source, and that often makes them very successful in different, especially harsh environments….
It’s interesting to think about the different legume species, and how good they are at enforcing cooperation from the bacteria. Thinking about the bacteria as not only potentially being beneficial, but [also possibly] cheating the system—trying to take carbon from the plants and not give back as much nitrogen, especially under high soil nitrogen conditions. Click to continue »
Posted in Climate Change, Ecology, Interviews | Comments Off on Q&A: Kim Komatsu, Ecosystem Conservation Ecologist
Wednesday, September 14th, 2016
Student learning science with Balliett’s comic
by Heather Soulen
Middle school can be a tough and unforgiving rite of passage, filled with raging hormones, ill-fitting highwater pants, voices akin to trumpet-wielding geese, and a multitude of distractions. Trying to learn while being swept up in puberty’s turbulence can be challenging. Equally challenging is trying to teach science to often-distracted tweens and teens. Right now, as most U.S. schools begin a new school year, some science educators might be looking for ways to engage their middle-school students with science. One science educator suggests meeting them where their interests lie – comics.
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Posted in Classes and Events, Climate Change, Ecology, Education, Interviews | Comments Off on Students ASSEMBLE! How comics can help with science learning
Tags: art, comics, Cool School Rap, middle school, NGSS, PaxCon, PaxCon2016, Science Education, science learning, STEAM, STEM, teachers, teaching
Friday, August 12th, 2016
by Emily Li, science writing intern
SERC intern Cole Caceres collects Japanese invasive beetles from a hormone trap for his experiment (Photo: Emily Li/SERC)
Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) intern Cole Caceres has two passions: science and cooking. He enjoys doing research and adding to the larger body of knowledge, but he hasn’t given up on owning his own restaurant. When he’s not studying nitrogen filtration as a laboratory assistant at the University of California, Davis, he’s probably watching Food Network or frying chicken wings in a sweet soy sauce glaze.
But Caceres found the perfect mix of his interests as an intern with SERC’s Terrestrial Ecology Lab. There, he cooks for invasive Japanese beetles, hoping to help shed light on their dietary preferences so that plant conservation initiatives can be more fully informed—one beetle bite at a time.
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Posted in Ecology, Interns, Interviews, Invasive Species, Land Use, SERC Sites and Scenes | Comments Off on Food for Thought: Cooking for Invasive Beetles
Friday, August 12th, 2016
By Emily Li, science writing intern
You might have heard of The Giving Tree, a children’s picture book by Shel Silverstein about a boy and a tree. As the boy grew, he began to want more from the tree, and the tree happily gave and gave and gave: her apples, her branches, and even her trunk. While Silverstein’s heartbreaking story was a fiction, the plot is happening in wetlands around the world—and this time, it’s for real. Marshes improve water quality, mitigate hurricane damage, sequester atmospheric carbon, and serve as ideal habitats and nurseries for wildlife. In return, as sea levels rise, they’re in line to be the first casualties.
SERC intern Jefferson Riera shows off his sunburn after a day in the field. (Photo: Emily Li/SERC)
That said, marshes are hardly a serene paradise. To Smithsonian Environmental Research Center intern Jefferson Riera, wetlands are ruined shoes caked in mud. Wetlands are wasp stings on his lips. Wetlands are spider webs of scratches from marsh vegetation. Wetlands are sunburns so severe his skin doesn’t match itself anymore.
And yet, he knows that they’re worth protecting. That’s why he, and the rest of SERC’s Ecological Modeling Lab, are working to develop a baseline understanding of local marsh elevation to educate policymakers on the state of wetlands—before their fates are sealed by the sea.
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Posted in Climate Change, Ecology, From the Field, Interns, Interviews, Land Use, SERC Sites and Scenes | Comments Off on Sink or Swim? Divining the Fate of Life-Giving Wetlands
Monday, August 8th, 2016
SERC intern Lauren Mosesso takes a water quality reading (Photo: Emily Li/SERC)
by Emily Li
One year ago, a team of scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center set out to restore a stream running through its campus in Edgewater, Md. No one ever said it would be simple.
At first glance, the restoration of Muddy Creek seems to be a closed case. Before the project began, the creek’s severely eroded banks were disconnected from its floodplains, turning the stream into a raging river during storms that stripped nutrients from the system and dumped them in the Chesapeake Bay. Now, after a facelift in January, the creek is nearly unrecognizable. Its gentle banks cradle the wide, slow-moving stream littered with leaves, ferns, and an abundance of other plant life. Choruses of croaks fill the air, accompanied by the hum of insects, bird chatter, and the occasional splash of frogs retreating into the cloudy water.
But another layer of mystery is clouding the waters. A mat of red Leptothrix bacteria coats some sections of the site, leading SERC senior scientist Dr. Thomas Jordan and his colleagues to ask a host of new questions. Are the bacteria harmful to the ecosystem, or an important part of the food web? Are they a short-term phenomenon or a permanent fixture to the stream? Exactly how much area do they cover? One SERC intern is hoping to find out.
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Posted in Ecology, From the Field, Interns, Interviews, Land Use, SERC Sites and Scenes, Water Quality | 1 Response »
Thursday, August 4th, 2016
SERC intern Michelle Hauer sets up her soundscape ecology tank experiment (Photo: Emily Li/SERC)
by Emily Li
In high school, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center intern Michelle Hauer fell in love with sound. She discovered the cello, which she insisted on bringing to her internship this summer despite having limited space and housing. But her affair with sound didn’t stop there, even as she was exploring her interest in science. While still in high school, she wrote a paper on the effects of naval sonar on marine mammals. Then, while attending DePaul University, Hauer came across the relatively new field of soundscape ecology through a Chicago-based organization called Chicago Wildsounds—and she hasn’t looked back. Now, as a summer intern in SERC’s Fish and Invertebrate Ecology Lab, Hauer is studying the darker side of sound by researching how noise pollution can affect marine wildlife in the Chesapeake Bay and beyond.
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Posted in Ecology, Fisheries, Interns, Interviews, SERC Sites and Scenes, Water Quality | Comments Off on Making Noise About Marine Sound Pollution
Monday, August 1st, 2016
SERC intern Jasmin Graham cleans her equipment of marine organisms (Photo: Emily Li/SERC)
by Emily Li
Watching educational programs like Animal Planet or That’s My Baby—a series that documents pregnant animals—might evoke memories of flickering classroom projectors for most. But for Jasmin Graham, an intern with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC), these shows were her childhood. Her love for marine science and wildlife followed her through high school science fairs and university research on shark genetics at the College of Charleston. Now, at an internship with SERC’s Ocean Acidification Lab, she studies acidification not in the open ocean, but in a far more dramatic arena, where the marine celebrities she grew up with may be at risk.
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Posted in Climate Change, Ecology, Extreme Weather, Fisheries, From the Field, Interns, Interviews, SERC Sites and Scenes, Water Quality | 1 Response »
Friday, July 22nd, 2016
Anna Nordseth surveys clay caterpillars for predation damage in BiodiversiTREE plot (Credit: Emily Li/SERC)
by Emily Li
Anna Nordseth, a summer intern for the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center’s Terrestrial Ecology Lab, wasn’t surprised to be taking work home the first week and a half of her internship. What she wasn’t expecting was to be making nearly a thousand clay caterpillars.
Each caterpillar began life as a half gram of green clay, with a wire spine and ends rolled into a worm-like silhouette. By the time Nordseth had finished—several podcasts and three seasons of House of Cards later—she had 900 caterpillars and the hand cramps to prove it. But she was ready to begin her research.
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Posted in Climate Change, Ecology, From the Field, Interns, Interviews, Land Use, SERC Sites and Scenes | Comments Off on How Clay Caterpillars Help Unlock Biodiversity’s Secrets
Monday, July 18th, 2016
Tony Dove in the garden pond in front of the SERC Administration Building. (Photo: Emily Li/SERC)
by Emily Li
What do we do when native plants lose? About five years ago, the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and the U.S. Department of Agriculture joined forces to back up seed sources of native plant species, just in case something threatens to wipe them out—but for some species, it looks like we might need them sooner rather than later. Learn more about the partnership and the pros of gardening with natives in this edited Q&A with Smithsonian Environmental Research Center horticulturalist Tony Dove.
Can you tell me about the native sentinel plant species partnership between SERC and the Department of Agriculture?
The Department of Agriculture has a woody plant germplasm conservation center in Beltsville. And what they do is they go around to different locations throughout the country and they collect seeds of various native plants. They grow those native plants in a nursery with the expectation that they will then take those plants and put them out into landscapes in different areas, so that there will always be a seed source for those particular plants if something tragically happens in the area where those plants grew.
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Posted in Ecology, Interviews, Invasive Species, Land Use, SERC Sites and Scenes | Comments Off on Q&A: Preparing a Safety Net for Native Plants
Thursday, July 14th, 2016
Christina Simkanin prepares to dive to survey ascidians. (Credit: Natalia Filip, University of Victoria, BC, Canada)
by Emily Li
Smithsonian biologists are on the trail of invasive ascidians. But with roughly 2300 species worldwide, describing these marine filter feeders (also known as “tunicates” or “sea squirts”) for a Most Wanted sign is tricky. Some ascidians are solitary; some are social. Some breed sexually, some asexually. Some, like Botrylloides magnicoecum, form large colonies of what look like octopus tentacles ringed in gold and highlighter blue. Others, like Rhopalaea crassa, resemble a cross between ghostly butterfly cocoons and pastel-colored pencil grips, while Polycarpa aurata is bulbous and mustard-yellow, with navy-blue veins that flare into trumpets.
When they invade new territory, ascidians can leave trails of damage in their wakes—but not always in ways scientists predict. In a new study published in the July issue of Marine Biology, a team of Smithsonian researchers, including marine ecologist Christina Simkanin of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC), tracked their invasions across North America.
What they found seemed simple at first: North America’s 26 non-native ascidian species have spread so much they’re now established along nearly 3000 miles of its coastlines. But a few surprises were hiding in the details.
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Posted in Ecology, Fisheries, Interviews, Invasive Species | Comments Off on Invasive Ascidians Are a (Potentially Delicious) Recipe for Disaster
