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Invaders escape persecution from parasites

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

by Monaca Noble

Invasion was a godsend for the rough periwinkle snail, which managed to escape its flatworm parasites. (World Register of Marine Species)

Most organisms have several types of parasites associated with them. However, when species are introduced, they may lose some of their natural parasites through the invasion process. Or sometimes, parasites that survive the journey don’t do very well in the new environment. In essence invasion acts as a filter limiting the number of parasites that are transported and introduced. In science this process is called the parasite escape hypothesis.

Take the common cat parasite Toxoplasma gondii. T. gondii‘s complex two-host life cycle makes it difficult for it to adapt to new places. The parasite has two phases, a sexual phase and an asexual phase. The sexual phase can only take place in the cat (primary host), but the asexual phase can occur in several mammal species (secondary host) including cats, mice, humans, and birds. Because the parasite must infect a cat to reproduce and survive, its preferred secondary host is a mouse. If a mouse infected with T. gondii were introduced into an area with no cats, the parasite would not be able to survive.
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Toughest Shellfish in the Sea?

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

by Kristen Minogue

Blue mussels (Credit: Meriseal)

Some species can survive just about anywhere. Take blue mussels, a group of shellfish whose habitat stretches from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. Over the last several decades, biologists have thrown all kinds of tests at them – heat, cold, saltwater, freshwater, low oxygen. They’ve even tried drying them out. Almost nothing fazes these animals. For invasion scientists trying to figure out how far they could spread, that’s a scary prospect.
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Posted in Ecology, Fisheries, Interns, Invasive Species, Publications | 3 Responses »

Snowmageddon vs. Caribbean Creep

Monday, January 9th, 2012

by Monaca Noble

SERC's Green Village during Snowmageddon February 2010 (Stephen Sanford)

Remember Snowmageddon 2010, the east coast storms that dumped up to three feet of snow over the mid-Atlantic? The February snowstorm was the largest in the region in nearly 90 years, resulting in the heaviest snowfall on record for Delaware (26.5 inches) and the third heaviest snowfall in Baltimore (24.8 inches). The storm made a big impression on Dr. João Canning-Clode and other scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, who began to wonder if the storm, and the December/January cold snap that preceded it, would lead to the deaths and potential disappearance of marine invaders from southern climates.
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Posted in Climate Change, Ecology, Extreme Weather, Invasive Species, Publications | 1 Response »

How Plants (Occasionally) Escape the Food Chain

Friday, December 23rd, 2011

by Kristen Minogue

Leaf shredded by insects. Credit: Marina LaForgia

It’s a trick worthy of any spy thriller: to elude an enemy, hide among something it won’t notice. Or, to be extra safe, something it finds incredibly disgusting. It turns out the same strategy can work for plants that don’t want to get eaten. Sometimes.

For the last seven months, intern Marina LaForgia has kept tabs on tree saplings in more than a dozen different environments and watched the game of ecological survival play out. As she tracked their progress, she searched for an answer to a deceptively simple question: Is diversity good for plants? When it comes to the food chain, will hungry herbivores pass over tasty plants if they’re surrounded by less palatable ones?
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Posted in Ecology, Interns, Publications | 8 Responses »

Why We Like Science

Friday, November 4th, 2011

Above: One perk of student research at SERC. Photo courtesy of the Phytoplankton Lab

It’s impossible to work here without some compulsion to understand the natural world – whether it’s colonial tunicates that bear a creepy resemblance to the Borg or endangered orchids that need microscopic fungi to survive. So when Smithsonian Magazine launched a “Why I Like Science” series on their blog Surprising Science, we took full advantage of the opportunity to share our enthusiasm. Here’s how four staff responded when asked why science is cool.

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Posted in Publications | 1 Response »

Hurricanes, Snakeheads and Dead Zones: What 2011 Weather Meant for the Chesapeake

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

by Kristen Minogue

Credit: NOAA Photo Library

Let’s face it, the East Coast has had an incredibly bizarre year. In 2011 so far, we’ve seen the coldest January on record, the hottest month on record (July), a hurricane, a tropical storm and an earthquake (we’re not even going to touch the last one – we’ll leave that to our colleagues at Natural History). And to top it off, August and September drenched us with uncharacteristically high rainfall. While SERC tends to focus on the long-term picture rather than brief snapshots, this year has prompted more than a few raised eyebrows among our scientists. What does it mean for the environment? What does it mean for Chesapeake Bay? And can any of it be linked to climate change?

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Posted in Climate Change, Ecology, Extreme Weather, Invasive Species, Publications, Water Quality | 3 Responses »

The Satellite That Could Save the Coasts

Friday, September 16th, 2011

by Kristen Minogue

On a hot afternoon in July, a team of researchers sailing down Chesapeake Bay stumbled across a cluster of striped bass floating in the water. About a dozen of the iridescent black and silver fish bobbed at the surface near the ship’s bow. All of them were dead.

Scientists prepare to measure how light interacts with particles in the Bay. Credit: Carlos DelCastillo

The fish kill came out of a low-oxygen zone near Annapolis, just one symptom of the Bay’s declining health. Overflows of nutrients from farms and cities have fueled massive growths of algae that cut off light and oxygen to the Bay’s lower levels.

“There was a very quiet moment between everybody on the boat,” recalled Vienna Saccomanno, one of the Smithsonian research interns aboard when it was discovered. “You kind of knew what everyone was thinking, feeling empowered to continue with this research and hopefully contribute to prevention of this in our water system.”

The scientists on board weren’t there simply to document the Bay’s many ailments, however. They had joined the 10-day cruise to pave the way for a much larger goal: a geostationary satellite that could provide constant, detailed coverage of coastal health.
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Posted in Ecology, Interns, Publications, Solar Radiation, Water Quality | Comments Off on The Satellite That Could Save the Coasts

Marshes, Microbes and the Other Blue Carbon

Tuesday, September 6th, 2011

by Kristen Minogue

Tidal marshes have long been lauded as carbon sinks for their ability to pull CO₂ from the atmosphere and bury it in the soil, what scientists have taken to calling “blue carbon.” But wetlands are also notorious methane emitters. Now ecologists suspect that only a select few wetland types can reliably act as sinks, and that number may shrink as sea levels rise.

The Kirkpatrick Marsh on SERC's campus in Edgewater, MD. Tidal wetlands both store and release greenhouse gases. Which will prevail as the planet warms is a question ecologists are still trying to answer. (Credit: Gary Peresta/SERC)

Scientists estimate wetlands are responsible for anywhere from 15 to 45 percent of all methane emissions – a wide range that makes predicting their role in climate change difficult. However, that role could prove critical in the years to come. Methane (CH₄) is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Over the course of a century, a single gram of methane is roughly 25 times more powerful than a gram of CO₂.
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Posted in Climate Change, Ecology, Interns, Publications | 2 Responses »

Hunt for a Missing Nutrient

Wednesday, August 17th, 2011

by Kristen Minogue

Intern Ginny Leviton (left) and Vienna Saccomanno sample groundwater from a drainage ditch, trying to pin down the exact spot where the nitrogen goes missing. (Credit: Tom Jordan)

The Choptank watershed has SERC researchers baffled. On the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay, roughly a 75-minute drive from SERC, the groundwater flowing into the Choptank River passes through a cornfield – a likely source of nitrogen, a nutrient that can wreak havoc on the Bay’s ecosystem if it runs too high. But something is happening to the nitrogen here before it reaches the Bay. Nutrient ecologist Tom Jordan and his research team have spent the better part of a year trying to figure out what.
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Posted in Ecology, Fisheries, Interns, Land Use, Publications, Water Quality | 6 Responses »

Intern Logs: Witness to an Invasion

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

Students on the SERC sampling team, with the 23-inch female snakehead fish they helped ensnare: Diana Sisson (intern), Alison Everett (visiting student), and Philip Choy (intern).

First-hand accounts of the snakehead capture from two interns on the seining survey.

It was around 3 p.m., and it was time to pull the last seine net of the day. We had been out on the water since 10 a.m., and we had already caught a few rarer species, including a stingray and a few juvenile Common Carp. Research biologists Eric Bah and Stacey Havard volunteered to pull what may be the seine of their career.
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Posted in Ecology, Interns, Invasive Species, Publications | 4 Responses »

Shorelines

Life and science at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center

Publications

...now browsing by category

Invaders escape persecution from parasites

Toughest Shellfish in the Sea?

Snowmageddon vs. Caribbean Creep

How Plants (Occasionally) Escape the Food Chain

Why We Like Science

Hurricanes, Snakeheads and Dead Zones: What 2011 Weather Meant for the Chesapeake

The Satellite That Could Save the Coasts

Marshes, Microbes and the Other Blue Carbon

Hunt for a Missing Nutrient

Intern Logs: Witness to an Invasion