A Week in Yellowstone

I just finished up a week in Montana and Wyoming with a group of ninth graders, studying the history of wolf reintroduction in Yellowstone, learning a bit more about the wildlife while we were here. We booked part of our program with the Yellowstone Association, the education arm of the park, and I would highly recommend them for educational groups or for any visitors looking for informative and helpful guides. They were like classroom/field trip teachers for three days; they got to know our students, and they really knew their stuff when it came to natural history, archaeology, geology, and ecology of the region. They also provided transportation in short tour vans, binoculars, and spotting scopes. As our students had been studying wolf reintroduction, the Association arranged for us to meet with two ranchers up in the Gardiner Valley, Martin Davis and Bruce Malcolm. The conversations with these gentlemen helped us all to gain some perspective on the complexity of the issues surrounding wolves, hunting, ranching, ecology, and economics; the students and teachers alike were moved by their equanimity, common sense, and insight. The ranching life is not one that too many of our students are familiar with, and it was eye opening for them (and me).

The week started out snowy and in the 20s, but got a bit warmer and sunnier each day. It is April in Northern Wyoming!

It was a pretty incredible trip.

 

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On zoonotic diseases and “Spillover”

Image: W. W. Norton & Company

So, there IS a new David Quammen book! This one deals with the crossover of infectious disease into humans; a fascinating, terrifying, and all-too-common process called zoonosis. Diseases such as bubonic plague, swine flu, HIV, and Ebola fall into this category. It’s important to note that transmission by an organism doesn’t make a disease zoonotic; rather, zoonoses involve a “jump” of a species-specific pathogen to a new species (in this case humans). Swine flu is a good example. Normally, we don’t catch the flu that pigs catch — the virus is great at infecting pig cells, not ours. But when that influenza virus mutates (which it does often), some of those mutated versions may be able to infect us (note: some of those mutations might also be harmless to us; some mutations will render the virus ineffective entirely — but we don’t hear about those versions. This is natural selection, of course.). This situation can be especially problematic because that recently mutated virus, in addition to being “new” to the world, is also totally “new” to our immune systems (advantage: virus). Throw in the fact that we’re putting ourselves in contact with more and more potential “new” pathogens all over the world (travel, exploration, destruction of rain forests, etc.) and we end up with a lot more potential diseases to combat. My seventh graders do a project on infectious diseases after studying bacteria and viruses, and the subject of this book ties in nicely with that project. So, in addition to new books this fall from Chabon, Helprin, McEwan, Ruhlman, and Kean, now I’m looking forward to finding some time to read Quammen’s “Spillover.”

Here’s the trailer for the book from the publisher, W. W. Norton:

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Ready to Fledge

Well, just about ready. In this fairly non-scientific estimation (not actually counting days since hatching, nor counting pin feathers), I think these 4 little Carolina Wren chicks nesting on our back porch garden shelf are about ready to leave the nest.

This is the second time wrens have built a nest here on our porch. They seem to have become desensitized to the opening and closing of our screen door. A clutch of chicks fledged in 2010; they took last summer off (started a nest and then abandoned it), and they’re back. Curious to know if it’s the same pair.

Some interesting bits about Carolina Wrens from the Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior:

• Most wren species are monogamous. They defend all-purpose territories, and they usually pair for life.
• Male Carolina Wrens sing an individual song over and over, in bouts of anywhere from five to 250 repetitions, before switching to another. (I can attest to that.) They average about 32 songs per male, which is not quite as many as the Marsh Wren who clocks in around 50 songs.
• Winter and Carolina Wrens are perhaps the most catholic of wrens in their nesting preferences, placing their cup nests in crevices, low vegetation, or even on the ground [or on porch shelves].
• Wrens in N. America lay an average of 4 to 6 eggs (subelliptical to oval; white, cream, or pink with brownish mottling); the female incubates the eggs from 12 to 15 days.
• The altricial young have natal down when they hatch, primarily on the head and back. They are usually fed by both parents until feldging, which occurs at 10 – 17 days in the small-bodied species… Both parents continue to feed the young for about two weeks  after fledging, unless the female begins another clutch, in which case the male often takes sole responsibility for the brood.

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In the Field – Predator-Prey Ecology

We finished the field component of the predator-prey ecology class this week in the Daly Creek drainage, Montana, Yellowstone National Park. We worked to collect information on how elk browsing habits related to physical barriers in aspen stands affects recruitment of aspen saplings. Here’s a bit of what we saw.

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Halls of Learning

This is a nostalgic post.

I walked into Lewis Hall this morning for the classroom portion of my predator-prey ecology class, and was instantly transported back to undergrad, to that great typical old-school biology building: long halls, worn stone steps, stairs on either end of the building, glass display cases with taxidermied birds and mammals, frosted glass on the top half of the wooden doors, labs with those long black tables, microscopes in cabinets. Now part of the nostalgia included the fact that the building isn’t air conditioned, and it does have that special biology lab smell. If you spent any significant time in Arey, before they built Olin, you know what I’m talking about. It really brought me right back.

Tomorrow’s classroom is in the Daly Creek drainage, which is in the section of Yellowstone National Park that extends along the Continental Divide into Montana, the most northwestern section of the park. We’ll be looking at predator-prey interactions between wolves and elk, to see what effects those interactions have on aspen growth in the area. The big question relates to whether the observable positive effects on aspen growth (since wolf reintroduction in 1996/97) are due to behavioral changes in the elk (the so-called “ecology of fear”), or whether it’s strictly a density-mediated change, related to the reduced population of elk (which were at an historic high before wolf reintroduction, at numbers upwards of 20,000!). Time to collect some data…

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Predators and Prey

image via montana.edu

I’m in Bozeman this week for an MSSE class on predator-prey ecology, which I’m really psyched about. Two (long) days in the classroom, and three days out in the field in Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley. I walked around campus this afternoon, got my bearings, and I’m looking forward to a good burger before I settle in for some light reading on trophic cascades, carrying capacities, isoclines, and the paradox of enrichment. I haven’t seen any elk or wolves yet, but when I do I’ll post some pictures.

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Links for 2-14-12: Mitosis, Wind Farms, and Bee Behavior

A Mitosis Mystery Solved: How Chromosomes Align Perfectly in a Dividing Cell. via Science Daily.

Should You Drink Bottled Water (and other questions for Charles Fishman), by Dan Pink.

‘Mountain Lion’ Spotted at UConn Health Center More Likely a Bobcat, via New Canaan Patch.

Rising Ocean Acidity Worst for Caribbean and Pacific, via ENN.com.

World’s Biggest Offshore Windfarm Officially Connected to the Grid, via ENN.com.

“We Can See You” Display Deters Bee-botherers, via Nature News Blog.

and

Biology Labs for Valentine’s Day! from Science Stuff blog.

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On Fungi and the Recycling of Human Nutrients

Really interesting and thought provoking TED talk (is that redundant?) by Jae Rhim Lee on a kind of “mushroom death suit,” that will help recycle you. Quirky? Sure. But she raises some really good questions about our current burial practices and suggests a more green alternative.

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