The Agricultural Landscape Ecology Lab

Gardiner lab at ESA!

2011-11-13T13:03:00.002-05:00

So it's been....all summer... since we have updated our followers on our research progress.

Obviously we were productive as we are now at the Entomological Society of America meeting in Reno, NV, presenting various presentations and posters. Our aims are obviously to shock and awe! (or just bring awareness to our awesome projects)

ALE lab, unite!

2011-06-11T08:37:00.003-04:00

Chelsea and I have moved back to Wooster for the summer, making Mary Gardiner's Wooster grad student roster 5. We also have a small battalion of excited undergrads and high-schoolers working for us, which puts our total roster of busy-bodies up to 13.

It feels like this TV show I used to watch as a kid, called Captain Planet. With our powers combined...well, Wooster better be ready.

Biological Control (ENT 650)

2011-05-31T18:48:00.011-04:00

Many of the current entomology graduate students, and some undergraduates have been working hard on a class project throughout the quarter for our Biological Control course.

After many conversations between the Columbus and Wooster students over the video link, we decided on the focal habitats and methods for our study. We also had much assistance from our professors (Dr. Canas and Dr. Grewal) as well as our TA (Harit).

Our goal for this project was to assess the biological control services provided by organisms in three different habitats (conventional farm, community garden, and forest). We were interested in looking at both above and below ground control.

The below ground method involved placing larvae into cages and burying them in the soil. They were left there for 2-3 days, then retrieved and checked for fungal, bacterial, or nematode infection.

For surveying biological control services that occur above or on the ground we used three methods: Larvae on sticky cards, larvae hanging in cages, and aphid counts.

The larvae on sticky cards was a method that came up with ourselves, and I am unaware if this method had been used before to survey biological control services. The sticky cards are usually used to survey for flying insects in fields (lady beetles for example). We decided to stick the larvae on them and see if any predators attacked them. This method was not without flaws though. We found that the larvae were very active and were able to escape from the glue on the trap. Our solution was to use scotch tape to keep the larvae in place, and it worked in some cases.
We also placed the larvae in hanging cages, and we were hoping that they might be attacked by parasitoids.
The final method, aphids, is a method that is commonly used to asses biological control services in fields. This method involves placing plants infested with aphids in the field. One is covered with a net to exclude predators, but still be affected by the weather conditions. The other plant is left open (without a net) so predators are able to munch away on the aphids as they please. The idea is to compare the number of aphids on that closed plant with the number of aphids on that open plant after a period of time in the field (one week in our case) to get an idea of the effect predators have on aphid colonies. We would expect to have higher aphid counts in the closed plant treatments.

The class is now busy analyzing the data and putting together presentations!

There's always a better way

2011-05-21T14:03:00.004-04:00

Science is about sharing, and simplifying. Many scientists meet at conferences to talk about results of their work and about their methods for getting them. One of the most satisfying things for me is to find out that someone has devised an easier or better way to accomplish a task. For instance, in determining which type of larval parasitoids are hiding out in the body cavity of a really small insect. You could wait for them to emerge, spending weeks keeping the host insect alive and fed. Or, with the right instruction you could simply cut them open and look within days of collecting them. What a time saver!

So, in the spirit of this, how many of you have been tying your shoes wrong? Watch the video below to find out.

Cost Effective Window Trap

2011-05-18T14:29:00.004-04:00

This summer the ALE lab is working with the Cleveland Metroparks to study insect communities in some of the park's forests. The Metroparks have established 30 plots in beach maple forests throughout their system where they have completed and intensive inventory of plant diversity and relative abundance. Within each of these plots our lab will determine if the insect fauna is influenced by the quality of the plant community found. We are mainly interested in measuring beneficial insects including predators and parasitoids.

When designing this project I thought about several possible types of traps we could use. The understory in this plots is very open and most plots experience significant deer browse. I decided to use window traps to collect dispersing insects moving though each of the plots. Typically you make a window trap out of Plexiglas and suspend it within a frame. Then you place a pan of water underneath. When the insects hit the Plexiglas they fall into the pan of water. We priced out Plexiglas for 30 2 x 2 foot window traps and the price was too high for our budget. At a local hardware we ended up buying plastic sheeting for $1/foot. This is flexible, slightly heavier than a shower curtain material. We stretched the material between two posts and let the trap collect insects for 1 week. We found that this material worked great. It remained in position for the whole week despite several storms. We collected a diversity of flies, wasps and beetles which is what we hope to collect using the trap. If you need to build a large number of window traps and have limited funds this method may work for you.

Late May or October?

2011-05-16T15:18:00.002-04:00

The first few weeks of field work each spring usually involve some last-minute changes of plans. This year is no exception. Today Scott Prajzner began the first of three experiments to measure pollinator activity within vacant lots and urban gardens in Cleveland. Today we took 48 blooming sunflowers to 8 sites. Scott is using the sunflowers to measure pollination services. He will collect them in 7 days and compare seed set in flowers which were exposed to pollinators with those that were bagged to prevent pollinators from accessing them. He will then determine if the pollination services supplied to vacant lots or urban gardens is significantly different. In addition to using the sunflowers to measure pollination services we also planned to monitor the community of bees visiting the plants within each site. We also plan to measure bee activity at other flowering plant species within each site.

Unfortunately with high winds, rain, and temperatures of ~45 degrees there was nothing to monitor. We were the only animals that decided today would be a good day to visit these sites! We are going to try again on Friday when it is supposed to finally stop raining.

Costs of doing business, traditional versus citizen science

2011-05-13T12:36:00.004-04:00

So what does it cost to collect entomology data? Using data collected by the Buckeye Lady Beetle Blitz program, I am working on a paper with co-authors from the Lost Ladybug Project and UK Ladybird Survey to measure the accuracy of citizen-collected lady beetle data. We are interested in the costs both monetarily and in data accuracy of utilizing citizen science. We are comparing the costs of traditional science (researchers collect data), verified citizen science (citizens collect data that is checked by researchers) and direct citizen science (citizens collect data which is analyzed without being verified by researchers).

We compared the monetary costs associated with collecting a yellow sticky card trap using each type of science. Cost estimates included sampling supplies, labor costs, travel, workshops for volunteers, and website development and maintenance. We found that to collect one sticky card using traditional science costs approximately $132! To collect one sticky card using verified or direct citizen science costs $65.31 and $43.74 respectively. Therefore programs that employ verified citizen science can collect 2 times as many samples for the same cost when compared to traditional science. Since all data is verified by researchers, accuracy rates for species identification should be equivalent using traditional science and verified citizen science. The only loss of data quality would be due to errors in the way the sample was collected, so programs utilizing citizen science need to be sure to provide clear instructions to their volunteers. Direct citizen science will provide 3 times the samples of traditional science for the same cost. The tradeoff here is a potential loss of accuracy. Accuracy rates among the three programs examined ranged from 53-94% of lady beetles correctly identified by volunteers. Therefore, high levels of accuracy can be attained using direct citizen science but programs should consider some type of data verification at least in the beginning so that an error rate among citizen-supplied data can be calculated.

Luna moth!

2011-05-06T16:05:00.007-04:00

Our Saturniid emerged today, and it was a beautiful male Luna moth (Actias luna)! Ian, Caitlin and I had fun playing with it today. We thought it was a male because of its small abdomen. Here are some pictures of the shed pupal casing, and the moth.

Watch these 2 videos to see it in action!

1. Flight muscle warm-up
2. Take-off!

If you would like to raise your own Saturniid, just keep it in a dry container with something for it to crawl up nearby. Holometabolous insects need something to rest on until their wings harden up for flight. Other insects that do this are butterflies, dragonflies and cicadas. Enjoy the weekend!

Saturniid

2011-04-30T14:38:00.011-04:00

While mushroom hunting around Wooster, a few of us discovered what looked like a perfectly cylindrical dead leaf. But, a leaf it was not! As soon as I cut into the leafy shell, it literally came to life in a series of raspy gyrations that caused me to drop it and nearly lose it again in the leaf litter. Watch this video I took in the lab to see what I mean. If you look closely at the photos below, you can see eyes developing inside the dark brown thing in the middle.

In fact, it is the pupa of a giant silk moth, in the Saturniidae family. These are the largest moths in North America. Many Saturniids make drab cocoons and attach them to twigs to overwinter. But, this pupal casing was found in the leaf litter. Either way, the effect is the same, they look like un-interesting dead leaves. I've set up a hatching chamber in the lab, and we will keep our eyes on it to see if it emerges. We do not know what species it will be, but we do expect something large and extraordinary. Unlike this cocoon, the adults of this family are very showy! So showy that many confuse them with butterflies. The difference is in the antennae and resting wing posture. These moths have feathered antennae, and they rest with their wings horizontally over their backs. Butterflies have clubbed antennae and rest with the wings held vertically over their backs.

Here are pictures of the most recognizable species in this family, the Luna Moth (Actias luna) on top and the Cecropia Moth (Hyalophora cecropia) on bottom.

The beginnings of field season

2011-04-28T11:47:00.003-04:00

April is quickly coming to an end and a few of us in the Gardiner lab are starting our field seasons in May. I've started building my field equipment to use in June, and things are finally on a roll with the help of a few people more apt at construction than I (add that to the ever-expanding grad school skill check list).

Yesterday we set out an aerial sticky trap prototype to catch ballooning spiders. Last night was a real test of its stability as the winds knocked down some trees in the area. The only issue was the sticky trap square turned 90 deg. when it should stay facing west.

Mary and I will be on our way to Lowe's today to buy more materials for building an additional 47 of these traps. I will place 2 of these in each site (which includes urban community gardens, vacant lots, and grasslands either converted from vacant lots or within urban park reserves). The goal is to determine how aeronautic spiders differ in abundance and diversity around the city depending on the site type and surrounding landscape.

Peacock Spider

2011-04-19T17:54:00.001-04:00

Check out this amazing video of a Peacock Jumping spider!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GgAbyYDFeg

Supplies

2011-04-16T23:21:00.003-04:00

The lab has been bustling! Chelsea and I commute back and forth between Columbus and Wooster until June, while Scott, Ian, Caitlin and Mary hold down the fort. Lately we've been planning our supply lists, and will soon be placing orders and making visits to different stores for odds and ends. It all reminds me of playing Oregon Trail as a kid, and going to the general store to stock up for the big journey west.

First week in Wooster

2011-03-31T21:02:00.003-04:00

I've finally arrived in Wooster, and it's hard to believe the week is almost over! I am settling into my new apartment, though most of my time is already spent at the OARDC. There is of course lots to do and classes have barely started!

The weather has been pretty lackluster with snow yesterday afternoon. I have had little photographic opportunities so far here, although I did find a few spiders and flies out (pictures to come as my card reader is still in Columbus). However, bug life has been revving up around the state; I found this wolf spider a few weeks ago in Columbus:

This was taken mid-March, so I would think this is a juvenile. Here's its backside for anyone that may want to attempt an ID (it was approximately 1 cm long).

Some other predators are also busy with the early season sawflies serving as a good meal!

This is a juvenile assassin bug (family Reduviidae, species Zelus luridus) sucking the life out of a sawfly (family Tenthredinidae, species Dolerus nitens) (both IDs from bugguide.net). These are both very common insects, so it's not much of a surprise I found them around an apartment complex.

The Southwestern Ohio Beekeeper School

2011-03-29T11:56:00.003-04:00

Last weekend the ALE lab traveled to Loveland OH to attend the Southwestern Beekeeper School. Scott Prajzner presented a seminar titled: "Does your landscape influence the risk of pesticide contamination in managed hives?" In addition to providing information about the toxicity of pesticides to honey bees he also discussed some of the sub-lethal effects pesticides have on pollinators. Scott also signed up 22 beekeepers to participate in Bee Healthy Landscapes, a new citizen science program aimed at measuring pesticide contamination in honey bee hives across the state. Check out his website: http://beehealthy.osu.edu for details.

Ben Phillips presented his seminar titled: "Who pollinates pumpkin? How can we make vegetable crop habitats more suitable for native and manged bees." to a large group of beekeepers and pumpkin growers in the afternoon session. Ben described how he has established 6 native perennial floral strips consisting of several forb and grass species. He will be evaluating whether the addition of these strips enhances pollination and biological control within pumpkin fields. If you are interested in planting a native perennial strip check out the resources Ben provided including his seed mix (includes bloom period for each plant species) and a list of seed and plant suppliers.

Insect of the Week!

2011-03-29T11:44:00.005-04:00

Short Horned Grasshopper

Orthoptera: Acrididae

While spending my spring break in cold Michigan I set aside some time to watch much the video data I had collected from the past summer. The point of this video is to observe what eats lady beetle egg masses. With populations of native lady beetles declining in Ohio, I am interested in finding out if predation by exotic lady beetles on native lady beetle eggs is a factor. I have been able to observe many different arthropods feeding on the egg masses and to my surprise, grasshoppers are among them!

This grasshopper has an interesting method for making sure it has many offspring. The male will ride on the back of the female for a day or more in order to prevent other males from mating with her. This behavior is called mate guarding.

A disturbance in the force

2011-03-14T21:08:00.010-04:00

Hey ALE readers. This isn't my normal day to post anything on here, but I hadn't been paying attention to the news in Japan until I got sucked into an NPR discussion of the recovery this evening. Many things have happened there, at a large scale over the past 3 days. These are the 3 heavy hitters.

A tsunami struck the northeast coast 30 minutes after a 8.9 subduction earthquake occurred close by.
A recent estimated death toll has topped out at 10,000 people from the combination of these events.
Two nuclear reactors at a damaged coastal power plant have exploded, creating unconfirmed fears of large-scale radiation exposure. A 12-mile radius has been evacuated.

At the ALE lab, we focus our research on smaller agricultural disturbances, both natural and human, but I think these events are relevant to our work particularly in video 2 below. What we mean by a disturbance is a change in stasis in an environment by plowing, spraying pesticides, introducing pollinator habitat, etc. However, on 11 March a much larger disturbance occurred off the the coast of Japan in the form of an earthquake, creating a series of other ecological disturbances, including massive flooding of harbors, towns and farms. Japan, a very earthquake-prone and earthquake-ready nation, actually gave the phenomenon its name, "tsunami," which means "harbor wave" and now commonly refers to a large volume of water displaced by volcanic or tectonic activity.

The earth is like a chewy candy with a hard shell. The shell rests on molten rock as huge plates (picture 1). Japan is the eastern edge of the Eurasian plate, pushed up out of the Pacific ocean by the Pacific plate in what is called a subduction zone. The edges of these plates can be ripe with activity as the earth settles and adjusts itself, almost like an old house. You will notice from the map where other regions of the world sit on these plates, and how newsworthy seismic activity tends to occur the most along their edges.Subduction earthquakes result when the upper plate "catches" on the lower plate as the lower plate moves beneath it. Over time, the upper plate slowly bends until enough pressure builds and it breaks free. Very quickly, a high volume of water is sent straight up from the sea floor (video 1). Japan experienced the massive tremors from being on the upper plate, in a sort of springboard effect.

The high tsunami waves at sea do not ebb like normal tidal and wind waves, but continue to flow away from the epicenter in reaction to its rapid displacement from the sea floor until all of the displaced water's energy dissipates. This is what causes the continuous rush of flood water that you will see in the next video.

I shutter at the thought of all the grad students whose projects just washed away in those fields, not to mention all the kind grower-collaborators who managed them...

If you would like more information and multi-media I highly suggest this NYT link showing before/after satellite images and this integrated timeline and map of events in Japan which students and press from inside and outside the country have been doing their best to put together with social media where internet access and electricity is available.

Spring is almost here

2011-03-10T19:08:00.006-05:00

Lest another winter storm indicates otherwise, spring is just around the corner. I went out two days ago and found a few little bugs coming out to enjoy the sun.

A globular springtail is in the second picture, too. I didn't notice it until I brought it up on my computer!

These images aren't really professional quality, but I just bought a macro lens and hope to take some good pictures of the insects and spiders I see.

As Canadian as curling

2011-03-10T07:36:00.002-05:00

Mary and I are in Leamington, Ontario, meeting with the Great Lakes Vegetable Working Group (GLVWG). Leamington is the ketchup capital of the world and the greenhouse capital of North America. The GLVWG is made up of researchers and extension agents from every state and province in the Great Lakes watershed, and aims to form a communication network for vegetable specialist's throughout the Great Lakes region and to address current priorities facing growers and the vegetable industry. We've already seen great presentations on stem and root nematodes in garlic, millipede pests in tubers, plastic row cover economics, pumpkin seed mechanization and the Gardiner Lab's urban garden project. Yesterday, we took a break for curling. It was a first time for many of us. "You're only an amateur the first time. After that, you're a pro."

State insects!

2011-03-08T17:37:00.008-05:00

We already know Ohio's state insect...The convergent lady beetle!

Here are some other state insects...

New Mexico: Tarantula hawk wasphttp://callprobest.com/blog/2010/08/in-the-desert-the-tarantula-hawk-probest-pest-blog

South Carolina: Carolina Mantid
http://bugguide.net/node/view/325482 : Lori

New Hampshire (State butterfly): Karner Blue Butterfly

New Hampshire State Insect: Two spotted lady beetle

Alaska: Four-spot skimmer dragonflyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Four-spotted_Skimmer.jpg

Source: http://www.statesymbolsusa.org/Lists/state_insects.html

Spiders and car recalls

2011-03-03T15:56:00.003-05:00

In the news today is an interesting story about spiders. Apparently, there have been 20 reports of spider webs found in a part of 4-cylinder Mazda6 sedan fuel systems. Now 52,000 of these cars are being recalled, as the vent lines these webs are in can cause blockage and ultimately cracks in the gas tank. This could result in a fire, though none have been reported.

The spider culprit? Most news reports I can find refer only to "a yellow sac spider," a term which can refer to a few different species in the genus Cheiracanthium. US Recall News specifically sites Cheiracanthium inclusum, but as they readily indicate in the article their source of spider information is Wikipedia (i.e. not always informative or correct). C. inclusum is one of the few medically significant spiders in the United States, so it's little surprise (to me at least) that this particular species would be targeted first.

Cletus Lee Flickr

C. inclusum is a native spider often finds its way into homes and may be the most common cause of spider bites. The bites normally cause just local pain and a wound which should heal in a few weeks.

Whether the Mazda spiders are C. inclusum or C. mildei (another very common yellow sac spider which is invasive from Europe), I wonder why they are making webs in car innards. I'm not sure how small the vent is, but yellow sac spiders make webs for hiding out in rolled up leaves. They are otherwise active predators.

Insect of the week!

2011-03-01T11:30:00.004-05:00

The Tortoise Beetle

http://www.mobot.org/mobot/madagascar/essayimage.asp?order=27: David R. Parks
Tortoise beetle adult

These beetles have a very interesting way of protecting themselves from predators. As larvae, they use their shed exoskeletons and fecal matter to build a shield which helps camouflage them, and I am guessing it might make them unappetizing to predators as well.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/44947946@N06/4697887022/:Matthew J Sullivan
Tortoise Beetle Larvae

Updated ALE Lab Website

2011-02-28T16:19:00.003-05:00

Over the weekend I updated our lab website http://oardc.osu.edu/ALE. If you want to learn more about our current research and outreach check it out!

Ol' Punkin'

2011-02-25T08:55:00.003-05:00

After a long, and not quite finished winter, this pumpkin has still retained some of its color and shape. I am not sure what broke it up to begin with, but the thaw last week probably softened it up for an animal to eat some seeds. I saw lots of deer tracks frozen in the mud.
If we let nature take its course this will self-seed into new plants.

Enjoy the weekend!

Further ecological impacts of the seven-spotted lady beetle

2011-02-22T08:32:00.006-05:00

I recently stumbled upon an article that caught my eye...

"The co-occurrence of an introduced biological control agent (Coleoptera: Coccinella septempunctata) and an endangered butterfly (Lepidoptera: Lycaeides melissa samuelis)"

In a post long ago, I talked about an internship I had during the summer of 2007 with the Detroit Zoo. I worked with their restoration program for the endangered karner blue butterfly (KBB) (Lycaeides melissa samuelis).

Karner blue butterfly

Now I am studying the effects of exotic lady beetles such as the seven spotted (Coccinella septempunctata) on native lady beetles. Though, I had not taken much time to think about other native insects that could be affected by the exotic beetles. In this paper the authors reported observing both species co-occurring spatially and temporally with the eggs and larvae of the KBB. They also observed an adult beetle feeding on a KBB larvae. This observation is not shocking to me since lady beetles are generalist predators, meaning they can feed on a wide variety of prey.

http://www.cirrusimage.com/Beetles/7-spotted_ladybird_3.jpg
Seven-spotted lady beetle

The conservation of endangered species is incredibly important since the loss of a single species has the potential to drastically impact the ecosystem. The KBB is also treated as an "umbrella species" because efforts made to preserve KBB populations, have benifited other native plants and animals that reside in the Oak Savannah habitat as well.

Oak savannah habitat in Southern Michigan

Citation:
Schellhorn, N. A., C. P. Lane, and D. M. Olson. 2005. The co-occurrence of an introduced biological control agent (Coleoptera: Coccinella septempunctata) and an endangered butterfly (Lepidoptera: Lycaeides melissa samuelis). Journal of Insect Conservation 9:41-47.

Pollination experiment set-up

2011-02-18T14:47:00.008-05:00

Here's a sneak peak at the set-up for one of my experiments this summer. We will be targeting when the brunt of pollination happens in the pumpkins by closing research flowers every 2 hours between 5 and 11AM in our research plots. If we see that pollen grains (and the resulting seed set) do not increase that much between 9AM and 11AM collections compared to our 7AM collections, then that means most of the pollen is deposited before 7AM. Counting the seeds in mature pumpkins exposed to these same restrictions will tell us if the pollination window corresponds to successful pumpkins. The cameras will be set up to record the number of bees, species and time spent visiting the flowers on the field edge, and in the interior of the field. This will give us a good idea who pollinates and how long it takes them.

Accuracy of lady beetle ID by volunteers

2011-02-09T14:27:00.005-05:00

Over the past two years I have been surveying lady beetle abundance across the state of Ohio with the help of 250+ volunteer citizen scientists. These volunteers placed yellow sticky card traps in their home gardens for two 7-day sampling periods in June and August of 2009 and 2010. After each 7-day collection each volunteer examined their card for 14 different lady beetle species and filled out a data sheet indicating which species were present. They then sent us their data sheet and yellow sticky card so that all identifications could be verified and additional insects could be counted. To see images of these species check out our lady beetle ID guide.

In a future post I will review the diversity and relative abundance of lady beetles found but today I want to talk about how well the volunteers were able to distinguish between these tiny insects. Overall, volunteer identification accuracy of lady beetles in 2009 was 46.2% in June and 50.3% in August. Similar accuracy rates were found in 2010, with 51.1% of lady beetles correctly identified in June and 43.1% of in August. While this may seem discouraging to some of our volunteers, I think its a really positive finding that we can build on in the future. Each volunteer who participated in our survey attended a 2-hour training session. At these sessions we used a power point presentation to illustrate how to identify each species. We also had boxes of pinned insects. I think that this year I am going to bring examples of actual sticky cards collected in 2010 so that volunteers can see what the lady beetles look like on the cards, when they can be much more difficult to ID. We may also try and get some photos of lady beetles on sticky cards on the website for reference.

I also plan to target additional time towards discussing species which were most commonly confused. The multi-colored Asian lady beetle (Harmonia axyridis) was the most abundant of all species found in Ohio gardens. Volunteers incorrectly identified H. axyridis as ten other lady beetle species. Forty specimens (18.6% of specimens collected) were incorrectly identified as a native coccinellid, with the rare convergent lady beetle (H. convergens) accounting for 20 of these errors across the four sampling periods. Twenty H. axyridis specimens (9.3% of specimens collected) were incorrectly identified as another exotic species. Of these 17 were identified as the seven spotted lady beetle (C. septempunctata). Some also missed H. axyridis specimens on their yellow sticky card trap (13 specimens, 6.0% of total collected) or listed it as “other lady beetle” (20 specimens, 0.3% of total collected) indicating that they thought H. axyridis was a lady beetle species other than the 14 surveyed by the BLBB program.

I am not surprised that volunteers had difficulty identifying this species. It is called the multicolored Asian lady beetle because it varies in color from pale yellow to bright red. Some individuals have spots and others lack spots. The key identifying feature of this insect is a black "W" on the pronotum, a plate covering the insect's thorax. Michelle and Andy who follow our blog sent us some great pictures of the multicolored Asian lady beetle, check out our March 2010 blog post to learn more about this species.

Modeling bee data

2011-02-04T23:08:00.003-05:00

I completed watching all of my video data of bees visiting pumpkin flowers from last summer! I am now in the works analyzing and modeling the data. Though this summer's data was preliminary, the modeling practice will come in handy with larger data sets consisting of multiple treatment scales like farm diversity, floral strip type and farm location.

Here's the run-down on the lingo above...In science you always want to isolate a variable that you want to test. We use the word "treatment" to describe that. For every treatment, you must have a "control", which is set-up in the same manner of the treatment, but is spared the actual treatment. For example, I wanted to test how pumpkin plants are affected by planting floral strips by them. Are the pests reduced? Are the pumpkins bigger? Do the bees transfer more pollen? To do this I set up 6 farms that will have floral strips (treatments), and 6 farms that will not (my controls). Each farm will use similar planting practices to make all of my plots as close to identical as possible. This allows me to see the effect of the floral strip, unobscured by the many other factors that may affect pumpkin.

On top of that basic experiment I have more treatments! Holy moly! My 6 floral strip farms are also nested within a gradient of environments, and matched with my 6 control farms. I have 4 farms (2 floral strip farms and 2 control) in areas surrounded by agriculture, 4 farms surrounded by a high ratio of forests and grasslands to farmland, and 4 farms located in areas somewhere in between those two extremes. With data coming from all of those locations I can attempt to answer questions like "how does the surrounding area affect the types of insects I find in the floral strips and in the control plots?".

The results of this may sound definitive, but this will only reveal a small part of the big picture. And even then, only if everything works. You can never completely control the interference which may affect your data, and that's why it takes a lot of repetition to flesh out the big picture. I am standing on the shoulders of giants before me who tested similar theories, and more research will proceed after me. Each one of us takes a wack at a great piece of marble, if you will, chipping away a little more mystery until a sculpture is formed.

Grant writing and DNA barcoding

2011-02-03T12:13:00.012-05:00

No, I'm not writing an NSF grant (yet!). The National Science Foundation is one of the premiere grant funding agencies in the US for basic science research. From what I know, the competition is brutal, so I'm probably in need of some skin-thickening before I apply for anything there. Some preliminary results might also be helpful!

What I've been working on are some more specialized grants. The American Arachnological Society provides a small amount of funding for research supplies, and I submitted my grant about 3 weeks ago. It's too early to feel any waiting pressure, but I am getting anxious!

I'm currently working on a grant funded through OSU which is their SEEDS program. I've written up my master's research proposal and will be requesting $3000. Somehow my research ideas are proving to be expensive! One of my goals is to molecularly analyze the gut contents of some of the spiders I will collect in three urban greenspaces in Cleveland: vacant lots, community gardens, and lots redesigned as natural areas.

Most gut-content analysis frames the question as "Who is eating this particular pest species?" Then, DNA tags which are specific to the pest species are used to find that tag within different potential predators' guts. This is helpful when researchers and farmers want to know which predator populations to invest support for conservation within particular crops.

But my question is "What are these spiders eating?" This is a hard question to answer for spiders because they are difficult to watch for long periods of time (not because they're boring, you just don't know when they're going to eat!). But there are ways to analyze gut contents without previous knowledge or species-specific DNA tags. What I plan to do is identify a "universal" sequence region of DNA within each spider gut. This region is within the COI gene which is found within mitochondria (the power supplies within cells). In fact, all animals (and other eukaryotes) contain mitochondria, so they all have a COI sequence. This sequence mutates relatively quickly, so in theory is quite different between species but consistent within a species. Ultimately, this region (other regions are used for plants) is used for"DNA barcoding," where you can identify a DNA sequence by comparing it to a database with already identified sequences. Using these methods, I can recover COI sequences from each spider gut and then run them through a database and viola, the database tells me what animal each sequence comes from.

It's sort of like if you have a word to translate from a language you don't know, so you put it through an online translator. My high school German is a little rusty, so when I type in "schreibe" I find it means "to write." And that's its only meaning. That would be a species-specific identification.

However, the result is only as good as the translator's dictionary, but you may come close. So if I look up the Finnish word "kirjoittaa" the translation results are: "write, type, compose, spell, print, author, put, etc etc etc". I'm in the neighborhood of what the word means, but it's not precise. For my COI identification, that's similar to the database telling me this particular sequences comes from the fly genus Brachyopa but that's it. My dictionary doesn't have anything more specific, but I'm close. Hopefully I can come at least this close in my research with all my sequences.

What makes this process expensive is how I plan to recover my sequences. First, the spiders will be ground up (sorry guys!) and all their DNA and the DNA in their guts will be amplified so I have a bunch of sequences to work with. Then, this recovered DNA needs to be sequenced (CAATTAAGGA etc. - I need to know which letters make up my "word"). A new fancy (read expensive) method of sequencing involves adding a specific tag to each "word" so I know which spider it came from ("schreibe-Spider1" vs "schreibe-Spider2" and "kirjoittaa-Spider2").

And then I'll know what these spiders are eating. This first summer I'm focusing on a wolf spider Pardosa milvina which from what Mary has found is pretty common in all the sites she's looked at so far. Later on I hope to identify sequences from a few different spiders and compare how their diets may overlap or complement one another.

What did you eat today?

A great read for the winter months!

2011-02-01T19:07:00.003-05:00

I would highly suggest this book to anyone that is interested in how animals survive though the winter. I read this book about a year ago, and after last nights ice storm, I am considering reading it again. The adaptations animals have to survive harsh winters are amazing, and the author, Bernd Heinrich, includes some examples of insect survival as well! Heinrich has an amazing knack for noticing details in the winter world around him proving him to be a fabulous naturalist.

Stay safe in this weather!

Paper titles

2011-01-28T16:43:00.004-05:00

Working on my literature review, it always brings a much needed smile to my face to really connect with an author through their title. Paper after paper of explicit, sometimes long-winded titles stating the subject, location and effect can get boring and repetitive, but one with a good hook really stays with you. I've collected a few over the past two quarters that I will share.

Berenbaum and Lekowsky. 1992. Life history strategies and population biology in science fiction films. Ecological Society of America. v 73(4) p 236-240.

Hey, I like sci-fi!

Cane et al. 2000. Sampling bees for pollinator community studies: pitfalls of pan-trapping. Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society. v 73(4) p 225-231.

Using one sampling method as a pun for the other. Nice one, Jim!

Logan and Powell. 2001. Ghost forests, global warming, and the mountain pine beetle (Coleoptera: Scolytidae). American Entomologist. v 47(3) p 160-173.

This one only works after you read the paper. Ghost forests are exactly what we are going to be left with in the American West.

Roark. 1947. Some promising insecticidal plants. Scientific Monthly. v 64(117) p 437-445.

Mr. Roark, your brevity is hilariously unenthusiastic. I hope you kept it coming.

Stamp. 2003. Out of the quagmire of plant defense hypotheses. The Quarterly Review of Biology. v 78(1) p 23-55.

Ms. Stamp really captures the essence of frustratingly parsing through hypotheses and writing a literature review.

Trewavas. 1999. Much food, many problems. Nature. v 402 p 231-232.

This came out 2 years after Notorious B.I.G.'s hit "Mo Money Mo Problems" went to the top of the US Billboard.

Nentwig. 1993. SPIDER VENOMS ARE NOT SUITABLE INSECTICIDES. Toxicon. v 31(3) p 233-234.

I found this reference in all caps, and thought it came across with a tone of extreme importance and dire consequences that left me chuckling, especially because it's only 2 pages. OK Nentwig, OK!

Lavandero et al. 2006. Increasing floral diversity for selective enhancement of biological control agents: a double-edge sward? Basic and Applied Ecology. v 7 p 236-243.

This one is, and has been my favorite for a long time. Introduces conflict with a good pun involving popular grasses used in conservation plantings.

Phillips et al 20??. Smashing pumpkins: using floral strips and native bees to economically pollinate really, really good-looking Cucurbita pepo

...Needs work, but I've got a couple of years to come up a with a real zinger.

Giant bees attack Cleveland!

2011-01-26T14:50:00.003-05:00

Well not really, its just Scott Prajzner planning his summer research. He will be placing bumble bee hives in the backyards of Ohio residents along an urban to rural transect extending from Cleveland south into rural Wayne County. He is currently trying to decide on where to place the hives. We want to make sure that the foraging ranges of the bees from each hive do not overlap, so Scott created disks that represent the size of the bees foraging range (about 3 km) that he can place on a map of his research area.

Beetle Intercepted at the port of San Diego

2011-01-25T12:03:00.002-05:00

We talk about invasive species often here...MALB, buckthorn, Soybean aphid, and they make it into the mainstream media as well.

Recently, a exotic beetle was intercepted at the Port of San Diego by customs agents. This beetle, Gymnetis Pantherina, has been known to feed upon more than 300 types of crops.

The larvae of this beetle destroys the roots systems of plants which has a large impact on the growth and yield of the plants.
http://www.examiner.com/crime-in-san-diego/destructive-beetle-intercepted-at-san-diego-port

After the discovery of this insect, the shipper was given the option to either treat the bananas to kill any insects, or send the shipment back. In this case the shipper decided to treat the bananas.

This is how many of our current invasive species have made their way into the United States. Hopefully customs gets better at intercepting exotic insects before they can hop off the boat into our fields and ecosystems.

Homeostasis

2011-01-21T10:01:00.005-05:00

In my recitation for Biology 101 for non-majors this quarter I have been using a lot of youtube videos to demonstrate some of the concepts raised in lecture. For example, one of the key signs of life is that a living organism maintains an internal constancy, known as homeostasis, to efficiently utilize its energy. Some animal behavior associated with this are reptiles sunning to warm up, and dogs panting to cool down and humans using layers of clothing.

In class I used a specific example from Japan, where an enormous hornet, known as the Asian Giant Hornet (Vespa mandarinia), is a native pest of honeybee colonies. The queen hornet starts a colony from scratch and feeds her young with large insects that she kills and carries back to the hive. She, and other adults cannot digest protein. Once fed, the larvae secrete a juice that is high in amino acids and energy, which the adults drink to continue hunting.
When the hive has enough adults, they start pillaging the hives of other species of bees and wasps for their nutritious eggs and larvae. Scout hornets investigate hives and leave a scent marker that tells the rest of the clan that this hive is worth ransacking. Introduced European honeybee hives are susceptible to these hornets because they cannot detect the danger of the visiting scout hornet, as seen in this video.
However, native Japanese honeybees have developed a defense to the hornets where they swarm the scout before it can alert its attack squad. They beat their wings to raise the temperature to 117 degrees Fahrenheit, just 2 degrees higher than the hornet's peak operating temperature, and only 1 degree below their own peak temperature. The hornet cannot maintain its internal temperature with that much heat generated by the bees! You can watch in this video.

We just received some major snow and cold weather in Ohio. We will do our best to maintain our internal temperatures, and I hope the rest of you do the same. Have a good weekend!

Jumping spider courtship!

2011-01-18T11:50:00.002-05:00

Today in insect behavior Larry showed us videos of Jumping spider courtship behavior.

The males have very intricate courtship dances. There is been strong selection pressure for these dances to occur so the male can avoid being eaten.

Check out these cool videos!

Video 1

Video 2

Ian McIlvaine is thinking about aphid invasions

2011-01-17T18:52:00.011-05:00

Ideas for Ian's M.S. research!

Ian and Chris search for common buckthorn along a forest edge

Ian McIlvaine started graduate school this January. Those who follow our blog may remember his introduction post. Ian's M.S. research will focus on the soybean aphid, an invasive herbivore that attacks soybean plants. This insect overwinters on common buckthorn, also an invasive species. This plant is present in disturbed habitats such as forest edges, fencerows, and unmanaged hedges.

Ian is interested in measuring if the amount of common buckthorn in the landscape influences the liklihood that a soybean field will be colonized by the soybean aphid. As one part of his project, he aims to determine how far the aphids move between their winter host (common buckthorn) and their summer host (soybean). This information is critical to developing a management plan for the soybean aphid that involves the removal of common buckthorn. Before we can motivate stakeholders to remove this invader from their property for the purpose of reducing soybean aphid we need to know at what spatial scale these management efforts would make a difference.

Over the past couple of weeks, Ian and I have begun to hash out ideas to address his goals and objectives. It's pretty hard to tell from the messy white board but we have made a lot of progress!

Applications of GIS

2011-01-13T16:57:00.004-05:00

I think my mind is finally losing the haze of winter break, and I'm also back in class. Along with the Stats course I'm taking with Ben (which is requiring me to brush up on my calculus), I'm in an intermediate GIS class.

GIS (Geographic Information Systems/Science) is a really exciting field of study, and I'm happy to be incorporating it into my work. We live in a globalized society and visualizing space is important for understanding what is going on in certain areas. For example, you can map the distribution of biodiversity and visualize the "hotspots" around the world.

Map from Conservation International

For my work in the ALE Lab, I will use landscape data of the areas surrounding my field sites. My focus will be on land use, such as buildings, turf grass, other sorts of lawns, roads, etc. Using GIS technology I can analyze how different land uses may be affecting spider community composition within a particular urban patch. May the presence of many buildings preclude spider establishment because ballooning spiderlings can't pass through? Maybe different types of greenery in the surrounding area are better than others for maintaining spiders (think of corporate lawns sprayed with pesticides compared to parks). These sorts of questions can be analyzed using GIS and thinking of data spatially.

Maybe one day little transmitters can be attached to ballooning spiders and they could be tracked along the landscape. That would be pretty neat (and difficult).

P.S. Here's a good video about how spiders balloon.

Summer Research Jobs for Students in Wooster, OH

2011-01-12T15:12:00.005-05:00

Are you a high school junior, senior, or undergraduate student looking for a summer job?

Interested in environmental science, conservation, and agriculture?

Consider applying for a summer research assistant position in the ALE Lab. We seek bright, hard working, and creative students to assist with our research and outreach programs. These positions are a great opportunity to gain experience towards a career in the biological sciences. For more information about our research and outreach projects check out our website http://oardc.osu.edu/ALE. Students must be able to work 40 h per week during the summer. Personal research opportunities such as independent studies for class credit at your school are possible. Students interested in conducting their own research should also check out the OARDC Research Internship Program.

For more information contact Dr. Mary Gardiner at gardiner.29@osu.edu.

SNOW!

2011-01-11T11:57:00.004-05:00

It's going to be snowing all day today in Columbus!

How do lady beetles survive the harsh winter?

Lady beetles survive by aggregating as adults under leaf litter, rocks, bark, and in other protected places including buildings.

Flight to overwintering locations is triggered by cold weather and a decline in prey. The behavior occurs at different times from year to year.

If you saw lady beetles in your house this fall, it's likely you might see them this spring!

Volunteer #62 and counting...

2011-01-10T15:12:00.003-05:00

For the past two summers, the ALE lab has conducted the Buckeye Lady Beetle Blitz lady beetle survey in home gardens with the help of volunteer Ohio gardeners. I am currently working on publishing the findings of our study based on the data that our volunteers have collected. Before I summarize everything though, I have to go back over both the 2009 and 2010 findings and check everything for errors. So far I am on volunteer number 62 for 2009. We had 189 gardeners participate in 2009 and over 200 participate in 2010. I'm hoping to finish checking everything by the end of the week so I can get on the much more interesting part of summarizing the data, making figures and interpreting the results.

Stats class

2011-01-07T21:57:00.002-05:00

Classes have resumed, and I'm heavily invested in statistics this quarter. Caitlin and I are both learning about linear regressions, and I'm also learning the ins and outs of a couple of statistical analysis programs to use with my own data. I was surprised when I bought this used book on the internet and it came with Chinese characters all over the cover and first couple of pages! Luckily, the main text is in English. I am curious about why these books were printed this way, but other students have them as well.

Have a good weekend!

Back to work!

2011-01-04T12:39:00.002-05:00

After a relaxing sleep-filled winter break, it's time to get back to work in Columbus. The graduate students are busy getting their teaching materials together and their courses started. Many of us are enrolled in Larry Phelan's course, Insect Behavior, which should be very interesting!

For some of us (Ben and I) this is likely to be our last quarter in Columbus. We'll be heading back to the lab in Wooster this March.

Happy Holidays From ALE!

2010-12-26T12:06:00.002-05:00

ALE Lab (from left): Scott Prajzner, Caitlin Burkman, Ben Phillips, Mary Gardiner, Ian McIlvaine, and Chelsea Smith.

Elephant Seals

2010-12-22T14:53:00.006-05:00

On my way to see the Pollinator Partnership in San Francisco we drove up the Pacific coast and stopped to see some elephant seals! December is breeding season, and we made it in time to see all the pups! They were frolicking and playing while their parents seemed to be taking well deserved naps.

Beach full of seals

Me with seal nap time behind

OSU Linnaean Games Team: National Champs!

2010-12-21T15:15:00.008-05:00

At this years, ESA meeting the OSU Linnaean Games Team took home the National Championship! The OSU students on the 2010 winning team were: Joshua Bryant, Ryan Caesar, Nicola Gallagher, Glene Mynhardt, and Kaitlin Uppstrom. The team was coached by Dr. Dave Horn. Way to go OSU Linnaean Team!

Below is some information about the Linnaean Games from the ESA website and photos:

"The ESA Linnaean games are a lively question-and-answer, college bowl-style competition on entomological facts played between university-sponsored student teams. It is an important and entertaining component of the ESA Annual Meeting. Each team is comprised of four players. The teams score points by answering questions correctly. The winning team wins an inscribed trophy cups for each team member and a plaque for the team's department. The runners-up win a certificate for each team member and a plaque for the team's department. In addition to the national game, the ESA Branches conduct their own Linnaean game competitions at their yearly Branch meetings. The winning team and the runner-up both go on to the national competition."

Associate Chair Dan Herms (above) and graduate student Joshua Bryant (below) with the competition board.

Kaitlin Uppstrom (above) and Joshua Bryant and Nicola Gallagher (below) display their medals!

ALE students awarded at ESA

2010-12-16T14:28:00.007-05:00

Graduate student Ben Phillips was awarded the President's Prize for the Student Competition for his poster at this year's ESA meeting. Ben's poster was part of the Pollinators, Pollination and Host Plant Interactions Section.
Bethany Hunt, an undergraduate student who worked in our lab for two summers (2009-10) was also awarded First Place in the President's Prize for the Student Competition for her poster at this year's ESA meeting. Bethany's poster was part of the Undergraduate Student Research Section.

All the ALE students who attended did an amazing job preparing and presenting their work at the national meeting this year, I am very proud of all of them!!

Assassin Bug Deception (Aggressive mimicry)

2010-12-16T12:16:00.012-05:00

While looking for articles in the popular media to present to the Biology 101 students I stumbled upon an interesting article about a species of assassin bug (Stenolemus bituberus) that tricks spiders in order to capture them. This behavior is known as "aggressive mimicry". I also managed to find the scientific article that the media article was based off of. The species that is the focus of the study is pictured below.

From the popular media article:
"A new study has just revealed the bugs' devious and deadly tactics. Like nightmarish bass players, assassin bugs pluck spider silk in webs, mimicking the movements of exhausted, stuck prey. When the hungry spider eases in for what it thinks is a sure meal, the assassin bug taps the spider, and then grabs, stabs and eats it." This seems to be a fairly accurate description of what is stated in the scientific article.

From the scientific article:
"The vibrations generated by bugs showed clear structural similarities to those generated by prey struggling in the web."

This particular species of assassin bug (S. bituberus) spends nearly its entire life in spider webs and preys upon a variety of spiders. This is dangerous prey for an insect, and counterattacks by the spiders are often observed resulting in the death of the assassin bug.

Other than being an intersting topic, the other reason I am bringing this article up is to show how the popular media may confuse readers about the significance of findings. After describing the study the popular media article stated: "Studies on the behavior and biology of certain species of assassin bugs, such as those from South America, could help to wipe out Chagas disease, a parasitic infection."

It can be very confusing for readers when reporters make a links to other topics. There are 1000's species of assassin bugs.The particular species that spreads Chagas disease is not the one that preys upon spiders. Chagas disease is spread by the "kissing bug" from the subfamily Triatominae. The picture below shows an example of a kissing bug.
The media will often seek a connection to humans in order to make the topic more interesting to readers. The type of assassin bug that spreads Chagas disease looks, and acts very different from the species described in the study, and is not even mentioned within the scientific article. The media article makes it seem like studying the behavior of deceptive assassin bugs can help wipe out Chagas disease. I do not think that this is a very good connection.

The media article also mentions termite killer assassin bugs, "...But some assassin bug species, such as those nicknamed "termite eaters," can benefit humans. These cunning pest-killers use dead termites to trick live ones into approaching them. This talent could make these assassin bugs a handy, natural form of pest control". Even though it as not mentioned in the scientific article, This statement actually relates to the overall topic of deception! This assassin bug (Salyavata variegata) is pictured below:Termites will often eat the carcasses of other termites for more protien, and to keep the nest clean. Salyavata variegata takes advantage of this behavior by using termite carcasses as bait.

Photo credit: Jim Kramer (bugguide.net); http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S1519-566X2003000100001&script=sci_arttext; www.brisbaneinsects http://.com/brisbane_assinsinbugs/TermiteAssassin.htm
Link to the media article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39879727/ns/technology_and_science-science/
Citation for the scientific article: Wignall, A. E. and P. W. Taylor. 2010. Assassin bug uses aggressive mimicry to lure spider prey. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Scott Prajzner presents his poster at ESA

2010-12-15T17:39:00.005-05:00

Scott Prajzner presented his research on Tuesday at the Entomological Society of America. Scott's poster focused on his research in Cleveland's vacant lands and community gardens. Scott measured pollinator diversity, abundance, and pollination services within these sites. He will be continuing his work in summer 2011 and is seeking an undergraduate student interested in conducting research in this area.

OSU Mixer at ESA

2010-12-14T09:18:00.003-05:00

The OSU Entomology Department, alumni, and friends gathered at the OSU mixer at the Entomological Society of America meeting Monday evening.

ALE students present their research at ESA

2010-12-13T16:16:00.003-05:00

The student research competition at the Entomological Society of America Meeting is underway today. Ben Phillips and Chelsea Smith presented their research as part of the graduate student poster competition. Bethany Hunt's research poster was part of the undergraduate student poster competition.

ALE made it to San Diego (almost)

2010-12-11T18:38:00.006-05:00

ALE lab members Scott, Chelsea, Ben, Mary, and their poster tube have made it to San Diego for the Entomology Society of America Meeting! Unfortunately our undergraduate student Bethany Hunt is stuck in Chicago due to the blizzard. Her flight is rescheduled for tomorrow so we will be awaiting her arrival. At least she will get to experience some nice weather once she arrives and hear Ben's new bug jokes...

San Diego

2010-12-10T18:15:00.004-05:00

Most of the ALE lab, and one former ALE lab member is headed to balmy San Diego tomorrow for the annual Entomological Society of America conference. We have all implements of education with us, including hand-outs, t-shirts, posters and powerpoints chock full of buggy things. I've even practiced a few bug-jokes, so everyone should be prepared for a few groans.

If we are lucky, we may get a chance to hear what my Dad, who grew up in a marina town himself, heard last December on a similar trip to the megalopolis.

"The evening of the big storm we drove back to our hotel, which is at a marina with hundreds of sail boats. From the parking garage you could look out at the boats...the sounds were simply incredible. I wish I could have recorded it. The clanging of the lines hitting the mast...hundreds of them...it sounded like nothing I've ever heard before. And because we were in a cement basement with a large open wall to look out over the boats, it added a bass sound. I think the people who live there simply take it for granted..."

Pictures will be forthcoming! Have a good weekend!

An Assistant Professors Life in Academia

2010-12-06T15:59:00.004-05:00

I blogged a couple weeks ago about a presentation I was asked to prepare for the Entomological Society of America Meeting. The title is "An assistant professor's life in academia". The way I am going to start off the talk is by showing my head shot taken when I started working at OSU. Then, I will flip to this staged photo we took today and say "but what is life really like!". The person right next to me is Dr. Dan Herms, our Associate Chair. On the far right is Dan Fickle pretending to be a carrot grower. The three students, Ian, Chris and Scott are representing the different types of questions students have with coursework and their own research. It was nice of these guys to help me out with my talk, hopefully it will get a laugh at the meeting.

Science in the media

2010-12-04T09:54:00.008-05:00

At the end of this quarter, I was able to help the Biology 101 professor, Dr. Wiline Pangle, write up a lab to teach the students how a scientific article makes its way into the popular media.

The point of the lab was not only to introduce the students to scientific literature, but also to teach them how scientific findings are altered as they make their way though the "media cycle". I am sure that Mary can confirm that even when the scientist is directly interviewed there is still much room for error.

Lets take a look at the cycle, this cartoon is actually pretty accurate! (http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174):

Every university has a press release office. When there is research that may be interesting to the public they often write up a blurb about that study and will also interview the researcher(s) to get some direct quotes (this is the first point at which errors, and misinterpretations can occur). After those articles are posted on the university website they will then be picked up by news wire organizations, such as the associated press. The associated press will then usually post the press release to be made available for other people to see. If a study is really interesting people may start blogging about them on the internet. This becomes a large source of misinterpretations. It is often the case that studies that have no or very little connections with humans are strongly related to humans, and the significance of a finding may be exaggerated. If the study gets enough attention on the internet, then the news channels may start to pick up on them. This is yet another point at which studies can be manipulated, exaggerated, or altered. Since the news channels need to draw in viewers to achieve good ratings, they give their newscast a flashy title. They then use tactics such as fear to be sure that the viewers pay attention.

The study we chose to show the Biology 101 students was about deception tactics used by topi (an animal in Africa similar to an antelope). Dr. Pangle was an author of this paper and it had some very interesting findings. It is currently available to view for free: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/653078.

To sum up the article: Topi grunt to warn predators that they see them and that there is no chance for a surprise attack. This study found that during the mating season the males will have small territories and when they notice a female leaving their territory they will make a "false grunt" making the female think that there is a predator around. She will then move back to the center of the male's territory and the he will them move in and mate with her. So the male is tricking the female to improve his chances to have offspring. A topi is pictured below.

This was a very interesting finding, but as the article made its way through the "blogging world" the main point of deception in the animal world was lost, and replaced with comments focused more towards humans such as "Men are so sneaky!", "Sounds like the average frat party", "Males lie to get laid", etc. So there is a tendency for people to take a study and automatically relate it to humans when it is not always appropriate.

This can sometimes cause problems when people begin to wonder about the funding of these studies. It would be a waste of money to study an animal like topi to learn about the sex lives of humans. Since the focus of this study was lost in many blogs, many readers have really thought that was the case. Of course if you read the article, the real point of the study was to learn about topi behavior, NOT HUMANS.

Learning everything we can about the life history of an organism is becoming more important as humans are having larger impacts and conversation biology comes into play. Therefore, I can see the importance in this study.

So what can be done to minimize this? How can scientists and the media work together to keep the focus, and big picture of the article known and avoid the public from questioning the intentions of scientists?

It may be difficult to find solutions to these problems. Scientists are not the best when it comes to relations with the public, and the media is not very good at understanding how science works.

My hope is that young scientists will recognize this problem and learn how to relate to the media throughout their education so when they finally have a real "adult" job such as a researcher for either a university or corporation, they will be able to convey their findings to the reporters in a way that the public will be able to understand. The same goes for reporters, they need to make sure they listen and understand the main big picture of a study.

So be sure to read "science news" reports with an open mind!

Land grant battle

2010-12-03T09:35:00.003-05:00

The State Agricultural College of Michigan and the Farmer's High School of Pennsylvania were both established as state Land-grant institutions prior to the Federal Morrill Act in 1862, which created more land grant schools around the country to promote agricultural science and military training during the Civil War. Later, their names changed to Michigan State University and Pennsylvania State University.
Over Thanksgiving I visited the beautiful town of State College for my first time to support my Alma mater, MSU. Through the first snow of the season MSU took the hideous land-grant trophy back from Penn State with a solid game for all four quarters!

"Come to Penn Staaaaate!" - Joe Paterno

First Snow

2010-12-01T08:53:00.003-05:00

Sadly we have our first snow here in Wooster today. My poor little aloe is watching with dismay.

Happy Thanksgiving from the ALE Lab!

2010-11-24T09:18:00.000-05:00

Another surprise from the video!

2010-11-23T20:06:00.004-05:00

First I saw a bird, now I don't know what I saw!
To me it looks like the nose of a mammal...raccoon maybe?

Any guesses?

Assistant Professor's Life in Academia

2010-11-22T20:05:00.003-05:00

At this year's Entomological Society of America Conference I was asked to present a talk to undergraduates titled "An Assistant Professor's Life in Academia". The purpose of the symposium is to give undergraduates some background about what it is like to be a new Assistant Professor. I want to make this as useful to the audience as possible. I need some help from students who are thinking about a career as a professor. What should I cover in a talk like this? What questions do you have? For graduate students, what questions do you have now, and what are some things you wondered about as an undergraduate student that I could include? You can either leave questions in the feedback section or email them to me at gardiner.29@osu.edu.

Thanks!

Entomologists of the past

2010-11-18T19:20:00.001-05:00

I signed up a few months ago to write short biographies about Entomological Society of America fellows (can you tell I'm just getting around to them?). As a resident of Ohio, I am a member of the North Central Branch, but I also joined the Eastern Branch so I could attend their conference when I was considering going to the University of Maryland. So, now that I'm in the system that way I was assigned two fellows to write about.

This has actually been a cool experience researching both because of how different their careers were. My first biography is about Donald Borror from Ohio State. For those of you not familiar with the big names of entomology, Borror is definitely up there. He helped write and edit many of the widely used textbooks and field guides, such as An Introduction to the Study of Insects and A Field Guide to Insects: America North of Mexico. He also was an avid ornithologist, and studied the bioacoustics of both birds and insects. The Borror Laboratory of Bioacoustics at OSU contains one of the largest collections of animal recorded sounds. He died in 1988, and many mourning colleagues wrote memorials. As you can expect, putting together his short biography is quite easy with the information I can find online and exploring the Borror lab.

Donald Borror

The other ESA fellow I am writing about, Fred P. Ide, is comparably a little guy in the Ent world. Like Borror, he continued to research and teach at his alma mater, the University of Toronto. Ide was an expert mayfly taxonomist and aquatic biologist and did a lot of research throughout his years on streams, weather, and the effects of DDT. But I have had to dig really deep to piece together this man's life. The fellow biography is to follow a template, so I need the basic information on birth, death, graduation years, career moves, and society memberships and service. There is no other biography on Ide's life, and his death notice in the The Bulletin of the Entomological Society of Canada was very short, the only new piece of information being the date of his passing. I could only find his birth date listed on an ancestry site, and still don't know the exact year he entered the University of Toronto. However, going through old journals and their occasional directly has helped. I now know who he worked with for the Canadian National Collection before attending Toronto, and a few societies he joined. But that took a lot of work going through old, scanned articles (also I want to include a shout out to anyone who is scanning old articles for online use - thank you!!)

An ironic twist is that Ide was an undergrad with a famous fisheries scientist, William Ricker, who had put together his own very detailed autobiography. I've gotten a lot of information mostly from Ricker's personal accounts, and even a picture.

Frederick Ide (from W.E. Ricker, 2006. Environmental Biology of Fishes 75: 7-37)

Of course, I could probably contact his old department (which has since split), and will once I figure out what is still missing. But what's been so interesting has been reading his work and thinking about how most entomologists will have a career such as his: doing careful, meticulous work, attending many conferences, adding to the scientific process, and having no long biography written about their work. Most of us won't make it to the big leagues, but in my opinion that doesn't make our careers any less important.

New Student in ALE Lab

2010-11-18T14:15:00.004-05:00

Hello everyone, my name is Ian McIlvaine and I will be joining the ALE Lab in January. In June I graduated from The Ohio University with a B.S. in Plant Biology and have been working in the ALE lab as a lab assistant since July. While working in the lab I have become interested in the Common buckthorn, an invasive species of shrub. This shrub may have potentially negative effects on the environment such as supporting invasive pests and reducing light availability for native understory plants. I'm excited to be given the opportunity to work as a graduate student in the ALE lab and continue my work with the Common buckthorn.

Irrigation

2010-11-17T07:36:00.002-05:00

We've been building an irrigation system in our greenhouse here in Wooster. This way when we grow our sunflowers next year I won't hear any griping about watering the plants! It's a little slow going at first, but I think I have the hang of it now. Now if I could only automate the planting...

Men's Garden Club of Youngstown...Avid Lady Beetle Watchers!

2010-11-10T09:58:00.003-05:00

Here are some pics sent by the Men's Garden Club of Youngstown this summer. All of these smiling youths helped out the BLBB by putting up sticky card traps in the youth gardens. Thanks for all the help, I think I see a few budding entomologists in there!

Unexpected visitor at Scott's place

2010-11-08T19:24:00.013-05:00

While trying to figure out what to write about for this weeks blog post I got a call from ALE lab's Scott Prajzner who asked if I knew how to catch a bat? It seems his house has a new and somewhat unwanted guest. Several of the establishments where I have resided over the years have hosted bats from time to time as well yet I could not offer much other than "do you have an insect net?" Maybe some of our readers can offer some methods to safely remove bats from the house?

According to Marne Titchenell, a wildlife specialist with Ohio State University Extension, Ohio is home to 13 species of bats, all of which feed on insects. In a single night a bat can consume between 200 to 300 insects. In fact, the United States Department of Agriculture estimates that bats’ ability to prey on agricultural pest insects save farmers and estimated $1 billion on pest control each year! So although they can be a little frightning they offer a significant ecosystem service for farmers and gardeners.

To learn more about bats, including information on how to make your own bat house (this could be useful to Scott) check out http://www.batcon.org/. If you live in Ohio, Marne Titchenell may offer a program about bats near you in the future, check out http://www.woodlandstewards.osu.edu/ for more information County Extension offices may also request a bat class.

Zotero

2010-11-05T09:30:00.006-04:00

Down in Columbus the grad students have all been doing a lot of reading and some writing. Soon we will be doing more writing than reading, and we will need to do A LOT of citing of references. Recently in our Entomology Seminar we were taught how to use EndNote to build a reference database and help us cite as we write. It's a great program with a great history and a lot of support by the scientific community. I use Zotero, a free program that can do most of the same things, and has the potential to be even more powerful than EndNote. So here is my explanation of the features that Zotero brings to the table.

You need to use Mozilla Firefox as a browser in order to use Zotero, but you do not need an internet connection for it to run. Within this three-paned program that attaches to your browser you can manually add references by filling in the fields like Author, Title, Date and Journal. Alternatively, by visiting a journal database like JSTOR or Google Scholar, your Zotero program will notify you with a little symbol in the address bar that it can automatically add all pertinent information to your library for you. It can also add multiple references at a time based off of a list of search results. When Zotero makes the reference in your library it will automatically link it to the internet database page where the document can be downloaded. You have to download the .pdf separately and link it to the reference yourself if you want full access to your references without internet. The references are easy to organize into sublibraries, but a downside here is that the program has no way to automatically detect and prevent duplicate references.

Once you have a library set up you can link the entire library to your word processor with a simple plug-in for adding citations on the fly. This will simultaneously build your bibliography for you. Zotero comes with a set of basic citation formats, but you can download and install many other styles from an ever-growing list on their website. For example, you can write an entire paper with Nature style numerical citations and decide to change it to Harvard style (Name date) parenthetical citations with a couple of clicks. Deleting a reference from your database will not automatically delete it from your Word document, but changing misspellings in your library will be reflected in your in-text citations by clicking a "refresh" button on your Zotero plug-in.

Additionally, if you use Google Scholar you can set your Bibliography Manager preference to "Show links to import citations into EndNote" and Zotero will interpret the information. For ISI Web of Science it is a bit trickier because you have to build an EndNote Web library and export that to your computer as a .txt file, and then import it to Zotero. In this case it is dependent on EndNote Web, but does not require a subscription to the stand alone program. Doing it this way will not link the references to their internet location, but the reference information will be complete and you can link .pdfs manually as usual.

Where the program really shines is in its community. It's called an "open-source" program, which means anyone can submit changes and build to the program with proper know-how. Similar to Wikipedia, this program is always getting new information from its users and the creators make sure that the good ideas get in the updated versions. All downloads and updates are free. If you decide to try it out, or make the switch you can readily import/export library information to most other major database programs, including EndNote. One of my favorite features is that you can have one Firefox window open to browse the web and have another window with Zotero up and running. The program won't take over both windows. Finally, because Zotero isn't a for-profit company, their website and forums function as their "getting started wizard" and tech support unit. Since the typical Zotero users are people in higher-education with a knack for problem solving, their discussions are very helpful.

I recognize that to some, it may seem unreliable or uncomfortable to try and complete research using an "unfinished" program, but I would argue that the incremental changing of the program is what makes it better and potentially more powerful than EndNote. The community at large is whittling and honing the program to perform optimally, much like how natural selection directs evolution along a continuum of speciation or how water erosion shapes shards of glass into well-rounded jewels. A for-profit company can't pay enough people to do that.

Not your average agroecology post, eh? Have a good weekend!

The Daring Jumping Spider

2010-11-04T17:20:00.002-04:00

I'm pretty sure this is the spider that terrified me as a kid when one jumped at my face from out of nowhere.

This is a female Phidippus audax (family Salticidae), also known as the Daring Jumping Spider. These are commonly found in and around homes catching various prey. Salticids are active hunters who do not make webs; they use their silk as safety lines in case they miss a jump. You can easily recognize this species because they are relatively large (most salticids are quite small while this species can be around 1/2 inch) and both sexes have bright blue or green chelicerae.

Photos from Thomas Shahan, one of my favorite Flickr streams.

Their eyesight is exceptional, as you might guess from their large frontward facing eyes (four more are on top of the head). Not only does this make them agile predators, they also rely on sight for sexual selection. Similar to many birds and mammals, the male jumping spiders are often more elaborately colored than the females because she is choosing her mate based on his beauty and dance performance.

Low MALB year!

2010-11-02T14:04:00.004-04:00

Has anyone noticed a difference in the amount of multicolored Asian lady beetles (Harmonia axyridis) invading their homes compared to last year?

There is a very simple explanation for this: there was less food!

These lady beetles really did not become established until the soybean aphid became established. Since the establishment of the soybean aphid, there have been many complaints of the lady beetles invading homes during the fall season which results in an unpleasent smell, possible allergies, and for some reason, most people just don't enjoy sharing their homes with 1000's of beetles.

The image above is of soybean aphids we had in the lab over the summer (greatly magnified). The populations of these aphids tend to cycle, meaning that there are years with very high numbers of aphids, and years with very low numbers of aphids. This year there were low numbers of aphids, so the lady beetles did not have as much food, and they were unable produce as much offspring.

So next time you have an intense home invasion of Asian lady beetles, that probably means that the soybean farmers didn't have such a good year either due to the numbers of aphids infesting their crops. Which of course leads to a increase in the amount of insecticide that is sprayed on the soybeans, which isn't good for the environment, our own health, or the growers wallets.

Pumpkin time!

2010-10-29T12:26:00.005-04:00

My first field season is officially done! The perennial flowers have been planted in half of my collaborator's farms, and will be managed by the farmer for a year before they are allowed to fully grow. In my two test sites in West Salem and Piketon I harvested the pumpkins that we studied back in August. In order to assess the level of pollination, Ian and Chris have been counting the seeds in the fully-developed pumpkins like the ones in our Piketon site pictured above.

As some of you may know, pumpkins are the most fun fruit. Not only can you carve them, but thousands of teenagers around the country revel in smashing your hand-crafted works of art the night before Halloween. There has been one long-standing tradition in one neighbor in Cleveland revolving around pumpkin sledding.

Many county fairs have a variety of pumpkin growing contests. Some of the trade secrets to growing an exceptionally large pumpkin are kept under lock and key, but include ritualistic daily care to ensure that the pumpkin is healthy, as mentioned in this news report.

Perhaps next year, after the demolition derby when there are a bunch of useless smashed-up cars laying around, the Wayne County Fair will introduce some new competitions: pumpkin launching, shooting and dropping.

Spooky Spider

2010-10-28T11:46:00.010-04:00

Halloween is fast approaching (and I am unfortunately lacking a costume idea), and it's the perfect time to highlight one of Ohio's most feared spiders: the black widow. These spiders are in the cobweb weaving family Therididae.

Two species live in our state, the common black widow (Latrodectus mactans) and the northern widow (L. variolus). The one pictured above is the common widow, which you can tell because of its complete hourglass on the bottom of the abdomen. The northern widow has an hourglass that is usually split in the middle, though both species can show variation in patterns and could even lack the red markings.

These spiders are referred to as widows because of the idea that the female will eat the male after copulation. This is not always the case, and is really only likely if the female lives in an environment with few prey sources. However, the black widow is cannibalistic as a spiderling. Out of a few hundred hatchlings, only a few will continue on after eating most of their siblings.

Bites from a black widow are rarely fatal, but nevertheless could require medical attention. Pain from the bite wound might not even begin until a few hours later, along with nausea, muscle cramps, dizziness, sweating, and vomiting. Therefore it's good to know if and where these spiders are adding to your Halloween yard decorations in order to remove them or just stay away.

Insect of the Week!

2010-10-26T17:13:00.003-04:00

The

The American Burying Beetle

Nicrophorus americanus

I talk about native lady beetles and their declining numbers in many posts on here...while the Convergent lady beetle is getting harder to find every year, it is still not endangered.

There are insects on the endangered species list though! The American Burying Beetle is a popular one among entomologists.

They are important because they are carrion beetles, which means that they scavenge the remains of animals and are important for recycling that material back into the environment. They have a really interesting behavior. When they find a dead animal, such as a mouse, the male and female work together to move the remains until they find ground that is soft enough to dig. They then bury the remains. This is done at night time to avoid flies laying eggs on the remains (the flies are active during the day). Then they strip the fur or feathers from the body and form in into sort of a compact ball. They use secreted liquids to preserve the carcass, and about 30 eggs are laid in a tunnel near the carcass. Unlike most insects though, the larvae receive parental care!

At one point this beetle could be found in 35 states, and into Canada.

Now this beetle is found in six states

The reasons for it's disappearance is unknown, but it may be due to a loss a habitat.

No Guts, No Glory....

2010-10-25T12:24:00.016-04:00

I have spent a lot of time over the last couple of weeks dissecting lady beetle abdomens. Why you ask would someone spend their time doing this? Worthwhile question for sure.

We are interested in determining the proportion of native and exotic lady beetles that are attacked by a parasitoid wasp, Dinocampus coccinellae. The female wasps sting the lady beetles and deposit an egg inside. the egg hatches and the wasp larva feeds on the lady beetle. If you look closely you can see the dead larva in the dissected abdomens above. I circled it in the top picture and there is a close up in the bottom picture. Eventually the wasp will emerge from the lady beetle and form a cocoon underneath the beetle. For more pictures and information about the wasps, see Chelsea's posts on March 9 and August 9 2010.

The goal of our study is to determine if either the type of crop or natural habitat within which the lady beetles are found, or the composition of the larger-scale landscape surrounding each habitat influences rates of parasitism among native and exotic lady beetle species.

The results of this study will be presented by our lab at this years Entomological Society of America meeting in December in San Diego, so we have a lot of beetles to dissect in a hurry!

Cellar Spider

2010-10-21T15:19:00.002-04:00

As I've been reading, thinking, and discussing with Mary, my thesis project idea has been veering toward arthropod predators and their ecosystem services. Most obviously, they eat many pest herbivores, which in turn increases plant productivity. Many are also considered indicator species for conservation purposes, as predators are usually very sensitive to habitat destruction.

There are many predators in the urban environment, but most are generalist consumers because they eat a wide variety of insects and can maintain themselves in an uncertain habitat. Of course, some of the most obvious to humans are the spiders, which are the maligned creatures I'd like to delve into for the next few blog entries.

I've had many encounters with cellar spiders (family Pholcidae) in my day; my own basement is probably some sort of utopia for them. These are the spindly, long-legged spiders you may find hiding in corners or windows. They spin irregular, wispy webs which they do not eat before leaving the way many other spiders do (neighboring cobweb spiders don't help the mess, either).

This is a female carrying her newly hatched babies. The red background is the bucket she was hiding in (Flickr).

Cellar spiders eat many annoying house pests such as gnats, flies, small moths, and mosquitoes. Their webs are not adhesive, but these spiders are quick to act and wrap up their prey when it gets lost in their irregular nets. The spiders' quick movements are also useful for another hunting techniques. Cellar spiders will go to other spider webs, tap the lines to imitate prey, and then attack when the owner comes to investigate. Pholcidae are also known for their vibrations when provoked.

Sheet Web Spiders at OARDC

2010-10-20T11:40:00.009-04:00

Yesterday it was very cool and foggy in Wooster and I took some pictures of spider webs in the shrubs outside the Entomology building at OARDC. These belong to sheet web spiders (Linyphiidae). This is a large family (over 4,000 known species) of very small spiders (most are between 4-10 mm). The close-up shots show webs spun by a "bowl and doily spider" in the genus Frontinella. The web consists of a dense bowl-shaped web with a flat sheet web (the doily) underneath. The spider hangs on the underside of the bowl and eats small flies, aphids, and other insects that become trapped in the non-sticky silk that makes up the web.

The Sweeper

2010-10-18T17:14:00.004-04:00

Today we realized the true extent of The Sweeper's (AKA Chelsea) activities this summer. We went though all three of our storage freezers and pulled out all of the Sweeper's samples, counted, and organized them by date to make sorting them easier. We have determined that over 1,008 sweep samples were collected during the summer! These samples were collected to determine how the diversity and abundance of arthropod predators present in a soybean, alfalfa, or grassland site influenced lady beetle egg predation.

Progress on these samples was a little slow today as the many different predators which may eat lady beetle eggs were counted. We will push forward though, after all it was very hard work for the Sweeper to collect all that data!

-- Mary, Ian, and Chris

Taxonomist vs Systemicist

2010-10-15T23:39:00.017-04:00

Recently, I have had to teach my students the difference between taxonomy and systematics when classifying species. Taxonomists describe the observable features and functions of an organism, and systemicists find hypothetical relationships between them. I found it easiest to explain it with cars...*

Clockwise top left: Dodge Rampage, Ford Ranchero, and Chevrolet El Camino

The vehicles pictured above could be described by a taxonomist as car-pickup truck hybrids dating back to the 1970s. The flatbed space is comparable, the number of doors is the same amongst all three specimens, and I would suspect all three have bench seats and rear-wheel drive. A taxonomist may realize the small differences in these vehicles, but would generally classify these as similar. A systemicist would take things one step further and find out how they are related. In this case, there is no relation! They have all stemmed from different vehicular lineages: Dodge, Ford and Chevrolet. When taxonomists observe enough vehicles over a long time systemicists review their observations to find links in the chain and piece together phylogenetic trees like this one. Many more cars have come and gone since the three above in the face of capitalistic selection pressures, resulting in vehicles like those below. They look very different; as different as elephants and pigs, and opossums and kangaroos! But, they are still related.

Clockwise top left: Dodge Viper, Ford F650, Chevrolet Volt

*Depending on your browser and screen resolution, the pictures may not actually appear in a clockwise pattern.

Solitary Pollinators

2010-10-14T16:10:00.005-04:00

To wrap up my posts on bees, this week I wanted to highlight some solitary bee pollinators.

Most bees are in fact solitary, and in one study of urban gardens in New York City they comprised 50% of the individuals sampled. The two most common families found were Colletidae and Halictidae. The latter are commonly known as sweat bees, and the genus Agapostemon is by far my favorite. How cool is a green bee?

Go here for some more awesome photos by Cyrus Khamak. Actually, I suggest just browsing through Flickr's photostream of insect macro (or search for jumping spiders).

Because many solitary bees nest in cavities, urban areas can provide a lot of suitable habitat with artificial structures. However, soil nesting bees are most abundant in forests, but the ground compaction by gardening and lawn care reduce the amount of suitable habitat in cities. I think this is a really interesting example of how community dynamics can change in urban ecosystems.

This leaf cutter bee (family Megachilidae) is using a brick wall as a nesting site:

Bees in the Megachilidae family are often used commercially for fruiting trees. They can be attracted with wood bored with holes.

Solitary bees are not known for their sting, though the females will do so if squashed or grabbed.

Someone was checking out my camera...

2010-10-12T14:37:00.003-04:00

While watching the hours of video I have from the field I caught a image of this curious little bird:
As I have mentioned in earlier posts, the point of these cameras is for me to observe what is eating lady beetle eggs in the field. The hypothesis is that the Exotic lady beetles are eating the egg masses of the native lady beetles.

So far I have seen a few different types in invertebrates munching on the eggs (things such as slugs, and daddy long legs), and have been documenting each encounter.

I look forward to each clip of video since they are all different, and I am still making new observations each day!

Introducing Buckthorn Watch!

2010-10-11T15:37:00.012-04:00

Common buckthorn has been present in the U.S. since the early 1800's when it was introduced by settlers though landscaping. Unfortunately this fast growing plant which can spread by both roots and seeds has become a widespread invasive species. Common buckthorn is found along forest edges, in between farm fields, along roadsides, in parks and campgrounds, and in railroad and power line right-of-ways. Within these habitats, common buckthorn reduces light penetration to the forest floor, resulting in a loss of native herbaceous plants often replaced by common buckthorn seedlings. Below is a picture of an invaded forest floor covered with buckthorn seedlings.
In addition to negatively impacting natural areas, common buckthorn also has a significant impact within agroecosystems. This invasive plant is the overwintering host of the soybean aphid. Soybean aphids spend the winter in the egg stage on common buckthorn, in the spring the aphids hatch and feed for 1-3 generations before winged aphids are produced that migrate to soybean fields. During the summer multiple generations of winged and wingless aphids are present in soybean. Aphid populations can reach 1,000's per plant, reducing yield and increasing pesticide use to control their populations. In the fall, when soybean plants begin to dry soybean aphids migrate back to common buckthorn to mate and deposit their overwintering eggs. One interesting fact about the soybean aphid is that during the entire year the only time that male aphids are present is in the fall, when males and females mate to produce overwintering eggs. During the rest of the year, only females are present and they are clonal, reproducing without mating! Below is a picture of winged and wingless aphids on common buckthorn.

The presence of soybean aphid not only damages soybean production but also has led to increased abundance of the multicolored Asian lady beetle. We have had several posts about this beetle, it has been implicated in the decline of native lady beetles and interactions between this insect and native lady beetles is one research focus of Chelsea Smith.

The Buckthorn Watch Program is a new regional citizen science program which will examine the relationship between these invasive species. This project was funded by the USDA and is a corroborative effort of the ALE Laboratory and Dr. Andy Michel at OSU, Dr. Doug Landis and Megan Woltz at Michigan State University, and Dr. Matt O'Neal at Iowa State University. We are currently looking for volunteers willing to help us map the distribution of this plant across the north central U.S. To register as a Buckthorn Watch member visit our new website. Check back in on this site as I continue to add new information, including a video describing the Buckthorn Watch program!

In addition to reporting common buckthorn infestations, we are also tracking the utilization of common buckthorn by the soybean aphid. Each spring and fall we will hold an Aphid Hunt, where volunteers will survey common buckthorn for soybean aphid. Anyone who reports a common buckthorn infestation is able to participate in Aphid Hunt.

I know that we have blog readers outside of Ohio who would like to participate in our Buckeye Lady Beetle Blitz program. I am excited to introduce this new, regional project and I hope that you will help us to reduce the impacts of this invasive plant!

Cause of CCD uncovered?

2010-10-07T15:21:00.006-04:00

There's lots of online talk today about the recent PLoS ONE article regarding honey bee Colony Collapse Disorder. A research team composed mainly of scientists from the University of Montana in Missoula and the Army's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center in Maryland have uncovered a virus-fungus tag team present in collapsing bee colonies.

The researchers used a method developed by the military called mass spectrometry-based proteomics (MSP), a tool that identifies peptide sequences which are screened against a database to identify pathogens. Two previously unidentified RNA viruses were found in the studied bee populations; a variety of RNA viruses thus far have been the main culprits in CCD. However, the real surprise was the identification of a co-occurrence of a DNA virus, an invertebrate iridescent virus (IIV), and a Nosema fungus. Nosema had been pinpointed previously in some collapsing populations, but the finding of an IIV is going to shift new research away from RNA viruses. The exact identity of the IIV is still unknown because not all known types in the virus family have been peptide sequenced.

The virus-fungus correlation is very strong, as the researchers found their co-occurrence in sampled US apiaries from 2006-2007, an observation colony that demonstrated collapse over the time of the study, and separate colonies in Florida experiencing CCD. As an illustration, the peptides of the pathogen pairing were shown to increase in the observation colony as bee forager flights decreased.

Bees sampled from a Montana colony and also bees shipped from Australia with no history of CCD did not contain the lethal pairing. Laboratory inoculations also supported the field studies' findings.

A major question, however, is if this virus-fungus pairing is the true cause of CCD. Are collapsing colonies just more susceptible due to something else, and the two pathogens together burn down the house? The lead researcher from the University of Montana, Dr. Jerry Bromenshenk, cautions, "We truly don't know if these two pathogens cause CCD or whether the colonies with CCD are more likely to succumb to these two pathogens."

The Power of Natural Selection!

2010-10-05T13:51:00.006-04:00

With both my Entomology course, and the Biology 101 labs I am teaching, Natural selection has been stuck in my mind for the past week or so.

After teaching natural selection to students, who may have never studied evolution before, it made me realize how complicated it can seem to someone who never thought about it!

I found this cute graphic (that of course includes an insect) to help explain it...

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/_0_0/bergstrom_02

This mechanism can apply to many different situations! The important thing to note, is that the green beetle can't pass the "green gene" on to future populations because it is eaten by the bird before it has a chance to reproduce. The beetles with the "brown gene" were able to produce more offspring because they lived longer.

This is one of the mechanisms that lead to such an amazing diversity of insects today!!

I'm Back!

2010-10-04T08:21:00.007-04:00

I am back at the OARDC after attending the Aphidophaga 11 conference in Perugia Italy. This conference was held in the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Perugia which is housed in St. Peter's Abbey. The setting was far from your typical conference, with presentations held in the Abbey and posters set up in an outdoor square.

The conference was an excellent opportunity to meet biological control researchers from across the U.S. and Europe. During the conference, I met Dr. Helen Roy and several members of her lab. Dr. Roy is an ecological entomologist who runs a diverse laboratory interested in many aspects of insect ecology and invasion dynamics. She also runs a lady beetle survey across the UK, http://www.ladybird-survey.org/, and has data on lady beetle populations for 30 years!

I also was able to catch up with my collaborator Dr. Audrey Grez, a professor at the Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile. Dr. Grez is studying biological control of aphids in alfalfa. She is also interested in interactions between native and exotic lady beetles, and the contributions of exotic lady beetles to native lady beetle decline. I will be working with Dr. Grez to measure the biological control service that lady beetles provide to alfalfa pest management beginning in 2013. I am really excited about the opportunity to travel to Chile to conduct experiments with her and her laboratory!

Bike study

2010-10-01T09:28:00.002-04:00

For my stats class I will be conducting a small study on the campus of OSU. Which type of bicycle is ridden the most? Out of four categories (road, mountain, hybrid and cruiser) the availability of cheaply-produced mountain bikes is much higher than road bikes, cruisers and hybrids. Therefore, I hypothesize that the bike commuters within OSU campus purchase and ride mountain bikes more than the three other styles of bicycle.

The Cruiser features high handlebars and a low seat for an upright riding position, a stiff frame and usually has a unique swooping top tube shape.
The road bike features a high seat and low handlebars for an aerodynamic seating position, stiff frame, large diameter skinny tires, and large gearing.

The mountain bike features a variety of suspension systems, but can also have stiff frames. They are noted for their small diameter knobby tires and flat handlebars.
The hybrid bikes feature qualities of both the road and mountain bike varieties. The flat bars, frame geometry and suspension on the front forks mimic many mountain bikes, but the gearing and large diameter skinny tire size often denote road bike influence.

There are pros and cons to each style, depending on your commuting area. Which one would you ride?

Have a good weekend!

Backyard Beekeeping

2010-09-30T11:45:00.002-04:00

Seeing as I don't have any data to analyze and am just beginning a literature review, I will instead highlight various aspects of urban ecology and insects for the next few weeks (until I can think of something else). I'll piggyback on last week's entry and discuss backyard beekeeping.

Indicative of the times (or maybe just my generation), the first thing I did to find information was Google "backyard beekeeping." I had no idea this topic was so hot! The hobby is booming, no doubt partially due to increasing public interest in organic produce and Colony Collapse Disorder. The White House kitchens even caved this summer and started their own hive.

Beekeeping regulations differ by state and county, but Ohio appears fairly lax with 41 beekeeper's associations. New groups are still forming, including the Greater Cleveland Beekeepers Association established in 2008. The organization is utilized by suburbanites and city-dwellers of the area, but why would your average Joe want a backyard beehive? The obvious reason is to have your own honey, but pollination services are also important. Not only will your (and your neighbor's) garden benefit, but surrounding parks can, too. Bees will fly up to 2 miles to find flowers and it takes about 2 million flowers to make 1 pound of honey. Backyard beekeepers are a real benefit to their community.

This does raise some questions about the landscape where the bees forage. An upcoming ALE lab study aims to examine how the surrounding landscape structure along an urban-to-rural gradient influences bee pollinators due to differing pesticide exposures. How are stressors different in a commercial apple orchard versus a suburb where many homeowners apply Roundup?

How does the Biology 101 classroom work these days?

2010-09-28T13:46:00.005-04:00

While science is always changing, the way we teach it changes too!

At a university, such as Ohio State, the lecturer might be teaching 600-700 students at one time! In the past this might have been a professor standing in front of everyone lecturing, and maybe writing on the chalk board.

As technologies have been invented, the lecturer now has the ability to interact with the class (even 600 of them!) and know instantly if they are understanding the information or not...by using Clickers!

The professor that teaches one of the Biology 101 sections really gets a good use of this technology. A multiple choice question can be shown on a PowerPoint, and after everyone answers using the remote (that they are all required to purchase), the professor gets instant feedback and can address confusing topics.

Favorite photo of the summer

2010-09-24T13:44:00.003-04:00

Class started on Wednesday in Columbus, and the Gardiner lab has hurdled the week with ease and grace. I put together a powerpoint presentation for the Pollinator Partnership in San Francisco, CA to explain all the goings on in Ohio over the summer. Looking back on the summer was fun, and I surprised myself by how much was accomplished. Next year will be much busier, and while I'm here in Columbus I will be synthesizing that experience with future goals in a research proposal. Here is my favorite photo of the summer: pumpkin stigmas soaking in soapy water for processing pollen counts.

New member in the ALE lab

2010-09-23T11:30:00.000-04:00

Hello readers! My name is Caitlin Burkman and I am yet another new graduate student in Mary's lab. I'm starting here in Columbus and yesterday was the first day of classes, made complete with our own tornado warnings (luckily no damage!). I won't be TAing, so I'm taking 3 classes: introductory GIS, insect ecology, and statistics.

I graduated this past May from Case Western Reserve University with a Biology B.S. I studied moth and cockroach behavior, but am looking forward to delving into ecology. My thesis project isn't defined yet, but I plan on examining disturbance within urban environments and its influence on insect communities. I'm happy that this work will largely be in Cleveland; having spent the last 4 years there, I hope to play some part in its revitalization efforts by understanding what's going on in its vacant lots, urban gardens, and elsewhere.

One really cool aspect of urban insects is backyard beekeeping. My boyfriend's dad has 3 hives in his backyard. Can't wait for the honey harvesting next season!

How well do you know your lady beetles?

2010-09-21T19:15:00.008-04:00

Are there any BLBB volunteers out there? Here is a good time to show off your knowledge of lady beetle identification!

Can anyone identify these?

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Major damage to OARDC left by tornado

2010-09-19T05:57:00.006-04:00

As Ben said on Friday, Wooster OH experienced severe weather on Thursday September 16. Our campus, The Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center experienced major damage. This includes damage to some of our campus buildings and our greenhouses. As a campus community we are so thankful that nobody was hurt during the storm. We have been asked to stay off campus while buildings are inspected and hazards are removed.

Rough Weather in Wooster

2010-09-17T10:26:00.002-04:00

The state of Ohio experienced some foul weather yesterday. In Columbus the tornado sirens sounded three times around 3 o'clock, and by 5:30 the same fast-moving storm system had zipped up to the OARDC in Wooster. No one has been hurt, and the Wayne County Fair continued to operate throughout the evening. However, there has been a substantial amount of property damage, and both a gas and electrical power outage has resulted in headaches for many scientists who rely on refrigeration for their samples. For more information and pictures, follow this link.

Wooster was lucky compared to Athens, which also got hit pretty hard.

First Report From Columbus!

2010-09-15T21:11:00.002-04:00

I am finally getting all settled into my new home in Columbus! So far everything has been going very well. While I miss the lab in Wooster, I am excited to learn about a new place and have already been meeting other students.

The past two days have been spent at orientation for teaching, and we have one more day of that. Biology 101 lab will be my first experience with teaching, and I understand that I'll be learning just as much as my students. It will be interesting since there are more students enrolled in Biology 101 at Ohio State than the entire student body of the college I went to for my undergraduate degree. This city is certainly nothing like Wooster, but I am getting used to it!

Aphidophaga 11 Conference

2010-09-14T09:01:00.003-04:00

This Friday (Sept 17) I am leaving for Perugia Italy to attend the Aphidophaga Conference. Aphidophaga are aphid-eating insects, and this conference will include speakers discussing a range of interesting topics including: lady beetle ecology, interactions between lady beetles and other aphid predators, aphid parasitoids, biological control of invasive aphids, and fungal diseases of aphid predators.

I am really excited about the opportunity to meet researchers from around the world who are studying aphid predators and parasitoids as well as catch up with corroborators of the ALE laboratory who will be attending. Watch for highlights from the conference and photos of Italy!

Seed mixing

2010-09-10T16:38:00.005-04:00

This week the gang and I mixed my perennial native plant seeds with sawdust! This dilutes the seeds and allows us to more evenly broadcast the seed by hand. We will plant this at six of my pumpkin growers' farms in October and let the seeds lay dormant over winter. Next year my growers will keep the plot mowed to allow the perennials to develop their root systems. By the summer of 2012 we will let them grow to witness the types of insects they attract to the pumpkins.
We mixed our sawdust and seed on a tarp and mixed it well with shovels. Ian and I had fun, while Chelsea took the pictures and Scott drank coffee...

Back to Campus

2010-09-09T16:37:00.002-04:00

Graduate students Ben Phillips and Chelsea Smith are leaving Wooster this week to begin Fall Quarter in Columbus, OH. The Ohio State University is gearing up for the new school year which gets underway the week of September 20. Both Chelsea and Ben will be busy this fall, teaching laboratory sessions of Biology 101 and taking graduate courses. Both of them are in my Insect Ecology class so at least I will get to see them a couple times a week!

We also have a new graduate student joining us this fall, Caitlin Burkman. Welcome to the lab Caitlin!

Garden Club of Ohio

2010-09-08T16:53:00.003-04:00

Today I gave a presentation at the Garden Club of Ohio's annual meeting. This group "supports endeavors in every aspect of gardening through educational programs, horticulture, and floriculture." The club had a great turnout today, with 100 people attending the presentations and lunch. I really enjoyed meeting with the Garden Club members, and I hope we get some great insect questions for future blog posts!

Found in the Garden

2010-09-07T14:02:00.003-04:00

Lately the ALE Lab blog has received some interesting insect photos from gardeners. The top picture was sent in by Sarah Vradenburg. It's a swamp milkweed beetle (Labidomera clvicollis). This leaf-feeding beetle looks a lot like a lady beetle, and can be found on milkweeds in the garden. The bottom image was sent by Sally Francis, its a Colorado potato beetle. This beetle is a major potato pest, feeding on plant leaves and stems as a larva and adult. If you find an "insect of mystery" send it to us at ladybeetles@osu.edu!

Lazy Friday

2010-09-03T11:16:00.003-04:00

All is quiet in the lab this Friday. Everyone is feeling sick or has a visitor or is traveling, except me! I'm here processing the final bee bowls, copying my data sheets and cutting open a knucklehead pumpkin I received as a gift from one of my growers to practice seed counting. This is my opportunity to play music that no one else likes!

Before Chelsea and I move to Columbus we have a large list of things to take care of to winterize the lab. There are drawers and cupboards for everything and pieces of equipment that need to be gathered and grouped. It reminds me of when I used to volunteer at a volunteer bike shop. We would start each day with a 30 minute "find and bind" where we would gather up loose pedals, shifters and various matching parts that belong together and zip-tie them for storage in the part bins. It also gave us the chance to find junk that we didn't need, and an opportunity for new storage space.

Have a nice weekend!

BLBB August Sample

2010-09-02T18:55:00.004-04:00

Volunteer Cathy Roe's garden

The Men's Garden Club of Youngstown Youth Garden

Wilson Garden Wonder

The buckeye lady beetle blitz has two sampling periods, one in June and one in August. During both sampling periods our 200+ volunteers survey Ohio's lady beetles in their home gardens. Above are some images of the August data collection that just finished up. Thank you to all who participated!

Yeah Bethany!!!!

2010-09-01T15:33:00.004-04:00

We received some great news today. As many of you know who follow the ALE blog, undergraduate researcher Bethany Hunt has been studying lady beetle decline as part of our lab for the past two summers. This summer, Bethany presented her research as part of an undergraduate research symposium held at the OSU Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center. Her presentation earned her a FIRST PLACE Research Award for her outstanding research and presentation. Bethany will travel to San Diego this winter to present her work at the Entomological Society of America conference. Way to Go Bethany!!

Bethany in the ALE lab and working hard in the field!

Insect QUESTION of the week!

2010-08-31T08:03:00.004-04:00

Do you know which insect is a beneficial predator (preys on other arthropods), and which is a pest of many crops?

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Leave your answer in the comments section!

Our Urban Farming Collaborators

2010-08-30T08:42:00.012-04:00

The ALE lab has been studying insect communities in urban vacant lands and comparing these communities to lands converted to produce food crops for two summers now. We have had a chance to work with some great collaborators though this research and I wanted to provide some information on their efforts to produce food within the urban landscape.

Blue Pike Farm

Carl Skalak, owner of Blue Pike Farm with Mary, Chelsea and Lucia

Blue Pike Farm: Last week we held an outreach event at Blue Pike Farm. This farm is operated by Carl Skalak. Blue Pike is located on East 72nd Street north of Saint Clair in downtown Cleveland and is the first farm started in Cleveland in the 21st century. The goal of the farm is to produce a variety of produce for local sale with out the use of conventional fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides. In addition to Carl the Blue Pike staff consists of a hard-working volunteer coordinator named Pat and several volunteers who help to plant, cultivate and harvest the produce. They produce a diversity of crops at Blue Pike including strawberries, raspberries, melons, squash, eggplant, asparagus, peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, onions, and herbs. The farm sells produce every Thursday from June-October on-site. They also sell at local markets in Cleveland as well as direct to restaurants around town. Carl and Pat are really great to work with, we really appreciate them allowing us to collect data from Blue Pike Farm and we hope to work with them again next summer!

The Cleveland Botanical Gardens Green Corps Program

The Cleveland Botanical Gardens Green Corps Program: Our research team also worked with the Cleveland Botanical Gardens this summer, collecting data from 6 of their learning farms which are located across the city. These farms host the Green Corps program which is a work/study program founded in 1996. As part of Green Corps high school students learn job skills, leadership and environmental stewardship. Students in Green Corps plant, tend, and harvest produce that they sell at farmers markets across the city. They also produce their own bottled products called, Ripe from Downtown, including salsa and salad dressing. For more information about the Cleveland Botanical Gardens Green Corps program, check out their website at: http://www.cbgarden.org/green_corps.html

A small break

2010-08-27T10:16:00.004-04:00

Finally a slow and relaxed day, and it's a Friday! I can't speak for everyone, but this was a much needed break from my pumpkin schedule. I can process data, back-up my hard drive and clear my head for yet another go at collecting the elusive squash bee in action next week. My parents are in town for a visit, and I'll be entertaining them for the weekend. Above is a picture of my immediate family in Las Vegas. Penn was always my parents' favorite!