3.20.15

Springing forward

Scientist Shaun collecting phenology data in the climate change experiment. He is recording the date that the first flowers emerge for dame’s rocket.

Sean Mooney, a high school researcher, collecting phenology data in the climate change experiment. He is recording the date that the first flowers emerge for dame’s rocket.

The Reading Level 1 activities are as follows:

The Reading Level 3 activities are as follows:

Éste Data Nugget también está disponible en Español:

Every day we add more greenhouse gases to our air when we burn fossil fuels like oil, coal, and natural gas. Greenhouse gasses trap the sun’s heat, so as we add more the Earth is heating up! What does climate change mean for the species on our planet? The timing of life cycle events for plants and animals, like flowering and migration, is largely determined by cues organisms take from the environment. The timing of these events is called phenology. Scientists studying phenology are interested in how climate change will influence different species. For example, with warming temperatures and more unpredictable transitions between seasons, what can we expect to happen to the migration timings of birds, mating seasons for animals, or flowering times of plants?

Scientists collecting phenology data in the climate change experiment. They are recording the date that the first flowers emerge for dame’s rocket.

Scientists collecting phenology data in the climate change experiment.

Plants are the foundation for almost all life on Earth. Through photosynthesis, plants produce the oxygen (O2) that we breathe, food for their own growth and development, food for animals and microbes, and crops that provide food and materials for human society. Because plants are so important to life, we need to find out how climate change could affect them. One good place to start is by looking at flowering plants, guided by the question, how will increased temperatures affect the phenology of flowering? One possible answer to this question is that the date that flowers first emerge for a species is driven by temperature. If this relationship is real, we would expect flowers to emerge earlier each year as temperatures increase due to climate change. But if flowers come out earlier and earlier each year, this could greatly impact plant reproduction and could cause problems for pollinators who count on plants flowering at the same time the pollinators need the pollen for food.

Shaun, Mark, Elizabeth, and Jen are scientists in Michigan who wanted to know if higher temperatures would lead to earlier flowering dates for plants. They chose to look at flowers of dame’s rocket, a leafy plant that is related to the plants we use to make mustard! Mark planted dame’s rocket in eight plots of land. Plots were randomly assigned to one of two treatments. Half of the plots were left to experience normal temperatures (normal), while the other four received a heating treatment to simulate climate change (heated). Air temperatures in heated plots increased by 3°C, which mimics climate change projections for what Michigan will experience by the end of the century. Mark, Elizabeth, and Jen measured the date that each plant produced its first flower, and the survival of each plant. The scientists predicted that dame’s rocket growing in the heated plots would flower earlier than those in the normal plots.

 Featured scientists: Shaun Davis from Thornapple Kellogg Middle School and Mark Hammond, Elizabeth Schultheis, and Jen Lau from Michigan State University

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = The Reading Level 3 activity has a score of 9.2; the Level 1 has a 6.4.

Flowers of Hesperis matronalis (dame’s rocket), a species of mustard that was introduced to the U.S. from Eurasia.

Flowers of Hesperis matronalis (dame’s rocket), a species of mustard that was introduced to the U.S. from Eurasia.

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget include:

  • If you would like your students to interact with the raw data, we have attached the original data here. The file also includes weather data over the course of the experiment if students want to ask and explore independent questions.

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10.24.14

Shooting the poop

The activities are as follows:butterfly

Imagine walking through a forest in the middle of summer. You can hear birds chirping, a slight breeze rustling the leaves, and a faint pinging noise like rain. However, what you hear is not rain – it is the sound of millions of forest insects pooping!

If we look closer to see who is making all this frass (insect poop) you’ll notice there are tons of caterpillars amongst the leaves. You might see caterpillars eating plants and hiding from predators. Some caterpillars might camouflage themselves, while others build shelters from leaves to avoid being seen. Others are brightly colored to warn predators that they have chemicals that make them taste awful.

The silver-spotted skipper is a caterpillar that lives in the forest. They have a variety of defense strategies against enemies, including building leaf shelters for protection. For these insects, the sight and smell of poop might alert predators that there is a tasty meal nearby. Usually caterpillars keep moving and leave their frass behind, but this species builds shelters and isn’t able to keep moving because they need their shelters for protection.

Martha is a behavioral biologist who studies these insects. While raising silver-spotted skipper caterpillars in the lab, Martha noticed that they were making a pinging noise in their containers. Upon further observation, she discovered that they “shoot their poop”, sometimes launching their frass over 1.5m! Martha wanted to figure out why these caterpillars might have this very strange behavior. Perhaps launching their frass is a way to avoid being found by predators.

To evaluate whether the smell of frass helps predators find and locate silver-spotted skippers, Martha conducted an experiment with a wasp predator that eats these caterpillars. She allowed two silver-spotted skippers to build shelters on a leaf and then carefully removed the caterpillars. She then inserted 6 frass pellets into one of the shelters, and 6 beads designed to look like frass but with no smell (control treatment) into the other shelter. She placed the leaf with the two shelters in a cage containing an actively foraging wasp colony (n = 10 wasps). She recorded how many times the wasps visited each shelter (control beads or frass) and how much time the wasps spent exploring each shelter. She expected wasps would spend more time exploring the shelters with the frass than they would the control shelters.

Featured scientist: Martha Weiss from Georgetown University. Written by Kylee Grenis.

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 9.6

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget include:

YouTube videos of the silver-spotted skipper (Epargyreus clarus) “shooting its poop” (aka. ballistic defecation). These videos would be great to show in class after students have read the Research Background section to help engage them with the system.

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9.25.14

Sexy smells

Danielle holding a male junco. Notice the white tail feathers.

Danielle holding a male junco. Notice the white tail feathers.

The activities are as follows:

Animals collect information about each other and the rest of the world using multiple senses, including sight, sound, and smell. They use this information to decide what to eat, where to live, and who to pick as a mate. Choosing a mate is an important decision that requires a lot of information, such as how healthy a potential partner is, and information about their genes. Mate quality can affect how many offspring an animal has and if their genes will get passed on to the next generation.

Danielle removing preen oil from a junco.

Danielle removing preen oil from a junco.

Many male birds have brightly colored feathers that are attractive to females. For example, the peacock has bright and elaborate tail feathers that are thought to communicate a male’s quality to the females. Besides using their sense of sight to see feathers, female birds may use their other senses to gather information about potential mates as well. Danielle is a biologist and she wanted to figure out if birds use vision and their other senses, such as smell, to determine the quality of potential mates.

Danielle decided to research how dark-eyed juncos communicate through their sense of sight and smell. Dark-eyed juncos are a type of sparrow. They are not colorful birds like peacocks, but they do have bright white feathers in their tails. Male dark-eyed juncos have more tail-white than females. Danielle thought is possible that females use the amount of white in a male’s tail to determine whether he is a high quality mate. Danielle was also interested in several chemical compounds found in junco preen oil, which birds spread on their feathers. This preen oil contains compounds that give birds their odor. Danielle found that males and females have different odors! Just as males have more white in their tail feathers, they also produce more of a chemical called 2-pentadecanone. Danielle wanted to test whether this chemical functioned as a signal to females of mate quality.

A preen gland where birds produce preen oil.

A preen gland where birds produce preen oil.

To test her two potential hypotheses, Danielle captured male juncos at Mountain Lake Biological Station in Virginia. She measured the amount of tail-white by estimating the proportion of each tail feather that was white, and adding up the values from each feather. She also took preen oil samples and measured the percent of each sample that was made up of 2-pentadecanone. She followed these birds for one breeding season to find out how many offspring they had. If females pick mates based on visual ornaments, then she predicted males with more tail-white would have more offspring. If females pick mates based on smell, then she predicted males with more 2-pentadecanone would have more offspring.

Featured scientist: Danielle Whittaker from Michigan State University

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 9.4

Additional classroom resources for this Data Nugget:

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8.13.14

Dangerous Aquatic Prey: Can Predators Adapt to Toxic Algae?

Figure 1: Scientist Finiguerra collecting copepods at the New Jersey experimental site.

Figure 1: Scientist Finiguerra collecting copepods at the New Jersey experimental site.

The activities are as follows:

Phytoplankton are microscopic algae that form the base of all aquatic food chains. While organisms can safely eat most phytoplankton, some produce toxins. When these toxic algae reach high population levels it is known as a toxic algal bloom. These blooms are occurring more and more often across the globe – a worrisome trend! Toxic algae poison animals that eat them, and in turn, humans that eat these animals. For example, clams and other shellfish filter out large quantities of the toxic algae, and the toxic cells accumulate in their tissues. If humans then eat these contaminated shellfish they can become very sick, and even die.

One reason the algae produce toxins is to reduce predation. However, if predators feed on toxic prey for many generations, the predator population may evolve resistance, by natural selection, to the toxic prey. In other words, the predators may adapt and would be able to eat lots of toxic prey without being poisoned. Copepods, small crustaceans and the most abundant animals in the world, are main consumers of toxic algae. Along the northeast coast of the US, there is a toxic phytoplankton species, Alexandrium fundyense, which produces very toxic blooms. Blooms of Alexandrium occur often in Maine, but are never found in New Jersey. Scientists wondered if populations of copepods that live Maine were better at coping with this toxic prey compared to copepods from New Jersey.

Figure 2: A photograph of a copepod (left) and the toxic alga Alexandrium sp. (right).

Figure 2: A photograph of a copepod (left) and the toxic alga Alexandrium sp. (right).

Scientists tested whether copepod populations that have a long history of exposure to toxic Alexandrium are adapted to this toxic prey. To do this, they raised copepods from Maine (long history of exposure to toxic Alexandrium) and New Jersey (no exposure to toxic Alexandrium) in the laboratory. They raised all the copepods under the same conditions. The copepods reproduced and several generations were born in the lab (a copepod generation is only about a month). This experimental design eliminated differences in environmental influences (temperature, salinity, etc.) from where the populations were originally from.

The scientists then measured how fast the copepods were able to produce eggs, also called their egg production rate. Egg production rate is an estimate of growth and indicates how well the copepods can perform in their environment. The copepods were given either a diet of toxic Alexandrium or another diet that was non-toxic. If the copepods from Maine produced more eggs while eating Alexandrium, this would be evidence that copepods have adapted to eating the toxic algae. The non-toxic diet was a control to make sure the copepods from Maine and New Jersey produced similar amounts of eggs while eating a good food source. For example, if the copepods from New Jersey always lay fewer eggs, regardless of good or bad food, then the control would show that. Without the control, it would be impossible to tell if a difference in egg production between copepod populations was due to the toxic food or something else.

Featured scientists: Michael Finiguerra and Hans Dam from University of Connecticut-Avery Point, and David Avery from the Maine Maritime Academy

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 10.6

There are three scientific papers associated with the data in this Data Nugget. The citations and PDFs of the papers are below. 

Colin, SP and HG Dam (2002) Latitudinal differentiation in the effects of the toxic dinoflagellate Alexandrium spp. on the feeding and reproduction of populations of the copepod Acartia hudsonica. Harmful Algae 1:113-125

Colin, SP and HG Dam (2004) Testing for resistance of pelagic marine copepods to a toxic dinoflagellate. Evolutionary Ecology 18:355-377

Colin, SP and HG Dam (2007) Comparison of the functional and numerical responses of resistant versus non-resistant populations of the copepod Acartia hudsonica fed the toxic dinoflagellate Alexandrium tamarense. Harmful Algae 6:875-882

6.9.14

Marvelous mud

mud

You can tell that the mud in this picture is high in organic matter because it is dark brown and mucky (in real life you’d be able to smell it, too!)

The activities are as follows:

The goopy, mucky, often stinky mud at the bottom of a wetland or lake is a very important part of the ecosystem. Wetland mud is much more than just wet dirt. For example, many species of microbes live in the wetland mud where they decompose (breakdown) dead plant and animal material to obtain energy. This dead plant and animal material is called organic matter. However, the wetland mud microbes do not have all the oxygen they need to decompose the plant and animal tissues quickly and efficiently. Because of this, the dead material in wetland mud decomposes much more slowly than similar dead material in dry soil.

A successful core! You can see that the tube has mud, as well as some of the water from the wetland that was on top of the mud.

A successful core! You can see that the tube has mud, as well as some of the water from the wetland that was on top of the mud.

As a graduate student, Lauren became fascinated with wetland mud and its interesting properties. She wanted to know how important all the mud and its organic matter is for wetlands. By talking with other members of her lab and reading scientific papers, Lauren learned that wetland mud can often be high in the element phosphorus and that phosphorus acts as a fertilizer for plants, including wetland plants and algae. However, nutrients, such as phosphorus can build up in wetland mud. Lauren thought it might be possible that the organic matter in the mud was the source of all the phosphorus in some wetlands. She predicted that wetlands with more organic matter would have more phosphorus. If her data support her hypothesis, it could mean that organic matter is very important for wetlands, because nutrients are needed for algae and plants to grow.

Although most mud is high in organic matter and nutrients, not all mud is the same. There is natural variation in the amount of organic matter and nutrients from place to place. Even within the same location mud can be very different in spots. Lauren used this variability to test her ideas. She measured organic matter and phosphorus in mud from 16 freshwater locations (four lakes, five ponds, and seven wetlands). She took cores that allowed her to sample mud deep into the ground. She then brought her cores back to the lab and measured organic matter and phosphorus levels in her samples.

Featured scientist: Lauren Kinsman-Costello from Kent State University

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 9.8

More photos associated with this research can be found here. There is one scientific paper associated with the data in this Data Nugget. The citation and PDF of the paper is below:

Kinsman-Costello LE, J O’Brien, SK Hamilton (2014) Re-flooding a Historically Drained Wetland Leads to Rapid Sediment Phosphorus Release. Ecosystems 17:641-656

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6.6.14

Fish fights

A male in his territory (front) and an intruding male (back)

A male in his territory (front) and an intruding male (back)

The activities are as follows:

In many animals, males fight for territories. Getting a good territory and making sure other males don’t steal it is very important! Males use these territories to attract females for mating. The males that get the best territories are more likely to mate with females and have more babies. Only the males that have babies will pass on their genes to the next generation.

Stickleback fish use the shallow bottom areas of lakes to mate. Male stickleback fish fight each other to gain the best territories in this habitat. In their territories, males build a nest out of sand, aquatic plants, and glue they produce from their kidneys. The better the nest, the more females a male can attract. Males then use courtship dances to attract females to their nests. If a female likes a male, she will deposit her eggs in his nest. Then the male will care for those eggs and protect the offspring that hatch.

Scientist Alycia out in the field collecting male stickleback fish for her experiments

Scientist Alycia out in the field collecting male stickleback fish for her experiments

Alycia is a scientist who is interested in understanding what makes a male stickleback a good fighter and defender of his territory. Perhaps more aggressive males are better at defending their territory and nests because they are better at fighting off other males. She used sticklebacks she collected from British Columbia to test her hypothesis.

In her experiment, 24 males were kept in 6 large tanks, with 4 males in each tank. Alycia watched each of the 24 males every day for 10 days. She recorded the behaviors of each fish when they were competing for territories, defending their territory, and building their nests. She also recorded the size of the males’ territories and whether they had a nest each day.

Featured scientist: Alycia R. Lackey from Michigan State University

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 7.7

More news on Alycia’s work on stickleback fish can be found at her BEACON blog post, “Making and Breaking a Species.” 

A male (right) defending his territory from another fish (left).

A male (right) defending his territory from another fish (left).

6.6.14

Which guy should she choose?

sticklebackmale

A male stickleback tending his nest. Notice the male’s bright red throat, blue eye, and blue-green body.

The activities are as follows:

In many animals, males use complex behaviors to attract females. They use displays to show off colorful parts of their bodies, like feathers or scales. For example, male peacocks fan out and shake their colorful tails to attract female attention. These displays take up a lot of energy, and yet some males are unable to attract any females while other males attract many females.

In stickleback fish, males are very colorful to attract females. Their throats turn bright red during the spring when they mate. Stickleback males also court females with zig-zag swimming! The males swim in a z-shaped pattern in front of the female, probably to show off their mating colors. Before male fish can get the attention of female fish, they must gain a territory and build a nest. In sticklebacks, females inspect nests that the males build and then decide if they want to deposit their eggs. Males care for the offspring before and after the eggs hatch. A female fish would benefit from identifying “high quality” males and choosing those males for mates. High quality males would have more energy to protect their offspring and would make better fathers. They could also pass on genes that make offspring more attractive to females in the next generation.

Scientist Alycia collecting fish from a freshwater lake in British Columbia, Canada.

Scientist Alycia collecting fish from a freshwater lake in British Columbia, Canada.

Alycia is a scientist who is interested in the stickleback’s mating behaviors. She wanted to figure out why there are differences between males and why certain males can attract a mate while others cannot. What is it about the way a male looks, moves, or smells that attracts females? What male traits are females looking at when deciding on a mate? Alycia thought female sticklebacks may choose males with redder throats and/or more complex behaviors because those traits show the female that those males are high quality. Previous work with these fish showed that male behavior, color, or territory size, or the presence of a nest could all be important. But it was still not clear which characteristic might be most important.

Alycia set up an experiment to figure out if male throat color or zig-zag swimming behaviors were attractive to females. She used a total of 24 male fish and six 75-gallon tanks. She divided the males up evenly between the large tanks, placing four males in each one. For 10 days she observed the male fish and recorded competition behaviors, territory defense, and nest building. On the tenth day, she introduced one female to each tank of four males. She recorded how the males behaved in courtship and which males the females chose. She also recorded the redness of each male.

Featured scientist: Alycia R. Lackey from Michigan State University

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 7.9

More news on Alycia’s work on stickleback fish can be found at her BEACON blog post, “Making and Breaking a Species” and her blog post for the MSU museum. 

4.16.14

Is chocolate for the birds?

Cocoa beans used to make chocolate!

Cocoa beans used to make chocolate!

The activities are as follows:

About 9,000 years ago humans invented agriculture as a way to grow enough food for people to eat. Today, agriculture happens all over the globe and takes up 40% of Earth’s land surface. To make space for our food, humans must clear large areas of land, which creates a drastic change, or disturbance, to the habitat. This land-clearing disturbance removes the native plants already there including trees, small flowering plants, and grasses. Many types of animals including mammals, birds, and insects depend on these native plants for food or shelter. Large scale disturbances can make it difficult to live in the area. For example, a woodpecker bird cannot live somewhere that has no trees because they live and find their food in the trees.

However, some agriculture might help some animals because they can use the crops being grown for the food and shelter they need to survive. One example is the cacao tree, which grows in the rainforests of South America. Humans use the seeds of this plant to make chocolate, so it is a very important crop! Cacao trees need very little light. They grow best in a unique habitat called the forest understory, which is composed of the shorter trees and bushes under the large trees found in rainforests. To get a lot of cacao seeds for chocolate, farmers need to have large rainforest trees above their cacao trees for shade. In many ways, cacao farms resemble a native rainforest. Many native plant species grow there and there are still taller tree species. However, these farms are different in important ways from a native rainforest. For example, there are many more short understory trees in the farm than there are in native rainforests. Also, there are fewer small flowering plants on the ground because humans that work on cacao farms trample them as they walk around the farm.

rainforest and cacao plantation

Part I: Skye is a biologist who wanted to know whether rainforest birds use the forest when they are disturbed by adding cacao farms. Skye predicted she would see many fewer birds in the cacao farms, compared to the rainforest. To measure bird abundance, she simply counted birds in each habitat. To do this she chose one rainforest and one cacao farm and set up two transects in each. Transects are parallel lines along which the measurements are taken. She spent four days counting birds along each transect, for a total of eight days in each habitat. She had to get up really early and count birds between 6:00 and 9:00 in the morning because that’s when they are most active.

Part II: Skye was shocked to see so many birds in cacao farms! She decided to take a closer look at her data. Skye wanted to know how the types of birds she saw in the cacao farms compared to the types of birds she saw in the rainforest. She predicted that cacao farms would have different types of birds than the undisturbed rainforest. She thought the bird types would differ because each habitat has different types of food available for birds to eat and different types of plants for birds to live in.

Skye broke her abundance data down to look more closely at four types of birds:

  1. Toucans (Eat: large insects and fruit from large trees, Live: holes in large trees)
  2. Hummingbirds (Eat: nectar from flowers, Live: tree branches and leaves)
  3. Wrens (Eat: small insects, Live: small shrubs on the forest floor)
  4. Flycatchers (Eat: Small insects, Live: tree branches and leaves)

skyecacao

Featured scientist: Skye Greenler from Colorado College and Purdue University

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 8.5

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget:

  • The research described in this activity has been published. The citation and a PDF of the scientific paper can be found here:
  • The complete dataset for the study has been published to a data repository and is available for classroom use. This dataset has even more data than what is in the Data Nugget activity. While the Data Nugget has data for just two habitats (cacao and rainforest), the full dataset also includes two other agroforest habitat types. The dataset also includes data for every species (169) recorded during the study, whereas the Data Nugget only has data for four families (toucans, wrens, flycatchers, hummingbirds).
  • Study Location: Skye’s study took place in a 10 km2 mixed rainforest, pasture, agro-forest, and monoculture landscape near the village of Pueblo Nuevo de Villa Franca de Guácimo, Limón Province, Costa Rica (10˚20˝ N, 83˚20˝ W), in the Caribbean lowlands 85 km northeast of San José.
  • For more background on the importance of biodiversity, students can eat this article in The Guardian – What is biodiversity and why does it matter to us?

About Skye: As a child Skye was always asking why; questioning the behavior, characteristics, and interactions of plants and animals around her.  She spent her childhood reconstructing deer skeletons to understand how bones and joints functioned and creating endless mini-ecosystems in plastic bottles to watch how they changed over time.  This love of discovery, observation, questioning, and experimentation led her to many technician jobs, independent research projects, and graduate research study at Purdue University.  At Purdue she studies the factors influencing oak regeneration after ecologically based timber harvest and prescribed fire.  While Skye’s primary focus is ecological research, she loves getting to leave the lab and bring science into classrooms to inspire the next generation of young scientists and encourage all students to be always asking why!

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3.25.14

Won’t you be my urchin?

The vegetarian sea urchin Diadema antillarum.

The vegetarian sea urchin Diadema antillarum.

The activities are as follows:

Éste Data Nugget también está disponible en Español:

Imagine you are snorkeling on a coral reef where you can see many species living together. Some animals, like sharks, are predators that eat other animals. Other species, like anemones and the fish that live in them, are mutualists and protect each other from predators. There are also herbivores, like urchins, that eat plants and algae on the reef. All of these species, and many more, need the coral reef to survive.

Experimental setup with tiles in bins. Some bins have sea urchins and some do not.

Experimental setup with tiles in bins. Some bins have sea urchins and some do not.

Corals are the animals that build coral reefs. They are very sensitive and can be hurt by human activity, like boating and pollution. Coral reef ecosystems are also in danger from warming waters due to climate change. Sadly, today many coral reefs around the world are dying because the places they grow are changing. Sarah is a marine biologist who is determined to figure out ways to save coral reefs. Sarah wants to understand how to help the dying corals so they can keep building important and diverse coral reef habitats.

Corals compete with large types of algae, like seaweed, for space to grow on the reef. Corals are picky and only like to live in certain places. If there is too much algae, corals will have no place to attach and grow. Sea urchins are important herbivores and one of the species that like to eat algae. Sarah thought that when urchins are present on the reef, corals will have less competition from algae for space, and thus more room to grow. Maybe adding urchins to a coral reef is a way to help corals!

To test her idea Sarah set up an experiment. She set 8 bins out on the reef. Into half of the bins, Sarah added urchins. She left the other half without urchins as a control. Sarah put tiles into all of the bins. Tiles gave an empty space for coral and algae to compete and grow. After a few months, Sarah looked at the tiles. She counted how many corals were growing on each tile. Sarah predicted that more corals would grow on the tiles in bins with sea urchins compared to the control bins with no sea urchins.

B. Photograph of Agaricia juvenile on experimental substratum. C. Photograph of Porites juvenile on experimental substratum

B. Photograph of coral species Agaricia juvenile on experimental tile. C. Photograph of coral species Porites juvenile on experimental tile.

Featured scientist: Sarah W. Davies (she/her) from the University of Texas at Austin

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 6.5

There is one scientific paper associated with the research in this Data Nugget. The citation and PDF of the paper is below.

Davies SW, MV Matz, PD Vize (2013) Ecological Complexity of Coral Recruitment Processes: Effects of Invertebrate Herbivores on Coral Recruitment and Growth Depends Upon Substratum Properties and Coral Species. PLOS ONE 8(9):e72830

After students have completed the Data Nugget, you can have them discuss the management implications of this research. Watch the news story below and have students consider how urchins can be used as a management tool to help restore coral reefs!

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3.25.14

Coral bleaching and climate change

A Pacific coral reef with many corals

A Pacific coral reef with many corals

The activities are as follows:

Éste Data Nugget también está disponible en Español:

Corals are animals that build coral reefs. Coral reefs are home to many species of animals – fish, sharks, sea turtles, and anemones all use corals for habitat! Corals are white, but they look brown and green because certain types of algae live inside them. Algae, like plants, use the sun’s energy to make food. The algae that live inside the corals’ cells are tiny and produce more sugars than they themselves need. The extra sugars become food for the corals. At the same time, the corals provide the algae a safe home. The algae and corals coexist in a relationship where each partner benefits the other, called a mutualism: these species do better together than they would alone.

When the water gets too warm, the algae can no longer live inside corals, so they leave. The corals then turn from green to white, called coral bleaching. Climate change has been causing the Earth’s air and oceans to get warmer. With warmer oceans, coral bleaching is becoming more widespread. If the water stays too warm, bleached corals will die without their algae mutualists.

Scientist Carly working on a coral reef

Scientist Carly working on a coral reef

Carly is a scientist who wanted to study coral bleaching so she could help protect corals and coral reefs. One day, Carly observed an interesting pattern. Corals on one part of a reef were bleaching while corals on another part of the reef stayed healthy. She wondered, why some corals and their algae can still work together when the water is warm, while others cannot?

Ocean water that is closer to the shore (inshore) gets warmer than water that is further away (offshore). Perhaps corals and algae from inshore reefs have adapted to warm water. Carly wondered whether inshore corals are better able to work with their algae in warm water because they have adapted to these temperatures. If so, inshore corals and algae should bleach less often than offshore corals and algae. Carly designed an experiment to test this. She collected 15 corals from inshore and 15 from offshore reefs in the Florida Keys. She brought them into an aquarium lab for research. She cut each coral in half and put half of each coral into tanks with normal water and the other half into tanks with heaters. The normal water temperature was 27°C, which is a temperature that both inshore and offshore corals experience during the year. The warm water tanks were at 31°C, which is a temperature that inshore corals experience, but offshore corals have never previously experienced. Because of climate change, offshore corals may experience this warmer temperature in the future. After six weeks, she recorded the number of corals that bleached in each tank.

 Featured scientist: Carly Kenkel from The University of Texas at Austin

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 8.0

There are two scientific papers associated with the data in this Data Nugget. The citations and PDFs of the papers are below. 

If your students are looking for more data on coral bleaching, check out HHMI BioInteractive’s classroom activity in which students use authentic data to assess the threat of coral bleaching around the world. Also, check out the two videos below!

  • Another BioInteractive video, appropriate for upper level high school classrooms. Visualizes the process of coral bleaching at different scales. Video includes lots of complex vocabulary about cells and the process of photosynthesis.

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