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6.13.25

What grows when the forest goes?

Area of the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon, a few years after a fire.

The activities are as follows:

The H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, or Andrews for short, is a long-term ecological research site in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon. The forest is a temperate old-growth rainforest. It is known for its lush and green understory of flowering plants, ferns, mosses and a towering canopy of Douglas fir, Western hemlock, Red cedar, and other trees. Scientists have spent decades studying how plants, animals, land use, and climate are all connected in this ecosystem.

Matt is a biology teacher who has spent two summers in the field working with scientists at the Andrews. These experiences have been valuable ways to bring real data and research back to his students! When he visits, Matt works closely with Joe and Cole. Joe is a scientist who has spent many years working in the forest studying the impact of disturbances on plants. Cole is in Joe’s lab and has been focusing on fire’s effects on the forest during graduate school.

Historically, large, severe fires have been a part of the ecology of forests in Oregon. They typically occur every 200-500 years. Many of the plants at the Andrews Forest are those that can deal with fire. Fires clear out dead plants, return nutrients to the soil, and promote new growth of understory and canopy plants. With climate change impacting temperature and rainfall across the globe, forests in Oregon are increasingly experiencing longer periods of dry and hot weather. These changes are causing an increase in the frequency and severity of wildfires.

On Matt’s last day at the Andrews in 2023, a lightning strike started a wildfire in a far corner of the forest. With hundreds of firefighters on the ground and several helicopters in the air, the “Lookout Fire” burned for several months, consuming about 70% of the Andrews forest!

Plots in 2023 being surveyed for native and invasive plants to calculate the proportion that are invasive after a burn.

When Matt returned in the summer of 2024, it looked nothing like the forest he had left. The fire completely changed the course of his research experience. When he saw the scorched forest, he began to wonder how it would recover. He also observed that the fire had not burned at the same intensity throughout the forest. Some areas of Andrews were burned more, and in some spots, the fire had been less intense.

Matt thought that some plants may do better after a severe burn, while other species might do worse. Specifically, Matt wanted to see whether native and invasive plants would show differences after a fire. Plants that have historically grown in an area without human interference are called native plants. These plants have a long history of adapting to the specific conditions in an area. When a plant species is moved by humans to a new area and grows outside of its natural range, it is called an invasive plant. Invasives often grow large and fast, taking over habitats, and pushing out native species. Invasive plants tend to be the ones that can grow fast and handle disturbances, so the team expected that invasive species would recover more quickly than native plants after high severity fires.

It was still too early to re-enter the areas burned by the Lookout Fire, so Matt and Joe chose another recent fire. They used data collected from a section of the forest that had burned in 2020. In 2021, a year after the fire, scientists put out 80 plots that were 1m²in size to collect data on the understory plants.

Each section was given a burn severity value based on the amount the canopy trees had burned directly over the plot. Scientists would look up at the tree canopy and see how much was missing, and the more that was gone, they knew the burn severity had been higher. Scientists then identified every species of plant in the plots and counted the number of individual plants of each species. This was repeated every year after 2021 to observe changes over time. Matt and Joe decided to analyze data from 2023, which Matt helped collect with Cole. To answer their question, they calculated the proportion of invasive plants in each plot.

Featured scientists: Joe LaManna (he/him) and Cole Doolittle (he/him) from Marquette University and
Matt Retterath (he/him) from Fridley Public Schools.

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 8.9

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget:

There are two blog posts written about the Andrews LTER research featured in this activity.

https://lternet.edu/stories/fire-brings-new-perspectives-on-disturbance-at-h-j-andrews-experimental-forest/
https://lternet.edu/stories/burned-forest-bleached-reef-lter-sites-adapt-to-learn-from-disturbance/

6.9.25

NSF Terminates $1.5M Data Nuggets Grant

On Friday, May 9th, the National Science Foundation (NSF) terminated a collaborative research grant shared between Michigan State University and Auburn University, “Sharing Scientist Role Model Stories to Improve Equity and Success in Undergraduate STEM Education”, which had over $1M in unused funds remaining. We join over 1,600 grants abruptly terminated by NSF in recent months, affecting vital research, education, and open science efforts nationally.

NSF has been a critical partner in fueling the Data Nuggets team’s innovations and growth at Michigan State University. In fact, NSF funded the collaboration between scientists and K-12 teachers that sparked the development of Data Nuggets in 2010. Data Nuggets provide over 140 free data literacy activities that reach tens of thousands of educators and countless students per year. Without NSF’s historic investments and continued support, our wildly popular and effective data literacy program would not exist.

By terminating our collaborative grant, financial support and personnel needed to run this program no longer exist. We are committed to maintaining the existing collection of publicly available Data Nugget resources and continue to provide them for free. However, we will need to revise our operational model in order to develop and disseminate new activities. Additionally, we will no longer be able to conduct and disseminate foundational educational research to increase our understanding of the best teaching practices for using activities featuring scientists within classroom materials.

The sudden termination of our work is not only devastating for the programmatic and research team – it also wastes years of previous NSF-supported work and jeopardizes a future we envision filled with free, interactive learning resources to benefit millions of students and educators. In addition, the termination has directly prevented the hiring of 5 early career scientists as well as over 10 undergraduates who would have been trained in science communication, curriculum development, and discipline-based education research.

Our terminated grant, “Sharing Scientist Role Model Stories to Improve Equity and Success in Undergraduate STEM Education”, centered on further refining Data Nuggets to help more students see themselves in STEM careers. Past research by our team showed that sharing scientist stories within data literacy instruction was an effective way to engage students with the activities and help them relate to scientists. The goal of our terminated research was two-fold: first, to research and provide insight into how to effectively tell scientist role model success stories in instructional materials; second, to create a new set of freely available, evidence-based, educational resources for undergraduate biology classrooms.

The text of our termination letter mirrors many that we have seen, stating that they are “issuing this termination to protect the interests of the government … on the basis that [the grant] no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities. This is the final agency decision and not subject to appeal.” Because appealing a grant termination is one way for an institution to raise its voice to object to an unwarranted action, our team submitted an appeal through Michigan State University; Auburn University declined to submit our appeal.

We remain steadfast in our mission to support free educational resources and interactive learning worldwide, to spark interest in data literacy for all students, and to share the stories of researchers who represent the full spectrum of identities within the science community.

More than ever, please consider supporting our work by sharing how important NSF funding has been to developing and advancing resources for STEM education. As the proposed US tax and spending bill goes to the Senate, we encourage those who can to contact your representatives and urge them to support funding for the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and other science agencies. Now is the time to act: the current funding proposal would slash NSF funding dramatically. #SaveNSF

Together, we can keep the future of interactive learning open and growing.

Sincerely,

The Data Nuggets Team and Auburn University collaborators

5.30.25

CO2 and trees, too much of a good thing?

The activities are as follows:

Kristina conducting the tree survey, measuring the size of a tree, which will later be used to calculate the mass of carbon in that tree.

The amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has steadily increased since the start of the Industrial Revolution in 1750. This extra CO2 traps heat like a blanket, causing the global climate to warm. The resulting climate change effect is known and widely accepted in science. While scientists are certain that climate change is happening, they still have many questions about its impacts.

For example, scientists today are exploring whether climate change will help or hurt trees and forests. Many scientists think that elevated CO2 in the atmosphere can actually help trees. We can see why in the formula for photosynthesis:

6𝐶𝑂₂+6𝐻₂𝑂+𝐸𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑔𝑦→𝐶₆𝐻₁₂𝑂₆ +6𝑂₂

Carbon Dioxide + Water + Energy (sunlight) → Glucose + Oxygen

If you add more CO2 to the atmosphere, trees will have more resources for photosynthesis and can make more glucose. Glucose is food for the trees. Trees can use their glucose for growth, using it to make wood. However, trees sometimes have to put glucose towards other things. Just like us, plants break down glucose for energy through cellular respiration:

C₆𝐻₁₂𝑂₆ +6₂→ 6𝐶𝑂₂+6𝐻₂𝑂+𝐸𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑔𝑦
Glucose + Oxygen → Carbon Dioxide + Water + Energy (ATP)

Two large trees stand in the experimental plot after a survey. The tree to the right has been banded to measure its growth.

Trees need energy for everyday functioning, or to respond to stress. Under climate change, trees might experience more stress. Stress for trees might increase if summer temperatures get too hot, or they don’t have enough water. More stress means more respiration and less growth. Or, even worse, the trees could die. Dead trees can’t photosynthesize, and they also decompose, which releases CO2 into the atmosphere
as microbes break down wood and other materials.

Kristina and Luca are scientists looking at the effects of climate change on trees. They wanted to test whether climate change was benefitting or hurting trees. They set out to find some data that would allow them to test these alternative hypotheses.

A dead ash tree stands in the experimental plot after a survey. The carbon in this tree
will return to the atmosphere through decomposition.

Kristina runs a tree census in a forest at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Center in Virginia. Since 2008, she and many other scientists have surveyed every tree in their 26-hectare plot. Every five years, they count up how many trees are alive, how much they’ve grown, and how many have died. Luca joined Kristina’s lab in 2022. He and Kristina worked together with many other scientists to collect and process data on tree growth and mortality in 2023.

They used this growth and mortality data for individual trees to calculate levels of carbon gained and lost by the whole forest. The amount of carbon used for growth across the whole forest was measured as the mass of carbon gained. They also calculated the weight of the trees that died, which was measured as the mass of carbon lost. Both of these measurements were calculated in megagrams (Mg, that’s one million grams) of carbon (C) per hectare (ha) of forest per year (yr), or (MgC/ha/yr). The difference between these
two values is the change in carbon. This value gives the balance between carbon gained and lost. A positive value means there is more carbon being taken in by the forest than lost, and a negative value means that more carbon is being lost back to the atmosphere.

Featured scientists: Kristina J. Anderson-Teixeira (she/her) & Luca Morreale (he/him) at Smithsonian’s National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute. Written by Ryan Helcoski

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 7.8

5.19.25

Science Communication and Data Literacy: Reflections on My Fellowship with Data Nuggets

Samson Stynen is a first PhD student in the Haddad Lab at W.K. Kellogg Biological Station. He studies the impacts of climate change on butterfly morphology and demography. He aspires to be a link between educators and scientists. He was awarded a KBS Outreach Fellowship to join the Data Nuggets program and gain experience in science outreach and communication.

As a first-year graduate student moving from Reno, Nevada, I had some hesitation about whether I’d find connections in Michigan or at the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station (KBS). I never expected that one of my strongest connections would be with an outreach program I had experienced as a student and teacher: Data Nuggets.

Data Nuggets are lessons designed by scientists to engage K–16 students in data literacy using real scientific data. Coming from an education background, I encountered Data Nuggets during high school as a student, and then again when I was looking for lessons for my own students as a teacher. I had no idea they were connected to KBS!

In my first semester, I met Liz and Melissa, the creators and directors of Data Nuggets, and began helping occasionally with projects. Then, this past spring, I was fortunate to receive the Data Nuggets Fellowship, where I got to dive deeper into the program, from science communication to program management, and see all the behind-the-scenes work that keeps Data Nuggets running.

Highlights from the fellowship

One of the most exciting parts of the fellowship was presenting at the Michigan Science Teachers Association Conference in March. During our session, I spoke with about 25 educators about using Data Nuggets in their classrooms. In the second half of the session, I walked the audience through Little Butterflies on the Prairie, a new Data Nugget based on my lab’s research that had just launched in January. It was amazing to hear directly from teachers about their classroom experiences, how they planned to adapt these lessons for their students, and what resources they’d like to see next.

Sam presenting Data Nuggets to a room of teachers at MSTA 2025. Photo by E. Schultheis.

I also revived the monthly Data Nuggets newsletter where I highlighted new activities, teacher resources, and the upcoming outreach events. For the February newsletter, I interviewed and wrote a blog post highlighting KBS Post doc Dr. Rosemary Martin to share with teachers how science doesn’t stop in the winter.

Finally, I was able to help with Data Nugget’s recent effort in highlighting the scientists behind the science. A handful of lessons now include scientist profiles, allowing students to learn not just about the research, but about the people and stories behind it.

Why Data Nuggets is important

The need for data literacy is quickly rising. However, many classrooms today do not incorporate real data in their lessons. Real data is messy! Data Nuggets are a perfect solution! They get students thinking about the current problems around them, as we have DNs written by people all over the U.S. and world! They get students engaged in real scientific research and the scientists’ creative solutions, and they also get students practicing with authentic data, complete with those dreaded decimals!

Why outreach matters

As first year grad student, this fellowship reminded me that research doesn’t end when a paper is published. The next step is sharing that knowledge in ways that matter, like with the next generation of scientists.

It has been my goal after graduate school to be a bridge between researchers and educators. Whether that be with an open-source program for teachers or by returning to the classroom myself, I hope to continue to share Data Nuggets resources.

I am thrilled to be able to work with Data Nuggets and I look forward to the continued connection in many semesters, and years, to follow.

5.14.25

PFAS: Our forever problem

Gary during his research experience with Natalia.

The activities are as follows:

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a group of pollutants that are found in many commonly used products. They are in clothing, non-stick pans, and even the linings of cans and other food containers. Because PFAS are used in so many everyday products, they make their way into the environment. Once these compounds are in our environment, they will be there for up to a thousand years! For this reason, PFAS are known as “forever chemicals.”

Water is a very common place to find these forever chemicals. Normal water treatment processes do not remove PFAS from our drinking water. Consequently, PFAS are found in the blood of humans and animals worldwide. In humans, they have been shown to cause liver damage, cancer, harm immune systems, and other health issues.

Natalia is a researcher at Florida International University who studies PFAS and other chemicals in the environment. She wanted to make sure she shared her work with the public, as this topic is so important for us all. She thought one way to do this would be to work with local teachers.

Gary, a science teacher at a school nearby, joined Natalia’s lab for the summer. When the opportunity became available, Gary jumped at the chance to investigate and learn more about Florida’s amazing environment and work in the field with scientists. He was so excited because Natalia had appeared on TV and radio shows and had authored articles in leading science magazines. When they met, Natalia described PFAS to Gary, and he was immediately captivated.

Gary and Natalia decided to work together to explore PFAS in Biscayne Bay. This area is a crucial estuary around Miami, providing a unique environment that supports diverse wildlife and local industries. As a young person, Gary would go shrimping along the bay. He really enjoyed the natural beauty of such a precious resource right in his backyard. Unfortunately, today, Biscayne Bay faces numerous
environmental challenges.

Map showing Gary’s research sites where he sampled PFAS

One challenge is PFAS, which enters the estuary through water pollution that drains into the bay. Gary expected PFAS to be highest in the urban freshwater streams that drain into the bay because human activity is high, and a lot of chemicals are released into the water. He thought that the bay would also have high concentrations of PFAS because the streams drain into the bay, but the surrounding land limits the water from mixing with the ocean. Once the water makes it to the ocean, the chemicals should be able to mix with the larger body of water, lowering the concentration of PFAS.

Gary and Natalia identified 16 water sampling sites in water bodies near Miami. They broke these sites into three categories: (1) freshwater rivers that bring water from urban areas into the bay, (2) brackish water, which means a mixture of freshwater and saltwater, located within Biscayne Bay, and (3) salt water found in the Atlantic Ocean. Courtney, a graduate student in Natalia’s lab, joined the team to assist Gary with collecting data and using the technical instruments needed to analyze the samples. Together, they collected one 500 mL sample from each site. To ensure accuracy in the collection of data, they collected two samples from the South Beach pump station site. Gary and Natalia brought the samples back to the lab and ran the samples through instruments that measured PFAS levels. Gary predicted that he would find high levels of PFAS in the freshwater canals and the brackish water of Biscayne Bay, but less in the open ocean.

Featured scientists: Gary Yoham from Miami Senior High School with Natalia Soares Quinete and Courtney Heath from Florida International University

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 7.3

4.18.25

Farms in the fight against climate change

Caro working in the labs at the Kellogg Biological Station to confirm the % soil carbon measurements used in the study.

The activities are as follows:

Carbon, when it is found in the soil, has a lot of benefits. Soil carbon makes water more available to plant roots, supports microbes and insects, helps water move through the soil and not flood at the surface, and holds on to critical nutrients for plants, like nitrogen and phosphorus. It is a key measure of soil health used by farmers.

The more carbon stored in soils, the less that ends up in our atmosphere as greenhouse gas, which contributes to climate change. Farming practices that increase soil carbon are a double benefit – they help crop plants grow and produce more return for farmers, while also helping to fight climate change.

Yet, accumulating carbon in the soil is a slow and mysterious process. It can take decades to see greater levels of carbon in most agricultural soils. Farmers need information about which farming practices reliably and continually increase soil carbon.

View of the Long-Term Ecological Research experiment at the Kellogg Biological Station where plots have been growing with different agricultural and plant community treatments since 1989.

Caro is a soil scientist working with farmers to figure out how they can increase carbon in their soils. Her passion for soils brought her to the Kellogg Biological Station. This site is very special because it houses the Long-Term Ecological Research Program, which has been running the same experiment since 1989! When the study began, the soils were the same across the site. But, after decades of different treatments taking place in research plots, a lot has changed above and below ground.

In 2013, a team of scientists worked to sample soil carbon at this site, 25 years after the experiment began. The team processed the samples to determine the percent, by weight, of each soil sample that is made up of carbon. This is called % soil carbon. They collected samples from 4 different treatments, each with 6 replicate plots:
(1) Conventional: plots grown in a corn soybean-wheat crop rotation. The soil in these plots is tilled during spring, meaning they are disturbed and turned over. These plots represent how agriculture is conventionally done in the area with standard chemical inputs of fertilizer, herbicides, and pesticides.
(2) No-till: plots that are grown in the same way as conventional, but with one key difference. The soil in these plots is not tilled, meaning it has been undisturbed for 25 years at the time of sampling.
(3) Cover crops: plots grown similarly to conventional, with a few key differences. First, cover crops were added. Cover crops are plants that are planted alongside crops or at times of the year when the main crop is not growing. This means the soil has living plant roots year-round, not just during the season with crops. Second, this treatment had no chemicals added; all nutrients came from the addition of manure. These plots were tilled.
(4) Not farmed: non-agricultural plots growing in a diverse mix of plant species. Plots are unmanaged, but are sometimes burned to keep out woody species.

These 4 treatments represent different ways that land can be managed. The goal of the study was to see how different types of land management had changed % soil carbon over time. When Caro came to KBS in 2018, she was excited to see such a cool dataset waiting to be analyzed! She thought that keeping the soil undisturbed and having living roots in the soil for more of the year would increase soil carbon over time. This led her to predict that she would see higher % spoil carbon in the cover crop and no-till treatments, compared to conventional.

Featured scientist: Caro Córdova from University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the W. K.
Kellogg Biological Station Long Term Ecological Research Program.

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 4.1

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget:

The results from this study are published and the article is available online.
Table 2 in the paper matches the dataset that students are working with in this activity.

If students want to read more about this paper, there is a blog post summarizing the study.

The full dataset is also available online in the Dryad Digital Repository. The file has lots of details about the variables measured and the different cropping systems studied. The first tab of the spreadsheet contains the data used in this activity, plus many more variables and treatments that students can explore to ask new questions!

More information on Regenerative Agriculture from MSU here.

These data are part of the Kellogg Biological Station Long Term Ecological Research Program (KBS LTER). To learn more about the KBS LTER, visit their website.

4.7.25

Data Nuggets awarded the Huxley from the Society for the Study of Evolution

The SSE T. H. Huxley Award Committee has announced the winner of the 2025 T. H. Huxley Award, Dr. Elizabeth Schultheis, Education and Outreach Coordinator for the Kellogg Biological Station Long-Term Ecological Research Program at Michigan State University, for her collection of educational resources called “Data Nuggets”. Data Nuggets, which are developed in collaboration with Dr. Melissa Kjelvik, bring real data and scientific role models into the classroom to build quantitative and critical thinking skills.

As part of the award, Dr. Schultheis will receive funding to present her work at the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) conference in October.

The T. H. Huxley Award is administered by the T. H. Huxley Award Committee, a subset of the SSE Education and Outreach Committee.

3.18.25

Reconstructing the behaviour of ancient animals

Holly working with a skull fossil before it is scanned.

The activities are as follows:

Fossils are the ancient remains of organisms that existed thousands to millions of years ago. Scientists look through fossil records to learn about the lives of animals and plants that are extinct today. Fossils can hold clues about the environment, how species interacted with each other, what they ate, and even how they acted.

Holly found her first fossil at 6 years old when she visited a beach in the United Kingdom. It was a small piece of ancient coral. She thought it was amazing to see a remnant of how something looked over 350 million years ago! Holly loved that fossils allowed her to time travel and explore ancient worlds. She pursued her passion and today is a paleobiologist, or scientist who uses the fossil record to learn more about the biology of past organisms. This career has given her the opportunity to study thousands of fossils from many species, from dinosaurs to ancient humans. She has traveled all over the world, including Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia!

Holly specializes in using fossils to paint a picture of the lifestyles of ancient animals. She uses the shape, structure, damage patterns, and burial poses of bones, and compares them to modern bones. By using what we know about living species, Holly can reconstruct the life and death of ancient organisms.

Recently, Holly teamed up with Mary, Sergi, Ingrid and Adam, because they were all scientists curious about the same species – an extinct primate called Mioeuoticus (phonetic: my-o-you-otikus). This animal is believed to be a relative of modern lorises. Lorises that are alive today live in the treetops of tropical forests in India, Sri Lanka, and southeast Asia. Lorises move very slowly and are nocturnal, which means they are typically active at night.

Holly and her colleagues wanted to know whether Mioeuoticus were nocturnal like their loris relatives. By reconstructing the behaviors of related species through time, the team can map out whether the ancestors of modern species behaved the same way since their origin.

There are a few traits from an animal’s skull that can serve as clues. For example, nocturnal animals typically have larger eyes to increase their ability to see at night. Therefore, animals that have proportionally larger orbital cavities, or eye sockets, are likely to be nocturnal.

There is only one Mioeuoticus skull in the whole fossil record! To answer their question, the research team first measured the orbital cavities of the fossil. They used a computer software program designed to precisely measure 3-dimensional scans of bones. Using this technology, Holly obtained the diameter and area of the Mioeuoticus orbital cavities.

Left) CT scan of *Mioeuoticus* cranium. Right) The same cranium with the optic foramen (through which the optic nerve connects the eye to the brain) is highlighted in red and the orbital cavity is highlighted in green.

They then had to compare the fossil values to values of modern species that are alive today. To do this, the team looked through published data collected by other scientists. They found values for the same features in nocturnal lorises and other primate groups. They compared the value from their fossils to three primate groups:

diurnal – active during the day
cathemeral – active during both the day and night
nocturnal – active at night.

In order to compare primates with different body sizes, the team used an index that looks at relative orbital size. This index uses an equation to scale the orbital measurements relative to body size. If Mioeuoticus were nocturnal, Holly predicted the relative orbital size to be similar to the strepsirrhines that have been observed to be nocturnal because this group includes the closest living relative, the lorises.

Featured scientist: Holly E. Anderson (she/her) from Warsaw University, Poland Collaborating scientists: Mary Silcox, Sergi López-Torres, Ingrid Lundeen, & Adam Lis

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 10.1

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget:

Check out this publication related to the research in this activity:

Anderson, H. E., Lis, A., Lundeen, I., Silcox, M. T., & López-Torres, S. 2025. Sensory Reconstruction of the Fossil Lorisid Mioeuoticus: Systematic and Evolutionary Implications. Animals: 15(3), 345. DOI: 10.3390/ani15030345

2.13.25

More than a token photo

When asked to name scientists, students mention the likes of Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, and Isaac Newton. And when asked to draw a scientist, students almost always draw a white man holding a test tube and wearing a lab coat. Professor Robin Costello from the University at Buffalo tells us more about a new study that parsed the effects of including visual depictions and humanizing information about scientists featured in undergraduate biology course materials.

This post was originally released by The Royal Society, here.

How students think of scientists reflects the false narrative that only certain types of people can be scientists – specifically white men with brilliant minds.

One powerful tool to combat this false narrative is to feature relatable, contemporary scientists whose identities do not match the dominant stereotype of a scientist featured in course materials. To highlight counter-stereotypical scientists, instructors can implement course materials that include photographs of scientists in their lecture slide decks. Or instructors can highlight humanizing information about scientists in their course materials. Sharing information such as the barriers scientists have faced or how they overcame obstacles in STEM may help students relate to scientists and envision their own STEM careers.

In our latest study, we parsed the effects of including visual depictions and humanizing information about scientists featured in undergraduate biology course materials with a large-scale research study. Over several academic terms and 36 undergraduate institutions in the United States, we distributed three versions of short quantitative activities (Data Nuggets) that varied in their level of information about the featured scientists (from including only their names and pronouns to full Project Biodiversify scientist profiles).

Data from over 3,700 students revealed that including humanizing information about scientists improves student engagement with quantitative biology activities. Photos of the scientists alone were not enough to improve student engagement. Instead, when provided information about the scientists’ life experiences, students found the activities more interesting, more relevant to their future careers, and put more effort into the activities. Our data suggests this pattern was driven by increased relatability of the featured scientists.

Diagram of the three different treatments

While these results applied to all students, the strongest impacts were evident among students who shared excluded identities with the featured scientists.Our findings underscore the importance of providing students with examples of relatable scientists in STEM courses, rather than simply adding photos to increase representation. By highlighting humanizing information about scientists, instructors can both increase student engagement in their courses and improve equity in STEM.

We recommend several evidence-based resources to use in biology courses, including the Data Nuggets and Project Biodiversify materials studied here (together, DataVersify), as well as Scientist Spotlights, BioGrapI, and the Story Collider Podcast.

2.10.25

Science Doesn’t Stop in the Winter!

When the days grow shorter and the landscape is blanketed in snow, it might seem like nature has gone dormant. Trees stand bare, ponds freeze over, and many animals disappear from sight. But winter is a critical time for many species. Researchers brave the cold to study how organisms survive and even thrive in winter’s harsh conditions.

For many species, winter isn’t an obstacle—it’s a necessity. Some organisms have evolved incredible adaptations to endure the cold. Insects use snow as an insulating blanket and even plants rely on winter conditions, with some seeds requiring a cold period before they can sprout.

Rosemary Martin in the lab with tanks of dragonfly larvae.

But winter isn’t what it used to be; Climate change is altering seasonal patterns, leading to shorter, warmer winters. These changes disrupt the delicate balance that many species depend on. Snow cover is disappearing earlier, and fluctuating temperatures cause unpredictable freeze-thaw cycles, which can be harmful to plants and animals alike.

Postdoctoral researcher associate Rosemary Martin (Rosie) studies how cold temperatures affect the development of organisms, particularly dragonfly larvae. These larvae spend their early lives underwater before emerging as winged adults, and rather than hibernating in winter, they remain active. Understanding how temperatures shape their development is crucial, especially as climate change alters seasonal temperature patterns.

To investigate this, Rosie and her colleagues conduct lab experiments with six species of dragonflies. They expose them to different pre-winter temperatures before placing them in bio chambers at 4°C—mimicking the temperature of water beneath the ice. By measuring metabolic rates and analyzing fat and protein levels, they aim to uncover how different pre-winter conditions influence their health and survival. If larvae grow faster or slower due to higher pre-winter temperatures, it could impact the entire food web, from the predators that rely on dragonflies to the insects they eat.

“They actually stay active through the winter,” Rosie explains. “You can imagine how having built up resources—and still burning through them during the winter—affects their body condition in the spring. That’s what we’re trying to understand.”

Dragonfly larvae (photo credit: Rosemary Martin)

Despite the cold temperatures, Rosie notes that “this is the part that I enjoy the most. […] Part of the reason I got into winter ecology is because I wanted an excuse to get outside into the field all year round.” Winter ecology does come with its unique challenges though. It is often understudied as it doesn’t line up with the usual academic schedule. “There’s also the danger of working on ice,” Rosie mentioned, “especially during the shoulder seasons when it’s less stable. And, of course, a lot of people just don’t think about winter as a biologically active season. […] But in these mid-latitude to high-latitude environments it is obviously a really impactful environmental filter.”

One surprising fact Rosie often shares is that many people don’t realize dragonflies have an aquatic stage at all. “First, I have to explain that, and then I get to the fact that they’re active through the winter—which surprises not just the general public but even some ecologists.”

A Data Nugget on Rosie’s research will be published shortly!

Getting Students Involved in Winter Science

For educators or students interested in exploring winter science, Rosie offers creative ideas. “If you have access to a refrigerator—and don’t mind keeping live insects in there—it can serve as a great proxy for an aquatic winter environment at 4°C,” she suggests. A mini bio chamber with LED lights and a timer can simulate winter conditions.

For those exploring the outdoors, Rosie recommends digging under the snow to examine leaf litter insects. “Try warming them up and see how long it takes for them to resume activity—that can give you insights into their overwintering strategies!” Other ideas include observing animal tracks, studying winter-active birds, and comparing how different types of trees handle the cold.

Dragonfly adult (photo credit: Rosemary Martin)

Bringing Winter Science to Your Classroom With Data Nuggets

Winter offers countless opportunities to engage students in real-world science. Data Nuggets provides resources to explore seasonal changes, including lessons on:

These lessons use real data collected by scientists, allowing students to analyze patterns and draw their own conclusions. By bringing winter science into the classroom, you can help students see that research doesn’t stop when the temperature drops—it simply takes on a new form.

So, this winter, bundle up and explore the science happening all around you! Whether it’s tracking animal footprints in the snow, investigating how ice forms, or analyzing real-world data, there’s no shortage of discoveries waiting to be made.

External Links:

Life under the Ice

Dragonfly larvae