Search Results for: projectbiodiversify.org

12.20.24

Does the heat turn caterpillars into cannibals?

Kale in the lab setting up an experiment with fall armyworms.

The activities are as follows:

Around the world, temperatures are rising from climate change. This is a hot topic for scientists because warmer temperatures could make diseases spread a lot faster. Many diseases spread by the foods we eat. With warmer temperatures, metabolisms increase, and organisms need to eat more food to survive. This increases the risk of eating something that will get them sick.

When Kale started graduate school, they joined a lab that studies how climate change affects the spread of disease in fall armyworms, a type of caterpillar. Fall armyworms are an agricultural pest known for destroying corn, soybeans, and other crops worldwide. In the summer, they move into fields and rapidly chow down on crops. It’s often reported by farmers that it seems as though fall armyworms can remove all the leaves from a cornfield overnight! Believe it or not, their huge appetite leads them to another food source – they will even turn into cannibals and eat each other!

Once Kale started graduate school, they became interested in how cannibalism can increase disease spread in warmer temperatures. Fall armyworms can get infected with a special type of virus called a baculovirus. Baculoviruses are a group of viruses that infect insects, especially caterpillars. They are highly specialized, meaning that each baculovirus usually only infects one species.

A fall armyworm that has been liquified due to a baculovirus infection.

If a fall armyworm eats a fellow fall armyworm that is infected, it can be deadly. In fact, the disease causes their body to completely liquify into a puddle of pure virus! This baculovirus is so effective that farmers even use it to help control infestations in their fields. Since this specific baculovirus only infects fall armyworms, it is safe to use on crops without worrying about effects on humans or other living things.

To study how cannibalism can affect disease spread, Kale designed a set of experiments. They thought that when temperatures are higher, the larvae’s metabolism would increase and make them hungrier caterpillars. Increased appetite could then lead to more cannibalism. As a result, more larvae would be eating others that are infected, further spreading the deadly baculovirus.

To test these ideas, Kale set up small Petri dishes and placed one big fall armyworm in each dish as the focus of each trial. Kale added a piece of insect food and a smaller fall armyworm to each dish. This way, the larger caterpillars had the option of eating the insect food, cannibalizing its smaller friend, or munching on both.

To see if temperature had an impact, Kale set up three treatments at low, medium (ideal), and high temperatures. They assigned 40 Petri dishes to each temperature. To test changes in disease transmission, half of the smaller caterpillars were infected with baculovirus, and half remained uninfected.

Kale predicted that fall armyworms at higher temperatures would cannibalize more because they need more food to keep up with an increased metabolism. They also predicted that fall armyworms that eat an infected caterpillar would be more likely to become infected at higher temperatures.

Featured scientists: Kale Rougeau from Louisiana State University

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 10.2

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget include:

You can also watch a time-lapse video of Kale in the lab to get a glimpse of their work. Follow along as they check fall armyworm cadaver samples for baculovirus infection using a microscope
Kale also provided a video of baculovirus lysing, where occlusion bodies that encapsulate the virus are dissolved, confirming the presence of infection in the fall armyworm sample.
  • Read more about Kale’s hobby of participating and training for dog competitions on the Beyond the Bench blog.
  • More about fall armyworms here and here.
8.24.24

Do urchins flip out in hot water?

Erin in the urchin lab at UC-Santa Barbara.

The Reading Level 1 activities are as follows:

The Reading Level 3 activities are as follows:

Teacher Resources:

Imagine you are a sea urchin. You’re a marine animal that attaches to hard surfaces for stability. You are covered in spikes to protect you from predators. You eat giant kelp – a type of seaweed. You prefer temperate water, typically between 5 to 16°C. But you’ve noticed that some days the ocean around you feels too hot. 

These periods of unusual warming in the ocean are called marine heatwaves. During marine heatwaves, water gets 2-3 degrees hotter than normal. That might not sound like much, but for an urchin, it is a lot. The ocean’s temperature is normally very consistent, so urchins are used to a small range of temperatures. Urchins are cold-blooded. This means they can’t control their own body temperature and rely on the water around them. Whatever temperature the ocean water is, they are too!

Erin is a scientist who studies how environmental changes, like temperature, affect organisms. Erin first got excited about urchins when she interned with a research lab. When she started graduate school, she learned more about their biology and started to ask questions about how urchins would react to marine heatwaves. Hot water can speed up animals’ metabolisms, making them move and eat more. However, warmer temperatures can also cause stress, potentially causing urchins to be clumsier and confused.

Erin getting ready to scuba dive to look for urchins off the California coast.

One summer, two science teachers, Emily and Traci, came to California to work in the same lab as Erin. Emily and Traci wanted to do science research so they can share their experience with their students.  As a team, they decided to test whether marine heat waves could be stressing urchins by looking at a simple behavior that they could easily measure. Healthy urchins have a righting instinct to flip over to orient themselves “the right way” using their sticky tube feet.

The research team predicted that urchins would be slower to right themselves in warmer temperatures. However, they also thought the response could depend on the temperature the urchins were used to living in. If the urchins had been acclimated to higher temperatures, they might not be as strongly affected by the heatwaves.

Together, Erin, Emily, and Traci took 20 urchins into her lab and split them into 2 groups. Ten were kept at 15°C, the ocean’s normal temperature in summer. The other ten were kept at 18°C, a marine heatwave temperature. They let the urchins acclimate to these temperatures for 2 weeks. They tested how long it took each urchin to right itself after being flipped over. They did this at three temperatures for each urchin: 15°C (normal ocean), 18°C (heatwave), and 21°C (extreme heatwave). They worked together to test the urchins three times at each temperature to get three replicates. Then they calculated the average of each urchin’s responses.

Featured scientists: Erin de Leon Sanchez (she/her) from University of California – Santa Barbara, Emily Chittick (she/her), and Traci Kennedy (she/her) from Milwaukee Public Schools.

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = The Content Level 3 activity has a score of 7.9 ; the Level 1 has a score of 5.9

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget include:

  • Here is a video of a parrotfish finding and eating an urchin. Show this video to emphasize how important it is for urchins to be able to right themselves!
Video of a trial where the researchers flipped over an urchin and timed how long it took the urchin to flip back over.
Watch how sea urchins use items from their environment to cover themselves.
7.2.24

Helping students hear the stories that data tell

Article Highlights

High school students work with a Data Nuggets module.
High school students work with a Data Nuggets module. Credit: Paul Strode
  • Michigan State University’s Data Nuggets program is starting its third round of funding from the National Science Foundation to improve data literacy in K-16 students.
  • The program, operated by the Kellogg Biological Station, also introduces real STEM professionals through storytelling, helping students better relate to their projects and engage more deeply with the program’s content.
  • In collaboration with Auburn University, the newest NSF grant will help Data Nuggets further that engagement and introduce students to a greater diversity of scientists.

A data literacy program that’s also changing students’ relationships with science and scientists is entering its third round of funding with a new $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation.

In collaboration with Auburn University, the Data Nuggets program at the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station, or KBS, will work to identify factors that improve equity and success in undergraduate STEM education.

Launched by Michigan State University in 2011, Data Nuggets is a curriculum development project designed to help students better understand and use data. The program shows how professionals in science, technology, engineering and math really work with data by sharing their stories, which also enables students to relate on a much more personal level.  

Data Nuggets challenges students from kindergarten through undergraduate levels to answer scientific questions using data to support their claims. The questions and data originate from real research provided by scientists whose studies range from physics to ecology to animal behavior. 

To add the personal element, Data Nuggets is collaborating with Project Biodiversify — another education program started at MSU — to add the scientists’ bios, which include information like hobbies and their lives outside of science. This helps students relate to the researchers and see them less as strangers in lab coats and more as scientific role models. 

“We’ve found that it’s the scientists that are engaging students in the activities,” said Elizabeth Schultheis, co-leader of the Data Nuggets program. “If they connect to the role model, then you can get students to do the data literacy activities because they know, ‘Oh, this is a real person. I relate to this person. And I’m working with authentic, real data. I’m not just doing busy work.’” 

Schultheis, who earned her doctorate in plant biology from MSU, is also the education and outreach coordinator for the Long-Term Ecological Research, or LTER, program at KBS, which supports Data Nuggets. Schultheis and co-leader, Melissa Kjelvik, developed and run the program, forming partnerships to research and fund the program.

“With our current research, we’re trying to figure out what is the special thing that’s really resonating with students in terms of the role models,” Kjelvik said.

“Our research will investigate how and why role models are critically important for students,” said Cissy Ballen. Ballen is an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Auburn, the lead institution on the NSF grant, which builds on the past success of Data Nuggets and will help ensure its future impact.

“The theory behind this is that students must be able to see a scientist’s success as attainable to relate to that scientist,” Ballen said. “My prediction is that students will find success most relatable when they see some scientists, like them, have struggled with science, but then were able to overcome that struggle.” 

Elizabeth Schultheis (right) and Melissa Kjelvik (left) lead the Data Nuggets program at Michigan State University’s W.K. Kellogg Biological Station.
Elizabeth Schultheis (right) and Melissa Kjelvik (left) lead the Data Nuggets program at Michigan State University’s W.K. Kellogg Biological Station.

Making data talk

Many students’ eyes gloss over when they hear terms like “data” or “science.” 

Even Schultheis admits she didn’t appreciate the significance of data until she was a grad student collecting her own. The problem, she said, is that kids are often taught how to make a graph, for example, but not why.

“I never really learned to care until I understood the reason I make a graph is because I want to answer a question,” Schultheis explained. “I need to see the data, what it looks like. And that’s why I make a graph.” 

Data Nuggets doesn’t change the skills that are taught in conventional curricula. Students still learn how to make and label axes, for example, and then how to plot data to create graphs. But they also get a more immersive introduction into why real people use these skills.

“Our purpose with these Data Nuggets modules is that everything is always given real context and always in service of a scientific question,” Schultheis said. “It’s always: Here’s a scientist. Here’s the question that they really care about and the reason they collected this data is because they want to answer this question. And you make the graph to visualize it so that you can see what the data is telling you.”

Data Nugget activities come in four levels, so instructors can use the ones best suited for their specific classes. Level 4 activities are designed for high schoolers and undergraduates, while level 1 activities are appropriate for elementary schools and higher grades looking for a refresher after a summer break, for example.

Teachers also have flexibility with how to present an activity based on their goals. For example, instructors can choose activities with completed graphs so students can focus on interpreting what they see to answer questions.

Or students can be given blank grids to give them experience in creating useful representations of data from scratch.

Connie High, a science teacher at Delton Kellogg High School about five miles from KBS, calls Data Nuggets “a game changer.”  

She said that her students, when they’re new to Data Nuggets, can usually make claims and find supporting evidence. The challenge is learning how to articulate the connection between the two.

“They really struggle with how to link claim, evidence and reasoning. They tend to just restate the evidence again,” High said. 

“With Data Nuggets, we definitely see an improvement from the beginning of the year to the end.” 

Humanizing data 

The Data Nuggets program started 13 years ago as a grassroots collaboration between KBS researchers — including Schultheis and Kjelvik, who were then grad students at KBS — and K-12 teachers, including High. 

More than 120 scientists have contributed more than 120 data literacy activities since then. Tens of thousands of people regularly use the Data Nuggets website. Links to various Data Nuggets stories can even be found in science textbooks. 

“Long-term relationship building is why we got such good insights from teachers about what their students needed, because they already had trust with us, and we went into their classrooms and learned from them,” Schultheis said. “And building relationships with scientists who trust us to tell their stories correctly, who are giving their own stories for students to read and learn about, continues to be critical to our success.”

But exactly how to best package and present the data stories falls to Schultheis and her colleagues. Previous research has supported the idea that focusing on the scientist and why they collected the data is essential. After all, data is just numbers. It’s human interaction that puts numbers in perspective, gives the scientific question context and engages students in the activity.

“Humanizing the data is at the crux of this work,” Ballen said. “Data Nuggets is such a successful resource because of the way they humanize the data component and contextualize it within the science itself and show that it’s being done by relatable scientists. They do that really well.”

With its third round of NSF funding, Data Nuggets is attempting to fine-tune how to best present the scientist role models and the stories to improve student engagement with science even more.

The goal is not only to increase the portrayal of under-represented groups among scientist contributors, but also for students to see that they share some things in common with the scientists they see. 

“We used to ask students to draw what a scientist looks like, and they all would draw someone who looks like Albert Einstein,” High said. “It’s incredibly important that they see there are scientists who look like them.”

“You can imagine if you were a student sitting in a classroom you might get an activity that features a scientist from a prestigious university with awards and that sort of thing, and that might not be very relatable,” Ballen said. “Success might not be perceived as attainable.”

Data Nuggets is working to combat that perception.

For example, there’s a Data Nugget called “Trees and the City”, featuring a photo of a smiling University of Minnesota ecologist named Adrienne Keller wearing a bike helmet and sunglasses. A video shows Keller riding her bike through neighborhoods in the Twin Cities as she describes her interest in tree patterns. She poses her dataset’s main question: “Are there differences in the total canopy cover or the number of tree species planted in a neighborhood based on residents’ income level or percentage of BIPOC — Black, Indigenous, and People of Color — residents?”

Another Data Nugget was written by a community scientist from Bayfield, Wisconsin, located on the south shore of Lake Superior. He’s pictured wearing shorts and gym shoes as he stands on ice. 

For his Nugget, he used historical data to answer his question if the winters were getting shorter and changing the dynamics of how people could travel in the area. 

He also happened to be a high school student.

“That’s the dream outcome,” Schultheis said, “that students realize how powerful data are, and they can be advocates for themselves and their communities because they can actually go to the source of information and ask and answer questions.” 

This story was written by Lynn Waldsmith, and was originally posted on the Michigan State University, College of Natural Science website here.

5.1.24

Auburn and MSU collaborate on NSF IUSE grant to determine what makes an effective scientific role model

Members of the Auburn and MSU research team sharing a meal.

Scientific role models increase student success in their science courses as well as inspire students to pursue science careers. The Ballen Lab at Auburn University has completed significant research demonstrating that role models with diverse identities are lacking in undergraduate biology classrooms. Students with identities that are not represented in their undergraduate science courses do not have many opportunities to see themselves in science careers and as scientific leaders.

“I am excited to collaborate with researchers at Michigan State University to identify factors that improve equity and success in undergraduate STEM education. Our research will investigate how and why role models are critically important for students,” said Cissy Ballen, associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences.

The collaborative team, led by Ballen at Auburn and Elizabeth Schultheis at MSU, was awarded $1.5 million from the National Science Foundation’s Division of Undergraduate Education.

Robin Costello, a postdoctoral scientist in the Ballen Lab working to understand the relationship between role models and successful student outcomes, explained, “Featuring relatable scientist role models in classroom materials is a low-cost and accessible way to increase the recruitment and persistence of students with identities historically and currently excluded from STEM.”

The research team’s recent research showed a direct correlation between relating to scientific role models and student engagement. “These results led to more questions about the critical features of scientist role models that make them effective and served as the foundation for the recently awarded project,” Ballen explained. “Theory makes several predictions about why and how role models are critical to student success. With this support from NSF, we will conduct critical research that tests theory on what makes an effective role model.”

Costello added, “Our research will specifically explore how to tell scientists role model stories in ways that improve student outcomes.” The project is entitled “Collaborative Research: Sharing Scientist Role Model Stories to Improve Equity and Success in Undergraduate STEM Education.”

“Several popular resources have been created to combat the pervasiveness of the stereotypical scientist in biology and STEM curricular materials,” Ballen added. An important long-term result of the project are free, open-source materials for educators to use in their classrooms to nurture more inclusive environments where students can learn from a wide array of STEM leaders to whom they can relate.

These resources will develop biology data literacy curricular materials that teach quantitative skills while simultaneously highlighting the diversity of scientists in STEM. These resources will be based on two well-known educational resources: Data Nuggets, resources that are developed in a partnership between scientists and teachers, and Project Biodiversify, a site that offers education tools for diversity and inclusion in biology classrooms.

Our team will be recruiting instructors to implement the activities in classrooms. If you are interested in participating in this project, please contact mjb0100@auburn.edu. For the original story, written by Maria Gebhardt, visit the Auburn page here.

8.17.22

Mowing for monarchs, Part II

In Part I you explored data that showed monarchs prefer to lay their eggs on young milkweeds that have been mowed, compared to older milkweed plants. But, is milkweed age the only factor that was changed when Britney and Gabe mowed patches of milkweeds? You will now examine whether mowing also affected the presence of monarch predators.

A scientist measuring a milkweed plant.
A scientist, Lizz D’Auria, counting the number of monarch predators on milkweed plants in the experiment.

The activities are as follows:

The bright orange color of monarch butterflies signals to their enemies that they are poisonous. This is a warning that they do not make a tasty meal. Predators, like birds and spiders, that try to eat monarch butterflies usually become sick. Many people think that monarch butterflies have no enemies because they are poisonous. But, in fact they do have a lot of predators, especially when they are young.

Monarchs become poisonous from the food they eat. Adult monarchs lay their eggs on milkweed plants, which have poisonous sap. When the eggs hatch, the caterpillars chomp on the leaves. Young caterpillars are less poisonous because they haven’t eaten much milkweed yet. And monarch eggs are not poisonous at all to predators.

Britney and Gabe met with their friends, Doug and Nate, who are scientists. Doug and Nate thought that Britney and Gabe’s experiment might have changed more than just the age of the milkweed plants in the patches they mowed. By mowing their field sites they were also cutting down the plants in the rest of the community. These plants provide habitat for predators, so mowing all of the plants would affect the predators as well. These ideas led to another potential explanation for the results Britney and Gabe saw in their data. Because all plants were cut in the mowed patches, there was nowhere for monarch predators to hang out. Britney and Gabe came up with an alternative hypothesis that perhaps monarch butterflies were choosing to lay their eggs on young milkweed plants because there were fewer predators nearby. To test this new idea, Britney and Gabe went back to their experimental site and started collecting data on the presence of predators in addition to egg number. Remember that in each location, they had a control patch, which was left alone, and a treatment patch that they mowed. The control patches had older milkweed plants and a full set of plants in the community. The mowed patches had young milkweed plants with short, chopped plants nearby. For the whole summer, they went out weekly to all of the patches. They counted the number of predators found on the milkweed plants so they could compare the mowed and unmowed patches.

Predators of monarch butterflies.
There are many different species that eat monarch butterfly eggs and young caterpillars. These are just a few of the species that Gabe and Britney observed during their experiment.

Featured scientists: Doug Landis and Nate Haan from Michigan State University and Britney Christensen and Gabe Knowles from Kellogg Biological Station LTER.

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 8.2

Additional resources related to this Data Nugget:

  • A news article discussing declining monarch populations and the causes that might be contributing to this trend.
1.11.22

Mowing for monarchs, Part I

A monarch caterpillar on a milkweed leaf.
A monarch caterpillar on a milkweed leaf.

The activities are as follows:

With their orange wings outlined with black lines and white dots, monarch butterflies are one of the most recognizable insects in North America. They are known for their seasonal migration when millions of monarch butterflies migrate from the United States and Canada south to Mexico in the fall. Then, in the spring the monarch butterflies migrate back north. Monarch butterflies are pollinators, which means they get their food from the pollen and nectar of flowering plants that they visit. The milkweed plant is one of the most important flowering plants that monarch butterflies depend on.

During the spring and summer months female butterflies will lay their eggs on milkweed plants. Milkweed plays an important role in the monarch butterfly’s life cycle. It is the only plant that monarchs will lay their eggs on. Caterpillars hatch from the butterfly eggs and eat the leaves of the milkweed plant. The milkweed is the only food that monarch caterpillars will eat until they become butterflies.

A problem facing many pollinators, including monarch butterflies, is that their numbers have been going down for several years. Scientists are concerned that we will lose pollinators to extinction if we don’t find solutions to this problem. Doug and Nate are scientists at Michigan State University trying to figure out ways to increase the number of monarch butterflies. They think that they found something that might work. Doug and Nate have learned that if you cut old milkweed plants at certain times of the year, then younger milkweed plants will quickly grow in their place. These new milkweed plants are softer and more tender than the old plants. It appears that monarch butterflies prefer to lay their eggs on the younger plants. It also seems that the monarch caterpillars prefer to eat the younger plants.

Britney and Gabe are two elementary teachers interested in monarch butterfly conservation. They learned about Doug and Nate’s research and wanted to participate in their experiment. The team of four met and designed an experiment that Britney and Gabe could do in open meadows throughout their community.

Britney and Gabe chose ten locations for their experiment. In each location they set aside a milkweed patch that was left alone, which they called the control.  At the same location they set aside another milkweed patch where they mowed the milkweed plants down. After a while, milkweed plants would grow back in the mowed patches. This means they had control patches with old milkweed plants, and treatment patches with young milkweed plants. Gabe and Britney made weekly observations of all the milkweed patches at each location. They recorded the number of monarch eggs in each of the patches. By the end of the summer, they had made 1,693 observations!

Featured scientists: Doug Landis and Nate Haan from Michigan State University and Britney Christensen and Gabe Knowles from Kellogg Biological Station LTER.

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 8.2

Additional resources related to this Data Nugget:

  • This research is part of the ReGrow Milkweed citizen science project. To learn more, visit their website or follow them on Twitter at @ReGrowMilkweed.
  • Britney, one of the scientists in this study, wrote a blog post about her experience in the NSF LTER RET Program (National Science Foundation’s Research Experience for Teachers) working with Doug Landis.
  • Learn about how this group of scientists responded to the COVID-19 pandemic to pivot to a virtual citizen science program in this blog post.
  • A news article discussing declining monarch populations and the causes that might be contributing to this trend.
7.19.21

Buried seeds, buried treasure

Marjorie (right) and David (left) digging up the seed bottle in 2021. This bottle was scheduled to be dug up in 2020, but the experiment was delayed one year due to COVID-19.

One of the world’s longest-running science experiments lies hidden in the soil beneath Michigan State University’s campus. Over 100 years ago, a scientist named William J. Beal had a question: how long do seeds survive underground? To find out, he started an experiment. In 1879 he filled 20 bottles with sand and seeds from local plants. William buried these bottles and created a map to document their location, hoping that future scientists would continue to dig them up to test whether the seeds would still grow long after his death.

These bottles and the map have been passed down from generation to generation, with each new scientist responsible for training their successor. To protect the seeds, only a select few scientists are let in on the secret. Today a team of four plant biologists hold the map, and they were the ones to dig up the most recent bottle in 2021. 

Early one Thursday morning, before the sun had risen, the team set out on their mission. Marjorie Weber, the first woman to be in charge of the study and currently the youngest team member, was the scientist who found the bottle and pulled it from the ground. This is a big deal, as back when William began the experiment women weren’t even allowed to be scientists!

Seeds of Verbascum blattaria germinating in 2021. This is the only species that germinated from the most recent collection.

Originally, the Beal Seed Experiment was designed to test seed viability, or how long seeds of different species stay alive in the soil and still germinate. Seeds don’t germinate as soon as they fall off their mother plant. They become part of a seed bank below the soil, waiting for the right conditions to tell them to sprout. William was working with local farmers in Michigan, and he was interested in helping them better understand how long weeds will continue to pop up in their fields after they start to plant crops. This is reflected in the fact that many of the species included in the experiment are weeds in agricultural fields. 

Despite all the changes that have taken place in the world since the seeds were buried 142 years ago, the main question remains the same: how long can seeds stay alive in the soil? In addition to helping farmers, Marjorie and the other scientists now have additional reasons for wanting to understand seed viability. Restoration of natural plant communities, conservation of endangered species, and removal of invasive plants from fragile ecosystems can all benefit from a knowledge of the seedbank. 

With this long-term study design, scientists can compare how many seeds sprout and which species are able to germinate through time. Originally, William dug up a new bottle every five years. Once scientists realized how long the seeds last, they made the interval between excavations longer; now they wait 20 years before digging up the next bottle. The experiment is set to go at least another 80 years. Imagine, future bottles will be dug up by scientists who are not even born yet!

Once a bottle is found and unearthed, it is taken back to the lab to see which species will germinate. Filled with sand and over a thousand seeds, each bottle contains the same mix of 50 seeds of 21 different species of plants. The contents are spread out on a tray filled with soil and are put into growth chambers. Scientists keep an eye on the trays to watch and see what germinates.

Featured scientist: Marjorie Weber from Michigan State University. 

Other scientists: Frank Telewski, David Lowry, Lars Brudvig, and Margaret Fleming.

Written by: Elizabeth Schultheis and Melissa Kjelvik.

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 9.7

Additional teacher resource related to this Data Nugget:

This experiment received a lot of press coverage. Have students check out these new stories and videos to learn more about the scientists and experiment:

YouTube video summarizing the search and the experiment:

6.7.21

Blinking out?

A researcher collects data from a yellow sticky card at the MSU KBS LTER site. Photo Credit: K. Stepnitz, Michigan State University.

The activities are as follows:

The longest surveys of fireflies known to science was actually started by accident!

At the Kellogg Biological Station Long-Term Ecological Research Site, scientists work together to answer questions that can only be studied with long-term data. Their focus is to collect data in the same way over many consecutive years to look for patterns through time. One of these long-term studies, looking at lady beetle populations, was developed to keep watch on these important species. To count lady beetles, scientists placed yellow sticky card traps out in the same plots year after year. These data are used to figure out if lady beetle numbers are changing over time.

Because sticky traps catch everything small that flies by, other insect species get stuck as well. One day, a research technician noticed this and decided to add a few new columns to the data sheet. That way they could start recording data on the other insect species found on the sticky traps. Each year the technician kept adding to the record and over time, more and more data were collected. One of those new columns happened to record the number of fireflies caught. Though the exact reason for this data collection is lost to history, scientists quickly realized the value of this dataset! 

Several years later, Julia became the lab technician. She took over the responsibility of the sticky trap count, adding to the dataset. Christie joined this same lab as a scientist and stumbled upon the data on fireflies that Julia and the previous technician had collected. She wanted to take advantage of the long-term data and analyze whether firefly populations had been increasing or decreasing. 

Many people have fond memories of watching fireflies blink across open fields and collecting them in jars as children. This is one of the reasons why fireflies are a beloved insect species. Julia grew up in southwest Michigan and fondly recalls spending summers watching them blink over yards and open fields, catching them in jars to watch them for a little while. Christie did the same in her parent’s yard in rural Ontario! That fondness never really went away and both enjoy watching the fireflies around Northeast Ohio where they currently live. Fireflies are also an important part of the ecosystems where they live. Larvae spend most of their time in the soil and are predators of insects and other small animals, such as snails. 

All the insects collected on a yellow sticky card trap over the course of one week. Photo credit: Elizabeth D’Auria, Michigan State University.

Many scientists and citizens alike have noticed that they aren’t seeing as many fireflies as they used to. Habitat loss and light pollution could be causing problems for fireflies. This is where the importance of long-term data really comes into play. Long-term data are critical to identifying and understanding natural population cycles over long periods of time that we wouldn’t be able to see with just a few years of data. It also gives scientists opportunities to answer unanticipated research questions. In this situation, even though the data were collected without a specific purpose in mind, having the dataset available offered new opportunities! Christie and Julia were able to look at the long-term changes in southwest Michigan firefly populations, something they would not have been able to do before the research technician added those extra columns. In order to start answering this question, they compiled all of the years of firefly data and began to compare the average counts from year to year. Although data were collected in multiple different habitat types, they focused on data from open fields because fireflies use these areas to find mates.

Featured scientists: Christie Bahlai and Julia Perrone from Kent State University. Data from the Kellogg Biological Station Long Term Ecological Research Program – KBS LTER

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 10.7

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget include:

4.20.21

How milkweed plants defend against monarch butterflies

Anurag looking at a monarch caterpillar on a milkweed plant.

The activities are as follows:

For millions of years, monarch butterflies have been antagonizing milkweed plants. Although adult monarchs drink nectar from flowers, their caterpillars only eat milkweed leaves, which harms the plants. This is an ecological interaction called herbivory. The only food for monarchs is milkweed leaves, meaning they have evolved to be highly specialized, picky eaters. But their food is not a passive victim. Like most other plants, milkweeds fight back with defenses against herbivory.

Monarch butterflies lay their eggs on the underside of milkweed leaves. After eggs hatch, caterpillars start to feed and quickly meet the plant’s first defense. Milkweed leaves are covered in thousands of tiny hairs, called trichomes, that the caterpillar needs to shave off before they can take a bite. The next challenge happens when the caterpillar takes a bite of the leaf. They get a mouthful of latex, which is sticky like Elmer’s glue. The caterpillars have to be very careful in how they feed. They cut the veins in the leaf to drain out the latex before continuing to feed on the leaf. Even after monarch caterpillars make it past the trichomes and latex, there’s another defense they need to overcome. Milkweed leaves have chemical toxins called cardiac glycosides, which are poisonous to most animals. As they feed, monarchs eat some of this poison.

Anurag is a scientist who has long been fascinated by plants and their defenses. He thinks this comes from the fact that his mother was such an avid gardener. She would grow food, such as peppers, squashes, and tomatoes. He looks back and has memories that are associated with garden plants and their defenses. For example, he remembers eating a bitter cucumber as a kid and spitting it out. He also can still recall the bitter aroma on his hand after brushing against the sticky tomato leaves. And plants that are tough and stringy, like kale, are not as tasty to eat. These traits are examples of plant defenses in action, making them harder or less enjoyable to eat, reducing herbivory.

Anurag collecting data on milkweed plants.

Anurag first started studying milkweeds 20 years ago, based on a recommendation from a friend. His friend told him of the bitter, sticky, and furry leaves that were treasured by the monarch butterfly caterpillars. This led him to study the paradox of coevolution. The milkweed and monarch have such a tight relationship that over time, milkweeds have evolved multiple ways to defend themselves against their herbivores. In response, monarchs have evolved to overcome those defenses because they need to eat the milkweed. This arms race may continue to shift back and forth over the course of evolutionary time.

This back-and-forth battle between caterpillar and plant intrigued Anurag. He wanted to know whether milkweed’s defensive traits are still effective against monarchs, or have monarchs evolved in ways that make them unaffected by the defenses? Because each defense trait might be at a different phase in the coevolution process, perhaps some would be effective defenses to herbivory, but others would not be effective. He predicted that monarchs would be harmed by all three milkweed defense traits (trichomes, latex, and cardiac glycosides), but that some would cause more harm than others.

To test his ideas, Anurag and his collaborators grew monarch caterpillars on 24 different North American milkweed species. They put a single newly hatched caterpillar on each plant and had five replicate plants per milkweed species. They recorded each caterpillar’s growth over the course of 5 days to see how healthy it was. They also measured the amount of trichomes, latex, and cardiac glycosides in each plant to determine their level of defense. Once they had their data, they looked for a relationship between caterpillar growth and plant defense traits to determine which made the best plant defenses. The better the defense, the less caterpillars would grow.

Featured scientist: Anurag Agrawal (He/Him/His) from Cornell University

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 8.5

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget include:

  • Anurag has other examples, data, and related stories in his book: Monarchs and Milkweed, which is written for budding scientists and interested naturalists: www.amazon.com/dp/0691166358.
  • Students can learn more about Anurag, his research, and his lab at his website: www.herbivory.com which includes blog posts about monarch conservation, the community of insects on milkweed plants, videos of talks and presentations, and other things related to his research and teaching at Cornell University.
  • A scientific article based on this research: Agrawal, A. A., Fishbein, M., Jetter, R., Salminen, J. P., Goldstein, J. B., Freitag, A. E., & Sparks, J. P. (2009). Phylogenetic ecology of leaf surface traits in the milkweeds (Asclepias spp.): chemistry, ecophysiology, and insect behavior. New Phytologist, 183(3), 848-867.
  • Learn more about Anurag and his research in this YouTube video!

Data Nuggets + Project Biodiversity = DataVersify

Below is a table of all DataVersify Activities – Data Nuggets for which we have a Scientist Profile. Click on the title to open a page displaying the Data Nugget activity, teacher guide, and links to the Profile on Project Biodiversify. The table can be sorted and searched.

For more information on Project Biodiversify, visit their website! For more information on the collaboration between Data Nuggets and Project Biodiversify, check out our Publications & Research page!

Data Nugget TitleScientist ProfilesSummaryContent Level
How milkweed plants defend against monarchsAnurag AgrawalFor millions of years, monarch butterflies have been antagonizing milkweed plants. Although adult monarchs drink nectar from flowers, their caterpillars only eat milkweed leaves, which harms the plants. The only food for monarchs is milkweed leaves, meaning they have evolved to be highly specialized, picky eaters. But their food is not a passive victim. Like most other plants, milkweeds fight back with defenses against herbivory. Which defensive traits are helping in the fight against herbivory?3
pcare2Raising Nemo: Parental care in the clown anemonefishTina BarbaschOffspring in many animal species rely on parental care; the more time and energy parents invest in their young, the more likely it is that their offspring will survive. However, parental care is costly for the parents. The more time spent on care, the less time they have to find food or care for themselves. In the clown anemonefish, the amount of food available may impact parental care behaviors. When there is food freely available in the environment, are parents able to spend more time caring for their young?3
Why are butterfly wings colorful?Adriana Darielle Meija BriscoeBig wings allow butterflies to fly everywhere with ease. But you may wonder, why are the wings of some species so brightly colored? The red postman butterfly lives in rainforests in Mexico, Central America, and South America. The color pattern on its wing is usually a mix of red, yellow, and black. These bright colors may warn birds and other predators that they would not make a tasty meal. Another potential reason for butterflies to have bright colors and dramatic patterns is to attract mates.3
Spiders under the influenceAaron CurryPeople use pharmaceutical drugs, personal care products, and other chemicals on a daily basis. Often, they get washed down our drains and end up in local waterways. Chris knew that many types of spiders live near streams and are exposed to toxins through the prey they eat. Chris wanted to compare effects of the chemicals on spiders in rural and urban environments. By comparing spider webs in these two habitats, they could see how different the webs are and infer how many chemicals are in the waterways. 2
junglefoulFeral chickens fly the coopEben GeringSometimes domesticated animals escape captivity and interbreed with closely related wild relatives. Their hybrid offspring have some traits from the wild parent, and some from the domestic parent. Traits that help hybrids survive and reproduce will be favored by natural selection. On the island of Kauai, domestic chickens escaped and recently interbred with wild Red Junglefowl to produce a hybrid population. Over time, will the hybrids on Kauai evolve to be more like chickens, or more like Red Junglefowl?3
What big teeth you have! Sexual selection in rhesus macaquesRaisa Hernández-PachecoIn Cayo Santiago there is one of the oldest free-ranging rhesus macaque colonies in the world. Scientists have gathered data on these monkeys and their habitat for over 70 years. The program monitors individual monkeys over their entire lives, and when they die their bodies are recovered and skeletal specimens are stored in a museum. These skeletal specimens can be used by scientists today to ask new and exciting questions, for example, what traits are under sexual selection in this population?3
Getting to the roots of serpentine soilAllie IgweWhen an organism grows in different environments, some traits change to fit the conditions. Serpentine soils have high amounts of toxic heavy metals, do not hold water well, and have low nutrient levels. Low levels of water and nutrients found in serpentine soils limit plant growth. Because serpentine soils have fewer plant nutrients and are drier than non-serpentine soils, Alexandria thought that plants growing in serpentine soils may not invest as much into large root systems.2
Blinking out?Julia PerroneMany people have fond memories of watching fireflies blink across open fields and collecting them in jars as children. This is one of the reasons why fireflies are a beloved insect species. However, there is concern that their populations are in decline. Scientists turned to the longest-running study of fireflies known to science to see if this is the case!2
Streams as sensors: Arctic watersheds as indicators of changeArial ShogrenAs the world warms from climate change, the Alaskan Arctic is heating up. This is causing permafrost, or the frozen underground layer of rock and ice, to melt. When permafrost melts, plant material that has been stored for thousands of years begins to decay, releasing carbon and nitrogen from the system. Ecologists can act like “ecosystem accountants” measuring the balance of material that goes into and out of these systems.3
Photo by Tomomi Suwa, 2013Does a partner in crime make it easier to invade?Tomomi SuwaMutualisms are a special type of relationship in nature where two species work together and both benefit. This cooperation should lead to each partner species doing better when the other is around – without their mutualist partner, the species will have a harder time acquiring resources. But what happens when one partner cheats and takes more than it gives?3
Purring crickets: The evolution of a new cricket songRobin TinghitellaAbout twenty years ago, scientists discovered male Pacific field crickets in several spots in Hawaii had stopped making songs due to selection from a parasitoid fly that uses the songs to locate their hosts. One summer, scientists heard what sounded like a purring cat, but there was no cat in sight. This sound was coming from crickets, and was unlike anything ever observed before. Could it be the beginning of evolution of a novel mating signal?3
Stop that oxidation! What fruit flies teach us about human healthBiz TurnellEach of our cells is home to mitochondria, tiny factories whose job is to turn the food we eat into the energy we need to live. But during this process oxidative damage can cause harm to everything in the cell. There are two ways that bodies can prevent oxidative damage: antioxidants and more efficient metabolic pathways. Biz looked at fruit flies with varying genetics for these two strategies and wanted to test whether the level of oxidative damage in eggs and sperm would influence how many offspring a female had.4
Buried seeds, buried treasureMarjorie WeberOver 100 years ago, a scientist named William J. Beal had a question: how long do seeds survive underground? He started an experiment by filling 20 bottles with seeds from 50 plant species, buried them on campus, and creating a map to find them in the future. This map have been passed down from scientist generation to generation. The most recent bottle was dug up in 2021, and scientists tested how many seeds were still able to germinate after 142 years underground.2
Do urchins flip out in hot water? Erin de Leon SanchezCorals are the most important reef animals since they build the reef for all of the other animals to live in. But corals only like to live in certain places. In particular they hate living near algae because the algae and coral compete for the space they both need to grow. Perhaps if there are more vegetarians, like urchins, eating algae on the reef then corals would have less competition and more space to grow.1 & 3
Mowing for Monarchs Part 1 & Mowing for Monarchs Part 2Gabe KnowlesDuring the spring and summer months, monarch butterflies lay their eggs on milkweed plants. Milkweed plays an important role in the monarch butterfly’s life cycle. When milkweed is cut at certain times of the year new shoots grow, which are softer and easier for caterpillars to eat. Scientists set out to see if mowing milkweed plants could help boost struggling monarch populations.2
Does the heat turn caterpillars into cannibals?Kale RougeauWhen Kale started graduate school, they joined a lab that studies how climate change affects the spread of disease in fall armyworms, a type of caterpillar. Fall armyworms can get infected with a special type of virus and it can be spread through cannibalism. Do warmer temperatures cause caterpillars to be hungrier, leading to more cannibalism and disease spread?3
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