Search Results for: urchin

Revealing the mechanisms behind sex differences in aging.

In many species across the animal kingdom, one sex ages slower than the other, or has a longer lifespan. This sex-specific aging has significant implications for conservation, agriculture, and human health. However, no unified model exists that reveals how mechanistic and evolutionary processes cause the diverse patterns of sex-specific aging seen in nature.

IISAGE – Integration Initiative: Sex, Aging, Genomics, and Evolution – is a Biology Integration Institute whose goal is to determine how genome architecture, organismal biology, and phenotypic plasticity contribute to sex-specific aging and its evolution.

To learn more about the people behind IISAGE, check out these scientist profiles!

The following Data Nuggets are made from IISAGE research and data.

	Title	LTER Site	EOC & Website	Content Level	Summary
	Blinking out?	Kellogg Biological Station LTER	Liz Schultheis	2	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. 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!
	Little butterflies on the prairie	Kellogg Biological Station LTER	Liz Schultheis	2	Many farmers are concerned with growing our food while still protecting habitat wildlife. They want to know – how can we grow food for ourselves while still providing good habitat for other species? Prairie strips are a new idea that might help both farmers and the environment. These strips are small areas of prairie that can be added to farm fields. They look like rows of flowers and grasses within a field. They create habitat for many species, like butterflies, birds, ants, and even microscopic fungi and bacteria!
	Farms in the fight against climate change	Kellogg Biological Station LTER	Liz Schultheis	2	Different farming practices affect the amount of carbon stored in soil, an important factor for soil health and climate change. Soil scientist Caro analyzed long-term data from a 30-year experiment at Kellogg Biological Station, comparing four land management types—including conventional farming, no-till, and cover crops—to see which ones best increase soil carbon. Her work helps identify practices that benefit both farmers and the planet.
	Microbes facing tough times	Kellogg Biological Station LTER	Liz Schultheis	3	As the climate changes, Michigan is expected to experience more drought. Scientists are looking into how crop mutualistic interactions with microbes may help them withstand drought periods. First they need to know how microbes are impacted by different carbon and drought conditions.
	Bringing back the Trumpeter Swan	Kellogg Biological Station LTER & Kellogg Bird Sanctuary	Liz Schultheis	3	Trumpeter swans are the biggest native waterfowl species in North America. At one time they were found across North America, but by 1935 there were only 69 known individuals in the continental U.S.! In the 1980s, many biologists came together to create a Trumpeter Swan reintroduction plan. Since then the North American Trumpeter Swan survey has been conducted to measure swan populations and determine whether this species is recovering.
	Growing energy: comparing biofuel crop biomass	Kellogg Biological Station LTER & University Wisconsin-Madison GLBRC	Liz Schultheis	3	Corn is one of the best crops for producing biomass for fossil fuels, however it is an annual and needs very fertile soil. To grow corn, farmers add a lot of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to their fields. Other crops, like switchgrass, prairie, poplar trees, and Miscanthus grass are perennials and require fewer fertilizers and pesticides to grow. If perennials can produce high levels of biomass with low inputs, perhaps they could produce more biomass than corn under certain low nutrient conditions.
	A difficult drought	Kellogg Biological Station LTER & University Wisconsin-Madison GLBRC	Liz Schultheis	2	Biofuels are made from plants that are growing today, and are being considered as an alternative to fossil fuels. To become biofuels, plants need to go through a series of chemical and physical processes that transform the sugars into ethanol. Scientists are interested in seeing how yeast’s ability to transform sugar into fuel is affected by environmental conditions in fields, such as temperature and rainfall. They used data from a year with drought and a year with normal rainfall to determine if plants that grew under drought conditions were lower quality for ethanol production.
	Fertilizing biofuels may cause release of greenhouse gasses	Kellogg Biological Station LTER & University Wisconsin-Madison GLBRC	Liz Schultheis	3	One way to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we release into the atmosphere could be to grow our fuel instead of drilling for it. Unlike fossil fuels that can only release CO2, biofuels remove CO2 from the atmosphere as they grow and photosynthesize, potentially balancing the CO2 released when they are burned for fuel. However, the plants we grow for biofuels don’t necessarily absorb all greenhouse gas that is released during the process of growing them on farms and converting them into fuels.
	The ground has gas!	Kellogg Biological Station LTER & University Wisconsin-Madison GLBRC	Liz Schultheis	3	Nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide are responsible for much of the warming of the global average temperature that is causing climate change. Sometimes soils give off, or emit, these greenhouse gases into the earth’s atmosphere, adding to climate change. Currently scientists figuring out what causes differences in how much of each type of greenhouse gas soils emit.
	Mowing for monarchs, Part I	Kellogg Biological Station LTER	Liz Schultheis	2	During 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.
	Mowing for monarchs, Part II	Kellogg Biological Station LTER	Liz Schultheis	2	When the scientists mowed down milkweed plants for their experiment, they changed more than the age of the milkweed plants. They also removed other plant species in the background community. Perhaps the patterns they were seeing were driven not by milkweed age, but by eliminating predators from the patches they mowed.
	Invasion Meltdown: will climate change make invasions even worse?	Kellogg Biological Station LTER	Liz Schultheis	3	Humans are changing the earth in many ways, including adding greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere, which contributes to climate change, and introducing species around the globe, which can lead to invasive species. Scientists wanted to know, could climate change actually help invasive species? Because invasive species have already survived transport from one habitat to another, they may be species that are better able to handle change, such as temperature changes.
	Springing forward	Kellogg Biological Station LTER	Liz Schultheis	1 & 3	What does climate change mean for flowering plants that rely on temperature cues to determine when it is time to flower? Scientists who study phenology, or the timing if life-history events in plants and animals, predict that with warming temperatures, plants will produce their flowers earlier and earlier each year.
	Cheaters in nature – when is a mutualism not a mutualism?	Kellogg Biological Station LTER	Liz Schultheis	4	Mutualisms 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?
	Fair traders or freeloaders?	Kellogg Biological Station LTER	Liz Schultheis	3	One example of a mutualism is the relationship between a type of bacteria, rhizobia, and plants like peas, beans, soybeans, and clover. Rhizobia live in bumps on the plant roots, where they trade their nitrogen for sugar from the plants. Rhizobia turn nitrogen from the air into a form that plants can use. Under some conditions, this mutualism could break down, for example, if one of the traded resources is very abundant in the environment.
	Streams as sensors: Arctic watersheds as indicators of change	Arctic LTER	Amanda Morrison	3	As 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.
	Limit by limit: Nutrients control algal growth in Arctic streams	Arctic LTER	Amanda Morrison	3	Aquatic algae, a type of microbe that live in the water, need to take in nutrients from their surroundings for growth. Two important nutrients for algal growth are nitrogen (N) and phosphorous (P). Climate change may be altering which nutrients are limiting to algae, changing food webs in the ecosystem.
	Which tundra plants will win the climate change race?	Arctic LTER	Amanda Morrison	3	While you might think of the arctic tundra as a blanket of snow and polar bears, this vast landscape supports a diversity of unique plant and animal species. Climate change is altering the arctic environment. With warmer seasons and fewer days with snow covering the ground, soils are thawing more deeply and becoming more nutrient-rich. With more nutrients available, will some plant species be able to outcompete other species by growing taller and making more leaves than other plant species?
	Spiders under the influence	Baltimore Ecosystem Study LTER	Bess Caplan & Alan Berkowitz	2	People 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.
	All washed up? The effect of floods on cutthroat trout	Andrews Forest LTER	Kari O’Connell	2	Floods are very common disturbances in streams. If floods happen right after fish breed and eggs hatch, young fish that cannot swim strongly may not survive. Although floods can be dangerous for fish, they are also very important for creating new habitat. Cutthroat trout are a species of fish living in Mack Creek, which experiences occasional floods. Trout breed in the early spring, right at the peak of flooding, so scientists are collecting long-term data on this species. Will floods hurt trout populations or help?
	Trees and bushes, home sweet home for warblers	Andrews Forest LTER	Kari O’Connell	4	The vast coniferous forests of the Pacific Northwest provide surprisingly rich and diverse habitat types for birds. Andrews Forest is a long-term ecological research site where there have been manipulations of timber harvest and forest re-growth. This land use history has large impacts on the bird habitats found in an area. Each year since 2009, scientists have gone out and measured bird populations and habitat types. Two species of warbler, with very different habitat preferences, can give insight into how birds are responding to these disturbances.
	What grows when the forest goes?	Andrews Forest LTER	Kari O’Connell	2	The H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon is a long-term research site where scientists study how ecosystems respond to disturbances like wildfire. After a major fire in 2023, biology teacher Matt and scientist Joe investigated how native and invasive plants recover from fires of varying severity. Using data from a 2020 fire, they analyzed plant communities to see if invasive species recovered more quickly than native ones.
	Benthic buddies	Beaufort Lagoon Ecosystems LTER	Katie Gavenus	2	Arctic lagoons support a surprisingly wide range of marine organisms! Marine worms, snails, and clams live in the muddy sediment of these lagoons. Having a rich variety of benthic animals in these habitats supports fish, which migrate along the shoreline and eat these animals once the ice has left. Ken, Danny, and Kaylie are interested in learning more about how the extreme seasons of the High Arctic affect the marine life that lives there.
	The birds of Hubbard Brook, Part I	Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest	Sarah Garlick & Amey Bailey	2	Avian ecologists at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest have been monitoring bird populations for over 50 years. The data collected during this time is one of the longest bird studies ever conducted! What can we learn from this long-term data set? Are bird populations remaining stable over time?
	The birds of Hubbard Brook, Part II	Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest	Sarah Garlick & Amey Bailey	3	Hubbard Brook was heavily logged and disturbed in the early 1900s. When logging ended in 1915, trees began to grow back. The forest then went through secondary succession, which refers to the naturally occurring changes in forest structure that happen as a forest ages after it has been cut or otherwise disturbed. Can these changes in habitat availability, due to succession, explain why the number of birds are declining at Hubbard Brook? Are all bird species responding succession in the same way?
	When whale I sea you again?	Palmer Station Antarctica LTER	Janice McDonnell	4	People have hunted whales for over 5,000 years for their meat, oil, and blubber. Today, as populations are struggling to recover from whaling, humpback whales are faced with additional challenges due to climate change. Their main food source is krill, which are small crustaceans that live under sea ice. As sea ice disappears, the number of krill is getting lower and lower. Humpback whale population recovery may be limited because their main food source is threatened by ongoing ocean warming.
	Lizards, iguanas, and snakes! Oh my!	Central Arizona–Phoenix LTER	Lisa Herrmann	3	People have dramatically changed the natural riparian habitat found along rivers and streams. In many urban areas today, these riparian habitats are being rehabilitated with the hope of bringing back native species, such as reptiles. Reptiles, including snakes and lizards, are extremely important to monitor as they play important roles in ecosystems. Are rehabilitation efforts in Phoenix successful at restoring reptile diversity and abundance?
	The mystery of Plum Island Marsh	Plum Island Ecosystems LTER & The TIDE Project	David Moon	3	Salt marshes are among the most productive coastal ecosystems, and support a diversity of plants and animals. Algae and marsh plants feed many invertebrates, like snails and crabs, which are then eaten by larger fish and birds. In Plum Island, scientists have been fertilizing and studying salt marsh creeks to see how added nutrients affect the system. They noticed that fish populations seemed to be crashing in the fertilized creeks, while the mudflats were covered in mudsnails. Could there be a link?
	Urbanization and estuary eutrophication	Plum Island Ecosystems LTER	David Moon	4	Estuaries are very productive habitats found where freshwater rivers meet the ocean. They are important natural filters for water and protect the coast during storms. A high diversity of plants, fish, shellfish and birds call estuaries home. Estuaries are threatened by eutrophication, or the process by which an ecosystem becomes more productive when excess nutrients are added to the system. Parts of the Plum Island Estuary in MA may be more at risk from eutrophication due to their proximity to urban areas.
	Does sea level rise harm saltmarsh sparrows?	Plum Island Ecosystems LTER	David Moon	3	For the last 100 years, sea levels around the globe have increased dramatically. Salt marshes grow right at sea level and are therefore very sensitive to sea level rise. Saltmarsh sparrows rely completely on salt marshes for feeding and nesting, and therefore their numbers are expected to decline as sea levels rise and they lose nesting sites. Will this threatened bird species decline over time as sea levels rise?
	Keeping up with the sea level	Plum Island Ecosystems LTER	David Moon	3	Salt marshes are very important habitats for many species and protect the coast from erosion. Unfortunately, rising sea levels due to climate change are threatening these important ecosystems. As sea levels rise, the elevation of the marsh soil must rise as well so the plants have ground high enough to keep them above sea level. Basically, it is like a race between the marsh floor and sea level to see who can stay on top!
	Is your salt marsh in the zone?	Plum Island Ecosystems LTER	David Moon	3	Beginning in the 1980s, scientist James began measuring the growth of marsh grasses. He discovered that their growth was higher in some years and lower in others and that there was a long-term trend of growth going up over time. Marsh grasses grow around mean sea level, or the average elevation between high and low tides. Are the grasses responding to mean sea level changing year-to-year, and increasing as our oceans warm and water levels rise due to climate change?
	Marsh makeover	Plum Island Ecosystems LTER	David Moon	3	The muddy soils in salt marshes store a lot of carbon, compared to terrestrial dry soils. This is because they are low in oxygen needed for decomposition. For this reason they play a key role in the carbon cycle and climate change. If humans disturb marshes, reducing plant diversity and biomass, are they also disturbing the marsh’s ability to sequester carbon? If a marsh is restored, can the carbon holding capacity also be brought back to previous levels?
	Invasive reeds in the salt marsh	Plum Island Ecosystems LTER	David Moon	2	Phragmites australis is an invasive reed that is taking over saltwater marshes of New England, outcompeting other plants that serve as food and homes for marsh animals. Once Phragmites has invaded, it is sometimes the only plant species left, called a monoculture. Phragmites does best where humans have disturbed a marsh, and scientists were curious why that might be. They thought that perhaps it was caused by changing salinity, or amount of salt in the water, after a marsh is disturbed.
	Can a salt marsh recover after restoration?	Plum Island Ecosystems LTER	David Moon	2	Before restoration began, it was clear the Saratoga Creek salt marsh was in trouble. Invasive Phragmites plants covered large areas of the marsh, crowding out native plants and animals. Human activity was thought to be the culprit – storm drains were dumping freshwater into the marsh, lowering salinity. In 1999 a restoration took place to divert freshwater away from the marsh in an attempt to reduce Phragmites numbers. Did it work?
	Make way for mummichogs	Plum Island Ecosystems LTER	David Moon	4	Mummichogs are small fish that live in tidal marshes all along the US Atlantic coast. Because they are so widespread and can be found in most streams, they are a valuable tool for scientists looking to compare the health of different marshes. The absence of mummichogs in a salt marsh is a sign that it is highly damaged. Students collected data on mummichog numbers before and after a marsh restoration. Did the restoration successfully bring back mummichogs to the marsh?
	Do you feel the urban heat?	Florida Coastal Everglades LTER	Nick Oehm	3	Record-breaking temperatures climb higher every year, and Florida is no exception. These extreme temperatures affect organisms of all types, including humans. Irvin wanted to see how much the heat varies across Miami and compare it to the sensor at the airport that is used to issue heat warnings. He focused on sites where people gather outside – bus stops. He also chose sites that varied in shade coverage to see how temperatures fluctuate in different environments.
	The case of the collapsing soil	Florida Coastal Everglades LTER	Nick Oehm	4	The Everglades are a unique and vital ecosystem threatened by rising sea levels due to climate change. Recently scientists have observed in some areas of the wetland the soils are collapsing. What is causing this strange phenomena? Sea level rise might be stressing microbes, causing carbon to be lost to the atmosphere through increased respiration.
	The carbon stored in mangrove soils	Florida Coastal Everglades LTER	Nick Oehm	2	Mangroves are globally important for many reasons. They form dense forested wetlands that protect the coast from erosion and provide critical habitat for many animals. Mangrove forests also help in the fight against climate change by storing carbon in their soils. The balance between how much carbon is added to the soils and how much is released might be dependent on a variety of factors, including tree size and amount of disturbance to the site.
	Are forests helping in the fight against climate change?	Harvard Forest LTER	Clarisse Hart & Katharine Hinkle	3	In the 1990s, scientists began to wonder what role forests were having in the exchange of carbon in and out of the atmosphere. Were forests overall storing carbon (carbon sink), or releasing it (carbon source)? To test this, they built large metal towers that stand taller than the forest trees around them and use sensors to measure the speed, direction, and CO2 concentration of each puff of air that passes by. These long term measurements can tell us whether forests help in the fight against climate change.
	A window into a tree’s world	Harvard Forest LTER	Clarisse Hart & Katharine Hinkle	2	Scientists are very interested in learning how trees respond to rapidly warming temperatures. Luckily, trees offer us a window into their lives through their growth rings. Growth rings are found within the trunk, beneath the bark. These rings provide a long historical record, which can be used to study how trees respond to climate change.
	Love that dirty water	Harvard Forest LTER	Clarisse Hart & Katharine Hinkle	4	As green spaces are lost to make room for homes and businesses, there are fewer forests and wetlands to filter our drinking water. A team of scientists used the New England Landscapes Future Explorer to study this challenge for the Merrimack River, an important river for the people of New England.
	Fertilizer and fire change microbes in prairie soil	Konza Prairie LTER	Jill Haukos	4	Prairies grow where three environmental conditions come together – a variable climate, frequent fires, and large herbivores roaming the landscape. However, prairies are experiencing many changes. For example, people now work to prevent fires, which allows forest species take over. In addition, land previously covered in prairie is now being used for agriculture. How do these changes affect the plants, animals, and microbial communities that inhabit prairies?
	Does more rain make healthy bison babies?	Konza Prairie LTER	Jill Haukos	2	The North American Bison is an important species for the prairie ecosystem. Bison affect the health of the prairie in many ways, and are also affected by the prairie as well. Each year when calves are born, scientists go out and determine their health by weighing them. This long-term dataset can be used to figure out whether environmental conditions from the previous year affect the health of the calves born in the current year.
	Trees and the city	Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Area LTER	Meredith Keller	3	Trees provide important benefits, such as beauty and shade. The number and types of tree species that are planted in a neighborhood can increase the benefits received from trees in urban areas. Based on her own observations, Adrienne started conversations with her colleagues about differences in urban landscapes. They conducted a study to see how social demographics of neighborhoods may be related to tree species richness and tree cover.
	Do urchins flip out in hot water?	Santa Barbara Coastal LTER	Scott Simon	1 & 3	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 research team decided to test whether marine heat waves could be stressing urchins by looking at a simple behavior that they could easily measure – how long it takes urchins to flip back over.
	Can kelp help the plovers?	Santa Barbara Coastal LTER	Scott Simon	2	On California beaches, dried kelp, beach hoppers (tiny crustaceans), and birds like snowy plovers form an important food web. High school students Mari and Azra, inspired by UCSB scientist Jenny Dugan’s research, set up experiments to test which types of kelp local beach hoppers preferred to eat. Their classroom project showed that beach hoppers avoided Laminaria but readily fed on other kelp species, helping reveal key pieces of the beach ecosystem that support threatened plovers.
	Catching fish with sound	Northeast U.S. Shelf LTER	Mei Sato	4	Climate change is warming our oceans, and scientists like Mei are studying how this affects marine food webs, especially small schooling fish that play a crucial role between predators and prey. As part of a long-term ecological research project in the Northeast U.S., Mei collects data using advanced sound technology (echosounders) to measure fish abundance, along with water temperature and depth. Her work helps build a clearer picture of how ocean ecosystems are changing over time, providing valuable information for fishers and resource managers preparing for the future.

Data Nuggets are free classroom activities, co-designed by scientists and teachers. When using Data Nuggets students are provided with the details of authentic science research projects, and then get to work through an activity that gives them practice looking for patterns and developing explanations about natural phenomena using the scientific data from the study. The goal of the Data Nuggets project is to engage students in the practices of science through an innovative approach that combines scientific content from authentic research with key concepts in quantitative reasoning.

Materials from webinars:

• Slides from October 2021 Elementary Webinar with Dr. Liz Schultheis
• Slides from October 2021 Middle and High School Webinar with Dr. Melissa Kjelvik
• Slides from July 2022 Elementary Webinar with Dr. Liz Schultheis
• Slides from July 2022 Middle and High School Webinar with Dr. Melissa Kjelvik
• Springing Forward Data Nugget
• Won’t You Be My Urchin? Data Nugget
• Mowing for Monarchs Data Nugget
• Request access to teacher guides
• C-E-R Scaffolding Tool
• C-E-R Example Student Responses
• Data Nuggets Guide to Graphing
• Data Nuggets Grading Rubric

Webinar recordings:

If you have any questions, please reach out to Liz (eschultheis@gmail.com) or Melissa (kjelvikm@gmail.com) and we’d be happy to help! Follow Data Nuggets on social media for updates (Twitter @Data_Nuggets, Instagram @Data_Nuggets).

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 Title	Scientist Profiles	Summary	Content Level
	Do urchins flip out in hot water?	Erin de Leon Sanchez	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 research team decided to test whether marine heat waves could be stressing urchins by looking at a simple behavior that they could easily measure - how long it takes urchins to flip back over.	1 & 3
	Spiders under the influence	Aaron Curry	People 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
	Stop that oxidation! What fruit flies teach us about human health	Biz Turnell	Each 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
	Blinking out?	Julia Perrone	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. 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
	Raising Nemo: Parental care in the clown anemonefish	Tina Barbasch	Offspring 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
	How milkweed plants defend against monarchs	Anurag Agrawal	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. 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
	Mowing for Monarchs Part 1 & Mowing for Monarchs Part 2	Gabe Knowles	During 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
	Why are butterfly wings colorful?	Adriana Darielle Meija Briscoe	Big 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
	Feral chickens fly the coop	Eben Gering	Sometimes 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
	Getting to the roots of serpentine soil	Allie Igwe	When 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
	Streams as sensors: Arctic watersheds as indicators of change	Arial Shogren	As 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
	Does a partner in crime make it easier to invade?	Tomomi Suwa	Mutualisms 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 song	Robin Tinghitella	About 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
	Buried seeds, buried treasure	Marjorie Weber	Over 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
	Does the heat turn caterpillars into cannibals?	Kale Rougeau	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 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
	What big teeth you have! Sexual selection in rhesus macaques	Raisa Hernández-Pacheco	In 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
	Reconstructing the behaviour of ancient animals	Holly E. Anderson	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. Holly compared a primate skull fossil to its living relatives to see if she can determine if the ancient primate was nocturnal, diurnal, or cathemeral.	4
	Farms in the fight against climate change	S. Carolina Córdova	Caro Córdova is a soil scientist and trained agroecologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her research emphasizes carbon sequestration, nitrogen fixation, and long-term resilience in diverse cropping systems, contributing to advancing regenerative agriculture globally.	4

Debajo, encontrarás una tabla de todas las actividades de Data Nuggets. Puedes hacer clic en el título para abrir la guía del maestro, actividades para los alumnos, la rúbrica de calificaciones y otros recursos asociados. La tabla se puede ordenar usando las flechas ubicadas al lado del encabezado de cada columna. También se puede buscar por área de contenido usando la barra de búsqueda, localizada en la esquina superior derecha de la tabla.

	Título	Traducción por	Edición por	Resumen
	¿Quieres ser mi erizo de mar?	Ana Pamela Torres-Ocampo	Priscilla Lumbreras	Los corales son los animales que construyen los arrecifes. Los corales compiten por espacio con muchos tipos de algas para poder vivir en el arrecife. Al mismo tiempo, los corales son muy selectivos y les gusta vivir en ciertos lugares solamente. Si hay demasiadas algas, los corales no tendrán un lugar donde adherirse a los arrecifes y crecer. Los erizos de mar son herbívoros importantes y una de las especies a cuáles les gusta comer algas.
	Blanqueamiento de corales y cambio climático	Ana Pamela Torres-Ocampo	Elsa Herraez Hernandez	Los corales son de color blanco pero se ven marrones y negros porque cierto tipo de algas viven dentro de ellos. Las algas, al igual que las plantas, usan la energía del sol para hacer su propio alimento. Cuando el agua se calienta demasiado las algas ya no pueden vivir dentro de los corales, por lo que salen de ellos. Carly es una científica que quiere estudiar el blanqueamiento de corales para poder ayudar a proteger los corales y los arrecifes de coral.
	Viendo hacia el futuro	Priscilla Lumbreras	Tatzyana Wachter	Debido a que las plantas son tan importantes, necesitamos investigar cómo les afectará el cambio climático. ¿Cómo afectarán las temperaturas más altas a las plantas de la tierra? Es posible que primaveras generadas por el cambio climático que ocurran más temprano y que estén más cálidas, puedan provocar que las flores florezcan más y más temprano.
	¿Puede una marisma salada recuperarse después de la restauración?	Priscilla Lumbreras	Ana Pamela Torres-Ocampo & Elsa Herraez Hernandez	En la década de 1990, estaba claro que la marisma salada de Saratoga Creek estaba en problemas. La planta invasiva, Phragmites australis, cubría grandes extensiones del pantano, abarrotaron las plantas nativas y redujeron el número de animales. En 1998, científicos, incluyendo los miembros de la Comisión de Conservación de Rockport y los alumnos del club de ciencias de la Escuela Intermedia Rockport, comenzaron a investigar el problema.
	Produciendo energía: Comparando la biomasa de cultivos de biocombustibles	Priscilla Lumbreras	Ana Pamela Torres-Ocampo & Elsa Herraez Hernandez	Los biocombustibles están hechos de los tejidos de las plantas que están vivas y que se cultivan hoy en día. Cuando se cosechan las plantas, sus tejidos, llamados biomasa, se pueden convertir en combustible. Los biocombustibles son renovables, lo que significa que podemos producirlos tan rápido como los usamos. En los sitios del Centro de Investigación de Bioenergía de los Grandes Lagos en Wisconsin y Michigan, científicos e ingenieros están tratando de investigar qué plantas producen los mejores biocombustibles.
	Dónde encontrar los herbívoros hambrientos	Carina Baskett	Beatriz Pablo Carmona	Al viajar a zonas cálidas y tropicales el riesgo de verte expuesto a enfermedades aumenta. Este mismo patrón de exposición a ciertos riesgos se repite en otros seres vivos tales como en los cultivos, en zonas cálidas aparecen con mayor frecuencia problemas asociados a plagas, lo que no se aprecia de tal manera en los cultivos de zonas templadas o frías. ¿Aparece este patrón para las plantas silvestres?
	¿Son las plantas del Trópico más toxicas que el resto?	Carina Baskett	Beatriz Pablo Carmona	Antes de que los científicos aprendieran a elaborar medicinas en el laboratorio, la gente encontraba sus medicinas en las plantas. Hoy en día, la gente sigue extrayendo algunos productos medicinales de las plantas. Pero, ¿Por qué las plantas producen estos químicos que son tan útiles para las personas? Muchas de estas sustancias químicas sirven para reducir la herbivoría. Carina pensó que esas defensas químicas dependan en la latitud, o en la distancia del Ecuador. ¿Son las plantas del Trópico más toxicas que el resto?
	Escarabajo, ¡Hace frío ahí fuera!	Fran Guerola	Andre Szejner Sigal	Muchas especies dependen de la nieve para protegerse del frío del invierno. La nieve actúa como una manta que cubre el suelo, evitando a que éste llegue a estar demasiado frío. Si las temperaturas invernales aumentan, la nieve se derrite y el suelo queda al descubierto durante períodos de tiempo más largos. Esto produce la sorprendente situación en que ¡temperaturas más altas producen suelos más fríos! ¿Cómo responderán las especies que dependen de la nieve, como las mariquitas, a temperaturas más altas producidas por el cambio climático?
	¿Por qué son coloridas las alas de las mariposas?	Adriana Briscoe	Arturo Arellano Covarrubias	Gracias a sus grandes alas, las mariposas vuelan con facilidad a todas partes. Pero te preguntarás, ¿por qué tienen las alas de colores tan vivos? Una de las razones por las que las mariposas pueden tener alas de colores brillantes es que estos colores advierten a los pájaros y otros depredadores de que no serían una comida apetitosa. Otra posible razón para que las mariposas tengan colores brillantes y dibujos espectaculares es atraer a sus parejas. Sin embargo, hay pocos estudios que demuestren si el color por sí solo o el patrón de color juntos disuaden a los depredadores o atraen a las parejas.

Below you will find all of our teacher professional development materials. These materials include handouts from the workshop, binder materials, and all session slides. For the “26 pack” of Data Nuggets, click here.

Agendas: Michigan PD July 10-11th, Colorado PD July 20-21st

Slides from all sessions

• Ice breaker activity (Images to print, protocol, answer key)

• Quantitative practices

• What are Data Nuggets?

• Process of science

• Hypotheses

• Graphing and data exploration

• Constructing explanations (CER)

• Asking productive science questions

• Data Nugget research study information

Binder materials and handouts

• What are Data Nuggets?

  • Data Nugget publication – Schultheis & Kjelvik 2015

  • Grading Rubric

  • Data Nugget Case Studies

• Quantitative practices in the biology classroom

  • Data Nugget Guide to Graphing

  • Data Nugget Tool for Constructing Explanations using Claim-Evidence-Reasoning

  • The Graph Choice Chart (GCC) – a tool to help students turn data into evidence

  • Quantitative Reasoning (QR) Case Studies

  • QR Definitions

• The process of science
  

  • Linear “scientific method” diagram
    

  • What is science?

  • Science as a process (flowchart)

    • Lesson using Understanding Science’s flowchart

  • Understanding Science’s teacher resources

• Hypotheses

  • Strode (2015) Hypothesis Generation in Biology: A Science Teaching Challenge & Potential Solution. The American Biology Teacher, 77(7): 500-506.

  • Writing a scientific hypothesis (teacher guide) (student guide) – Paul Strode
    

  • Hypotheses and theories explained – Understanding Science, UC Berkley

  • Hypothesis misconceptions – Understanding Science, UC Berkley

• Exploring data with statistics and graphing

  • Data Nugget Guide to Graphing

  • The Graph Choice Chart (GCC) – a tool to help students turn data into evidence

  • HHMI Teacher Guide: Math and Statistics – Topics include measures of average (mean, median, mode), variability (range, standard deviation), uncertainty (standard error, 95% confidence interval), Chi-square analysis, student t-test, Hardy-Weinberg equation, frequency calculations, and more.
    

  • Data and Error Analysis in Science – Beginners Guide (mean, median, mode, range, standard deviation, variance, standard error, and confidence intervals) – Strode and Brokaw

  • Teaching independent vs. dependent variables

  • Flowchart for statistics used in biology – Paul Strode

  • ANOVA – Student Guide – Paul Strode

  • Regression Analysis – Student Guide – Paul Strode

  • Chi-square Test – Student Guide – Paul Strode

  • t-test – Student Guide – Paul Strode

• Supporting claims using scientific data as evidence

  • BSCS Identify and Interpret Strategy – Student version, teacher version

  • Constructing explanations (CER) scaffolding tool

  • BSCS constructing explanations tool

  • Example Student Responses for “Won’t you be my urchin?” Data Nugget

• Asking good questions

  • Tables from “Make Just One Change”

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The following Data Nuggets are written by LTER scientists and created using LTER Data.

To learn more about the ongoing collaboration between Data Nuggets and the LTER, check out our blog posts, “Data Nuggets: small activities with big impacts for students” and “LTER Data Nuggets: Breathing new life into long-term data“. If you have any questions about the research in an LTER Data Nugget, or want help accessing original datasets, please contact us or the Education and Outreach Coordinator (EOC) for that site. 

	Title	LTER Site	EOC & Website	Content Level	Summary
	Blinking out?	Kellogg Biological Station LTER	Liz Schultheis	2	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. 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!
	Little butterflies on the prairie	Kellogg Biological Station LTER	Liz Schultheis	2	Many farmers are concerned with growing our food while still protecting habitat wildlife. They want to know - how can we grow food for ourselves while still providing good habitat for other species? Prairie strips are a new idea that might help both farmers and the environment. These strips are small areas of prairie that can be added to farm fields. They look like rows of flowers and grasses within a field. They create habitat for many species, like butterflies, birds, ants, and even microscopic fungi and bacteria!
	Farms in the fight against climate change	Kellogg Biological Station LTER	Liz Schultheis	2	Different farming practices affect the amount of carbon stored in soil, an important factor for soil health and climate change. Soil scientist Caro analyzed long-term data from a 30-year experiment at Kellogg Biological Station, comparing four land management types—including conventional farming, no-till, and cover crops—to see which ones best increase soil carbon. Her work helps identify practices that benefit both farmers and the planet.
	Microbes facing tough times	Kellogg Biological Station LTER	Liz Schultheis	3	As the climate changes, Michigan is expected to experience more drought. Scientists are looking into how crop mutualistic interactions with microbes may help them withstand drought periods. First they need to know how microbes are impacted by different carbon and drought conditions.
	Bringing back the Trumpeter Swan	Kellogg Biological Station LTER & Kellogg Bird Sanctuary	Liz Schultheis	3	Trumpeter swans are the biggest native waterfowl species in North America. At one time they were found across North America, but by 1935 there were only 69 known individuals in the continental U.S.! In the 1980s, many biologists came together to create a Trumpeter Swan reintroduction plan. Since then the North American Trumpeter Swan survey has been conducted to measure swan populations and determine whether this species is recovering.
	Growing energy: comparing biofuel crop biomass	Kellogg Biological Station LTER & University Wisconsin-Madison GLBRC	Liz Schultheis	3	Corn is one of the best crops for producing biomass for fossil fuels, however it is an annual and needs very fertile soil. To grow corn, farmers add a lot of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to their fields. Other crops, like switchgrass, prairie, poplar trees, and Miscanthus grass are perennials and require fewer fertilizers and pesticides to grow. If perennials can produce high levels of biomass with low inputs, perhaps they could produce more biomass than corn under certain low nutrient conditions.
	A difficult drought	Kellogg Biological Station LTER & University Wisconsin-Madison GLBRC	Liz Schultheis	2	Biofuels are made from plants that are growing today, and are being considered as an alternative to fossil fuels. To become biofuels, plants need to go through a series of chemical and physical processes that transform the sugars into ethanol. Scientists are interested in seeing how yeast’s ability to transform sugar into fuel is affected by environmental conditions in fields, such as temperature and rainfall. They used data from a year with drought and a year with normal rainfall to determine if plants that grew under drought conditions were lower quality for ethanol production.
	Fertilizing biofuels may cause release of greenhouse gasses	Kellogg Biological Station LTER & University Wisconsin-Madison GLBRC	Liz Schultheis	3	One way to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we release into the atmosphere could be to grow our fuel instead of drilling for it. Unlike fossil fuels that can only release CO2, biofuels remove CO2 from the atmosphere as they grow and photosynthesize, potentially balancing the CO2 released when they are burned for fuel. However, the plants we grow for biofuels don’t necessarily absorb all greenhouse gas that is released during the process of growing them on farms and converting them into fuels.
	The ground has gas!	Kellogg Biological Station LTER & University Wisconsin-Madison GLBRC	Liz Schultheis	3	Nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide are responsible for much of the warming of the global average temperature that is causing climate change. Sometimes soils give off, or emit, these greenhouse gases into the earth’s atmosphere, adding to climate change. Currently scientists figuring out what causes differences in how much of each type of greenhouse gas soils emit.
	Mowing for monarchs, Part I	Kellogg Biological Station LTER	Liz Schultheis	2	During 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.
	Mowing for monarchs, Part II	Kellogg Biological Station LTER	Liz Schultheis	2	When the scientists mowed down milkweed plants for their experiment, they changed more than the age of the milkweed plants. They also removed other plant species in the background community. Perhaps the patterns they were seeing were driven not by milkweed age, but by eliminating predators from the patches they mowed.
	Invasion Meltdown: will climate change make invasions even worse?	Kellogg Biological Station LTER	Liz Schultheis	3	Humans are changing the earth in many ways, including adding greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere, which contributes to climate change, and introducing species around the globe, which can lead to invasive species. Scientists wanted to know, could climate change actually help invasive species? Because invasive species have already survived transport from one habitat to another, they may be species that are better able to handle change, such as temperature changes.
	Springing forward	Kellogg Biological Station LTER	Liz Schultheis	1 & 3	What does climate change mean for flowering plants that rely on temperature cues to determine when it is time to flower? Scientists who study phenology, or the timing if life-history events in plants and animals, predict that with warming temperatures, plants will produce their flowers earlier and earlier each year.
	Cheaters in nature – when is a mutualism not a mutualism?	Kellogg Biological Station LTER	Liz Schultheis	4	Mutualisms 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?
	Fair traders or freeloaders?	Kellogg Biological Station LTER	Liz Schultheis	3	One example of a mutualism is the relationship between a type of bacteria, rhizobia, and plants like peas, beans, soybeans, and clover. Rhizobia live in bumps on the plant roots, where they trade their nitrogen for sugar from the plants. Rhizobia turn nitrogen from the air into a form that plants can use. Under some conditions, this mutualism could break down, for example, if one of the traded resources is very abundant in the environment.
	Streams as sensors: Arctic watersheds as indicators of change	Arctic LTER	Amanda Morrison	3	As 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.
	Limit by limit: Nutrients control algal growth in Arctic streams	Arctic LTER	Amanda Morrison	3	Aquatic algae, a type of microbe that live in the water, need to take in nutrients from their surroundings for growth. Two important nutrients for algal growth are nitrogen (N) and phosphorous (P). Climate change may be altering which nutrients are limiting to algae, changing food webs in the ecosystem.
	Which tundra plants will win the climate change race?	Arctic LTER	Amanda Morrison	3	While you might think of the arctic tundra as a blanket of snow and polar bears, this vast landscape supports a diversity of unique plant and animal species. Climate change is altering the arctic environment. With warmer seasons and fewer days with snow covering the ground, soils are thawing more deeply and becoming more nutrient-rich. With more nutrients available, will some plant species be able to outcompete other species by growing taller and making more leaves than other plant species?
	Spiders under the influence	Baltimore Ecosystem Study LTER	Bess Caplan & Alan Berkowitz	2	People 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.
	All washed up? The effect of floods on cutthroat trout	Andrews Forest LTER	Kari O'Connell	2	Floods are very common disturbances in streams. If floods happen right after fish breed and eggs hatch, young fish that cannot swim strongly may not survive. Although floods can be dangerous for fish, they are also very important for creating new habitat. Cutthroat trout are a species of fish living in Mack Creek, which experiences occasional floods. Trout breed in the early spring, right at the peak of flooding, so scientists are collecting long-term data on this species. Will floods hurt trout populations or help?
	Trees and bushes, home sweet home for warblers	Andrews Forest LTER	Kari O'Connell	4	The vast coniferous forests of the Pacific Northwest provide surprisingly rich and diverse habitat types for birds. Andrews Forest is a long-term ecological research site where there have been manipulations of timber harvest and forest re-growth. This land use history has large impacts on the bird habitats found in an area. Each year since 2009, scientists have gone out and measured bird populations and habitat types. Two species of warbler, with very different habitat preferences, can give insight into how birds are responding to these disturbances.
	What grows when the forest goes?	Andrews Forest LTER	Kari O'Connell	2	The H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon is a long-term research site where scientists study how ecosystems respond to disturbances like wildfire. After a major fire in 2023, biology teacher Matt and scientist Joe investigated how native and invasive plants recover from fires of varying severity. Using data from a 2020 fire, they analyzed plant communities to see if invasive species recovered more quickly than native ones.
	Benthic buddies	Beaufort Lagoon Ecosystems LTER	Katie Gavenus	2	Arctic lagoons support a surprisingly wide range of marine organisms! Marine worms, snails, and clams live in the muddy sediment of these lagoons. Having a rich variety of benthic animals in these habitats supports fish, which migrate along the shoreline and eat these animals once the ice has left. Ken, Danny, and Kaylie are interested in learning more about how the extreme seasons of the High Arctic affect the marine life that lives there.
	The birds of Hubbard Brook, Part I	Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest	Sarah Garlick & Amey Bailey	2	Avian ecologists at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest have been monitoring bird populations for over 50 years. The data collected during this time is one of the longest bird studies ever conducted! What can we learn from this long-term data set? Are bird populations remaining stable over time?
	The birds of Hubbard Brook, Part II	Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest	Sarah Garlick & Amey Bailey	3	Hubbard Brook was heavily logged and disturbed in the early 1900s. When logging ended in 1915, trees began to grow back. The forest then went through secondary succession, which refers to the naturally occurring changes in forest structure that happen as a forest ages after it has been cut or otherwise disturbed. Can these changes in habitat availability, due to succession, explain why the number of birds are declining at Hubbard Brook? Are all bird species responding succession in the same way?
	When whale I sea you again?	Palmer Station Antarctica LTER	Janice McDonnell	4	People have hunted whales for over 5,000 years for their meat, oil, and blubber. Today, as populations are struggling to recover from whaling, humpback whales are faced with additional challenges due to climate change. Their main food source is krill, which are small crustaceans that live under sea ice. As sea ice disappears, the number of krill is getting lower and lower. Humpback whale population recovery may be limited because their main food source is threatened by ongoing ocean warming.
	Lizards, iguanas, and snakes! Oh my!	Central Arizona–Phoenix LTER	Lisa Herrmann	3	People have dramatically changed the natural riparian habitat found along rivers and streams. In many urban areas today, these riparian habitats are being rehabilitated with the hope of bringing back native species, such as reptiles. Reptiles, including snakes and lizards, are extremely important to monitor as they play important roles in ecosystems. Are rehabilitation efforts in Phoenix successful at restoring reptile diversity and abundance?
	The mystery of Plum Island Marsh	Plum Island Ecosystems LTER & The TIDE Project	David Moon	3	Salt marshes are among the most productive coastal ecosystems, and support a diversity of plants and animals. Algae and marsh plants feed many invertebrates, like snails and crabs, which are then eaten by larger fish and birds. In Plum Island, scientists have been fertilizing and studying salt marsh creeks to see how added nutrients affect the system. They noticed that fish populations seemed to be crashing in the fertilized creeks, while the mudflats were covered in mudsnails. Could there be a link?
	Urbanization and estuary eutrophication	Plum Island Ecosystems LTER	David Moon	4	Estuaries are very productive habitats found where freshwater rivers meet the ocean. They are important natural filters for water and protect the coast during storms. A high diversity of plants, fish, shellfish and birds call estuaries home. Estuaries are threatened by eutrophication, or the process by which an ecosystem becomes more productive when excess nutrients are added to the system. Parts of the Plum Island Estuary in MA may be more at risk from eutrophication due to their proximity to urban areas.
	Does sea level rise harm saltmarsh sparrows?	Plum Island Ecosystems LTER	David Moon	3	For the last 100 years, sea levels around the globe have increased dramatically. Salt marshes grow right at sea level and are therefore very sensitive to sea level rise. Saltmarsh sparrows rely completely on salt marshes for feeding and nesting, and therefore their numbers are expected to decline as sea levels rise and they lose nesting sites. Will this threatened bird species decline over time as sea levels rise?
	Keeping up with the sea level	Plum Island Ecosystems LTER	David Moon	3	Salt marshes are very important habitats for many species and protect the coast from erosion. Unfortunately, rising sea levels due to climate change are threatening these important ecosystems. As sea levels rise, the elevation of the marsh soil must rise as well so the plants have ground high enough to keep them above sea level. Basically, it is like a race between the marsh floor and sea level to see who can stay on top!
	Is your salt marsh in the zone?	Plum Island Ecosystems LTER	David Moon	3	Beginning in the 1980s, scientist James began measuring the growth of marsh grasses. He discovered that their growth was higher in some years and lower in others and that there was a long-term trend of growth going up over time. Marsh grasses grow around mean sea level, or the average elevation between high and low tides. Are the grasses responding to mean sea level changing year-to-year, and increasing as our oceans warm and water levels rise due to climate change?
	Marsh makeover	Plum Island Ecosystems LTER	David Moon	3	The muddy soils in salt marshes store a lot of carbon, compared to terrestrial dry soils. This is because they are low in oxygen needed for decomposition. For this reason they play a key role in the carbon cycle and climate change. If humans disturb marshes, reducing plant diversity and biomass, are they also disturbing the marsh's ability to sequester carbon? If a marsh is restored, can the carbon holding capacity also be brought back to previous levels?
	Invasive reeds in the salt marsh	Plum Island Ecosystems LTER	David Moon	2	Phragmites australis is an invasive reed that is taking over saltwater marshes of New England, outcompeting other plants that serve as food and homes for marsh animals. Once Phragmites has invaded, it is sometimes the only plant species left, called a monoculture. Phragmites does best where humans have disturbed a marsh, and scientists were curious why that might be. They thought that perhaps it was caused by changing salinity, or amount of salt in the water, after a marsh is disturbed.
	Can a salt marsh recover after restoration?	Plum Island Ecosystems LTER	David Moon	2	Before restoration began, it was clear the Saratoga Creek salt marsh was in trouble. Invasive Phragmites plants covered large areas of the marsh, crowding out native plants and animals. Human activity was thought to be the culprit – storm drains were dumping freshwater into the marsh, lowering salinity. In 1999 a restoration took place to divert freshwater away from the marsh in an attempt to reduce Phragmites numbers. Did it work?
	Make way for mummichogs	Plum Island Ecosystems LTER	David Moon	4	Mummichogs are small fish that live in tidal marshes all along the US Atlantic coast. Because they are so widespread and can be found in most streams, they are a valuable tool for scientists looking to compare the health of different marshes. The absence of mummichogs in a salt marsh is a sign that it is highly damaged. Students collected data on mummichog numbers before and after a marsh restoration. Did the restoration successfully bring back mummichogs to the marsh?
	Do you feel the urban heat?	Florida Coastal Everglades LTER	Nick Oehm	3	Record-breaking temperatures climb higher every year, and Florida is no exception. These extreme temperatures affect organisms of all types, including humans. Irvin wanted to see how much the heat varies across Miami and compare it to the sensor at the airport that is used to issue heat warnings. He focused on sites where people gather outside - bus stops. He also chose sites that varied in shade coverage to see how temperatures fluctuate in different environments.
	The case of the collapsing soil	Florida Coastal Everglades LTER	Nick Oehm	4	The Everglades are a unique and vital ecosystem threatened by rising sea levels due to climate change. Recently scientists have observed in some areas of the wetland the soils are collapsing. What is causing this strange phenomena? Sea level rise might be stressing microbes, causing carbon to be lost to the atmosphere through increased respiration.
	The carbon stored in mangrove soils	Florida Coastal Everglades LTER	Nick Oehm	2	Mangroves are globally important for many reasons. They form dense forested wetlands that protect the coast from erosion and provide critical habitat for many animals. Mangrove forests also help in the fight against climate change by storing carbon in their soils. The balance between how much carbon is added to the soils and how much is released might be dependent on a variety of factors, including tree size and amount of disturbance to the site.
	Are forests helping in the fight against climate change?	Harvard Forest LTER	Clarisse Hart & Katharine Hinkle	3	In the 1990s, scientists began to wonder what role forests were having in the exchange of carbon in and out of the atmosphere. Were forests overall storing carbon (carbon sink), or releasing it (carbon source)? To test this, they built large metal towers that stand taller than the forest trees around them and use sensors to measure the speed, direction, and CO2 concentration of each puff of air that passes by. These long term measurements can tell us whether forests help in the fight against climate change.
	A window into a tree’s world	Harvard Forest LTER	Clarisse Hart & Katharine Hinkle	2	Scientists are very interested in learning how trees respond to rapidly warming temperatures. Luckily, trees offer us a window into their lives through their growth rings. Growth rings are found within the trunk, beneath the bark. These rings provide a long historical record, which can be used to study how trees respond to climate change.
	Love that dirty water	Harvard Forest LTER	Clarisse Hart & Katharine Hinkle	4	As green spaces are lost to make room for homes and businesses, there are fewer forests and wetlands to filter our drinking water. A team of scientists used the New England Landscapes Future Explorer to study this challenge for the Merrimack River, an important river for the people of New England.
	Fertilizer and fire change microbes in prairie soil	Konza Prairie LTER	Jill Haukos	4	Prairies grow where three environmental conditions come together – a variable climate, frequent fires, and large herbivores roaming the landscape. However, prairies are experiencing many changes. For example, people now work to prevent fires, which allows forest species take over. In addition, land previously covered in prairie is now being used for agriculture. How do these changes affect the plants, animals, and microbial communities that inhabit prairies?
	Does more rain make healthy bison babies?	Konza Prairie LTER	Jill Haukos	2	The North American Bison is an important species for the prairie ecosystem. Bison affect the health of the prairie in many ways, and are also affected by the prairie as well. Each year when calves are born, scientists go out and determine their health by weighing them. This long-term dataset can be used to figure out whether environmental conditions from the previous year affect the health of the calves born in the current year.
	Trees and the city	Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Area LTER	Meredith Keller	3	Trees provide important benefits, such as beauty and shade. The number and types of tree species that are planted in a neighborhood can increase the benefits received from trees in urban areas. Based on her own observations, Adrienne started conversations with her colleagues about differences in urban landscapes. They conducted a study to see how social demographics of neighborhoods may be related to tree species richness and tree cover.
	Do urchins flip out in hot water?	Santa Barbara Coastal LTER	Scott Simon	1 & 3	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 research team decided to test whether marine heat waves could be stressing urchins by looking at a simple behavior that they could easily measure - how long it takes urchins to flip back over.
	Can kelp help the plovers?	Santa Barbara Coastal LTER	Scott Simon	2	On California beaches, dried kelp, beach hoppers (tiny crustaceans), and birds like snowy plovers form an important food web. High school students Mari and Azra, inspired by UCSB scientist Jenny Dugan’s research, set up experiments to test which types of kelp local beach hoppers preferred to eat. Their classroom project showed that beach hoppers avoided Laminaria but readily fed on other kelp species, helping reveal key pieces of the beach ecosystem that support threatened plovers.
	Catching fish with sound	Northeast U.S. Shelf LTER	Mei Sato	4	Climate change is warming our oceans, and scientists like Mei are studying how this affects marine food webs, especially small schooling fish that play a crucial role between predators and prey. As part of a long-term ecological research project in the Northeast U.S., Mei collects data using advanced sound technology (echosounders) to measure fish abundance, along with water temperature and depth. Her work helps build a clearer picture of how ocean ecosystems are changing over time, providing valuable information for fishers and resource managers preparing for the future.

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Below, you will find a table of the 26 Data Nuggets to be used in the research study. Click on the Title to open a page displaying the Data Nugget and associated activities. The table can be sorted using the arrows located next to each column header. It can also be searched using the search command at the top of the table. By default we have the activities sorted by increasing difficulty.

For a reminder on what the Content Levels (1-4) and Graph Types (A-C) mean, check out our information page here.

	Title	Content Level	Keywords	Summary
	Won’t you be my urchin?	1	coral reef, herbivory, marine, sea urchin, water, animals, competition	Corals 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.
	Coral bleaching and climate change	1	climate change, coral reef, marine, mutualism, temperature, animals, algae	Corals are animals that build coral reefs. They look brown and green because they have small plants, called algae, that live inside them. The coral animal and the algae work together to produce food so that corals can grow big. When the water gets too warm, sometimes the coral and algae can no longer work together. The algae leave and the corals turn white, called coral bleaching. Scientists want to study coral bleaching so they can protect corals and the reefs that provide a home for so many different species.
	Dangerously bold	1	animals, animal behavior, tradeoff, fish, predation	There are two main habitats that young bluegill sunfish can use to find food to eat – open water and cover. There is lots of food in the open water, but this habitat also has very few plants for bluegill to hide from predators, like the largemouth bass, so it’s not safe when bluegill are small! The cover habitat has less food, but it has lots of plants that make it hard for predators to see the bluegill. This sets up a situation where there are costs and benefits to using either habitat, called a tradeoff.
	Springing forward	1 & 3	climate change, phenology, plants, temperature	What does climate change mean for flowering plants that rely on temperature cues to determine when it is time to flower? Scientists who study phenology, or the timing if life-history events in plants and animals, predict that with warming temperatures, plants will produce their flowers earlier and earlier each year.
	Do insects prefer local or foreign foods?	2	herbivory, invasive species, plants, insects, enemy release, ecology	Insects that feed on plants, called herbivores, can have big effects on how plants grow. A plant with leaves eaten by herbivores will likely do worse than a plant that is not eaten. Herbivores may even determine how well an exotic plant does in its new habitat and whether it becomes invasive. Understanding what makes a species become invasive could help control invasions already underway, and prevent new ones in the future.
	Deadly windows	2	animals, behavior, birds, environmental	Glass makes for a great windowpane because you can see right through it. However, this makes windows very dangerous for birds. Many birds die from window collisions in urban areas. In North America window collisions kill up to 1 billion birds every year! Perhaps local urban birds are able to learn the locations of windows and avoid collisions. By comparing window collisions by local birds to those of migrant birds that are just passing through, we can determine if local birds have learned to deal with this challenge.
	A tail of two scorpions	2	animal behavior, animals, predation	Species rely on a variety of methods to defend against predators, including camouflage, speedy escape, or retreating to the safety of a shelter. Other animals, such as scorpions, have painful venomous stings. Scientists wanted to know whether the pain of a scorpion sting was enough to deter predators, like the grasshopper mouse.
	Sexy smells	2	adaptation, animal behavior, animals, birds, mating	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. Many male birds have brightly colored feathers and ornaments that are attractive to females. Visual signals like these ornaments have been studied a lot in birds, but birds may be able to determine the quality of a potential mate using other senses as well, such as their smell!
	How do brain chemicals influence who wins a fight?	2	animals, behavior, competition, insects, aggression, brain chemistry, physiology	Animals compete for resources, including space, food, and mates. What are the factors that determine who wins in a fight? Within the same species, larger individuals tend to win fights. However, if two opponents are the same size, other factors can influence outcomes. Serotonin is a chemical compound found in the brains of all animals, including stalk-eyed flies. Even a small amount of this chemical can make a big impact on aggressive behavior, and perhaps the outcome of competition.
	Marvelous mud	2	ecology, environmental, fertilization, mud, phosphorus, substrate, water, wetland	Because mud is wet most of the time, it tends to have different properties than soil. Dead organic matter (partially decomposed plants) is an important part of mud and tends to build up in wetlands because it is decomposed more slowly under water where microbes do not have all the oxygen they need to break it down quickly. The amounts of organic matter may determine the levels of phosphorus and other nutrients held in wetland muds.
	Is chocolate for the birds?	2	agriculture, animals, birds, biodiversity, ecology, plants, rainforest	Humans invented agriculture 9,000 years ago, and today it covers 40% of Earth’s land surface. To grow our crops, native plants are often removed, causing the loss of animals that relied on these native plants for habitat. However, sometimes animals can use crop species for food and shelter. For example, the cacao tree may provide habitat for bird species in the rainforests of Costa Rica. Will the abundance and types of birds differ in cacao plantations, compared to native rainforests?
	Bye bye birdie? Part I	2	animals, biodiversity, birds, climate change, succession, disturbance, ecology	Avian ecologists at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest have been monitoring bird populations for over 40 years. The data collected during this time is one of the longest bird studies ever conducted! What can we learn from this long-term data set? Are bird populations remaining stable over time?
	Bye bye birdie? Part II	3	animals, biodiversity, birds, climate change, succession, disturbance, ecology	Hubbard Brook was heavily logged and disturbed in the early 1900s. When logging ended in 1915, trees began to grow back. The forest then went through secondary succession, which refers to the naturally occurring changes in forest structure that happen as a forest ages after it has been cut or otherwise disturbed. Can these changes in habitat availability, due to succession, explain why the number of birds are declining at Hubbard Brook? Are all bird species responding succession in the same way?
	To bee or not to bee aggressive	3	animals, behavior, genes, insects, tradeoff	Honey bees turn nectar from flowers into honey, and honey serves as an energy-rich food source for the colony. Honey also makes hives a target for break ins by animals that want to steal it. Bees need to aggressively defend their honey when the hive is threatened. They also need to ensure that they do not waste energy on unnecessary aggressive behaviors when the threat level is low. One way bees might match their aggressiveness to the threat level in the environment is learning from adults when they are young.
	Raising Nemo: Parental care in the clown anemonefish	3	adaptation, animals, behavior, coral reef, ecology, fish, marine, mating, tradeoff	Offspring 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?
	Growing energy: comparing biofuel crop biomass	3	agriculture, biofuels, climate change, fertilization, plants	Corn is one of the best crops for producing biomass for fossil fuels, however it is an annual and needs very fertile soil. To grow corn, farmers add a lot of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to their fields. Other crops, like switchgrass, prairie, poplar trees, and Miscanthus grass are perennials and require fewer fertilizers and pesticides to grow. If perennials can produce high levels of biomass with low inputs, perhaps they could produce more biomass than corn under certain low nutrient conditions.
	Fertilizing biofuels may cause release of greenhouse gasses	3	biofuels, climate change, fertilization, greenhouse gasses, nitrogen, plants	One way to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we release into the atmosphere could be to grow our fuel instead of drilling for it. Unlike fossil fuels that can only release CO2, biofuels remove CO2 from the atmosphere as they grow and photosynthesize, potentially balancing the CO2 released when they are burned for fuel. However, the plants we grow for biofuels don’t necessarily absorb all greenhouse gas that is released during the process of growing them on farms and converting them into fuels.
	The ground has gas!	3	climate change, temperature, greenhouse gasses, nitrogen, plants	Nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide are responsible for much of the warming of the global average temperature that is causing climate change. Sometimes soils give off, or emit, these greenhouse gases into the earth’s atmosphere, adding to climate change. Currently scientists figuring out what causes differences in how much of each type of greenhouse gas soils emit.
	When a species can’t stand the heat	3	animals, climate change, disturbance, ecology, environmental, mating, temperature	Tuatara are a unique species of reptile found only in New Zealand. In this species, the temperature of the nest during egg development determines the sex of offspring. Warm nests lead to more males, and cool nests lead to more females. With warming temperatures due to climate change, scientists expect the sex ratio to become more and more unbalanced over time, with males making up more of the population. This could leave tuatara populations with too few females to sustain their numbers.
	Feral chickens fly the coop	3	adaptation, animals, behavior, birds, ecology, evolution, mating	Sometimes 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?
	CSI: Crime Solving Insects	3	animals, insects, parasitism	You might think maggots (blow fly larvae) are gross, but without their help in decomposition we would all trip over dead bodies every time we went outside! Forensic entomologists also use these amazing insects to help solve crimes. Blow flies oviposit on dead bodies, and the age of the maggots that hatch helps scientists determine how long ago a body died. Scientists noticed parasitic wasps were also present at some bodies. Might these wasps delay blow fly oviposition and interfere with scientists' estimates of time of death?
	How the cricket lost its song, Part I	3	adaptation, animal behavior, animals, evolution, mating, parasitism	Pacific field crickets live on several Hawaiian Islands, including Kauai. Male field crickets make a loud, long-distance song to help females find them, and then switch to a quiet courtship song once a female comes in close. One summer scientists noticed that the crickets on the island were unusually quiet. Back in the lab they saw males that had lost their specialized wing structures used to produce song! Why did these males lose their wing structures?
	How the cricket lost its song, Part II	3	adaptation, animal behavior, animals, evolution, mating, parasitism	WIthout their song, how are flatwing crickets able to attract females? In some other animals species, males use an alternative to singing, called satellite behavior. Satellite males hang out near a singing male and attempt to mate with females who have been attracted by the song. Perhaps the satellite behavior gives flatwing males the opportunity to mate with females who were attracted to the few singing males left on Kauai.
	Are you my species?	3	adaptation, animals, behavior, biodiversity, competition, evolution, fish, mating	How do animals know who to choose as a mate and who is a member of their own species? One way is through communication. Animals collect information about each other and the rest of the world using multiple senses, including sight, sound, and smell. Darters are a group of over 200 colorful fish species that live in lakes and rivers across the US. The bright color patterns on males may signal to females during mating who is a member of the same species and who would make a good mate.
	The mystery of Plum Island Marsh	3	fertilization, fish, marine, mollusk, water, wetland	Salt marshes are among the most productive coastal ecosystems, and support a diversity of plants and animals. Algae and marsh plants feed many invertebrates, like snails and crabs, which are then eaten by larger fish and birds. In Plum Island, scientists have been fertilizing and studying salt marsh creeks to see how added nutrients affect the system. They noticed that fish populations seemed to be crashing in the fertilized creeks, while the mudflats were covered in mudsnails. Could there be a link?
	Finding Mr. Right	4	adaptation, animals, behavior, biodiversity, birds, evolution, mating, local adaptation	Mountain chickadees are small birds that live in the mountains. To deal with living in a harsh environment during the winter, mountain chickadees store large amounts of food throughout the forest. Compared to populations at lower elevations, birds from higher elevations are smarter and have better spatial memory, helping them better find stored food. Smarter females from high elevations may be contributing to local adaptation by preferring to breed with males from their own population.