Spiders under the influence

Field picture of an urban web. Dark paper is used to make the web more visible for data collection

The activities are as follows:

People use pharmaceutical drugs, personal care products, and other chemicals on a daily basis. For example, we take medicine when we are sick to feel better, and use perfumes and cologne to make ourselves smell good. After we use these chemicals, where do they go? Often, they get washed down our drains and end up in local waterways. Even our trash can contain these harmful chemicals. For example, when coffee grounds are thrown into the trash, caffeine gets washed into our waterways.

Animals in waterways, like insects, live with these chemicals every day. Many insects are born and grow in the water, absorbing the drugs over their lifetime. As predators eat the insects, the chemicals are passed on, working their way through the food web. For example, spiders living along riverbanks feed off aquatic insects and absorb the drugs from their prey.

Just as chemicals change human behavior, they change spider behavior as well! Effects of drugs on spiders have been studied since the 1940s. Dr. Peter Witt first discovered that chemicals change spider web construction. Peter gave caffeine, and a few other drugs, to spiders to see if they would build their webs during the day instead of at night, which is when they usually work. After giving his test spiders some of the drugs, the spiders still created their webs at night. However, he noticed something unexpected – the web structure of spiders on drugs was completely different from normal webs. The webs were different sizes and had more spacing between each thread. Normal webs help spiders to easily catch prey. Irregularly shaped webs were not good at catching prey because insects could fly right through the large spaces. After his study, Peter knew that drugs were bad for spiders.

Chris (they/them), a current resident of Baltimore and a spider enthusiast, lives in a watershed that is affected by chemical pollution. They wanted to build on Peter’s research by looking at spider webs in the wild instead of in the lab. Chris knew that many types of spiders live near streams and are exposed to toxins through the prey they eat. Chris wanted to compare the effects of the chemicals on spiders in rural and urban environments. By comparing spider webs in these two habitats, they could see how changed the webs are and infer how many chemicals are in the waterways.

Chris worked with Aaron, a local high school teacher, to do this research. They collected images of spiderwebs in areas around Baltimore. They chose two sites: Baisman Run, a rural site far from the city, and Gwynns Run, an urban site close to the city. Chris traveled to the sites and took pictures of eight spiderwebs at each location. Chris and Aaron expected that urban streams would have higher concentrations of chemicals than rural areas because more people live in cities.

When they got back to the lab, Aaron took the pictures and used a computer program to count the number of cells and calculate the total area of each web. These data offer a glimpse into whether spiders near Baltimore are exposed to harmful pharmaceutical chemicals and personal care products. If spiders are exposed to these chemicals, the webs will have fewer, but larger cells than a normal web. The cells will also have irregular shapes.

Featured scientists: Chris Hawn from University of Maryland Baltimore County and Aaron Curry from Baltimore Ecosystem Study LTER

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 7.8

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget include:

  • You can watch Aaron describe his Research Experience for Teachers project here.


Crunchy or squishy? How El Niño events change zooplankton

Laura identifies and counts zooplankton from a net tow using a microscope. Laura conducted these identifications while on a research ship at sea. 

The activities are as follows:

El Niño events happen every 5 to 10 years and take place in the Pacific Ocean. El Niño occurs when the winds that blow west over the equator temporarily weaken, and even switch direction. This allows warm surface waters that typically pile up on the western side of the Pacific Ocean to flow to the east. In South America, El Niño brings heavy rains and floods because the warm water moves toward that continent. On the other hand, the warm water moves away from the continent of Australia, causing drought. In the U.S., warm waters travel up to California during El Niño years, causing the ocean to be much warmer than usual. El Niño’s effects are so strong that it even changes the marine animals that live off the California coast in those years! 

Laura’s first experience with El Niño came when she was growing up in California. A strong El Niño event hit in 1997-98, and many cities in California flooded because of heavy rainstorms. The event even made the national news on TV! Laura’s second El Niño experience came in 2015, the year she started training to become a scientist. These events had such a big impact on her that she decided to study how zooplankton in the ocean are affected by El Niño. Zooplankton are tiny drifting ocean animals (“zoo” = animal + “plankton” = drifter) that eat phytoplankton (“plant drifters”). Zooplankton are important for the ocean’s food web because they are food for fish, whales, and seabirds. 

Doliolids are a type of gelatinous zooplankton, meaning they have soft, watery bodies and not a lot of nutrition for other animals to eat. They can form large groups in the ocean called ‘blooms’.

Zooplankton come in many shapes, sizes, and species. The two main groups are crustaceans and gelatinous animals. Crustaceans look like small shrimp and crabs, with hard, crunchy shells and segmented legs like insects. In contrast, gelatinous animals are watery and squishy, like jellyfish. Laura wanted to know how El Niño events might affect which group of zooplankton are found off the coast of California. 

Warm ocean waters during El Niño events have lower nutrient levels, so fewer phytoplankton grow leading to less food available for zooplankton. Gelatinous animals can survive in areas of the ocean where there is less food available. They are also able to live in warmer water than crustaceans. For these two reasons, Laura though that gelatinous animals may be able to live in the warmer water off California during El Niño events. Laura predicted that during the El Niño events of 1992-93, 1997-98, and 2015-16, the balance would shift in favor of gelatinous animals over crustaceans

To test her idea, Laura used a long-term dataset that documents zooplankton collected offshore of southern California since 1951. Every spring, a ship goes out on the ocean and tows plankton nets for 30 minutes at 40 different locations. The ship brings back jars full of zooplankton. Scientists look at samples from those jars and identify the species and measure the lengths of each individual zooplankton in the sample. They then add up all the lengths of individual plankton to get the total biomass of each group. Biomass is similar to weight and shows us how big each animal is and how much space their group takes up. Scientists also measure water temperature and how much phytoplankton is found. The amount of phytoplankton is measured by detecting chlorophyll in the water. Chlorophyll from phytoplankton is a measure of how much food is available to zooplankton.

A euphausiid, or “krill”, is a type of crustacean zooplankton, meaning that it is related to shrimp and crabs. It has a hard, segmented shell (exoskeleton). It is the main food source for blue whales and other whales and birds.

Featured scientist: Laura Lilly from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 10.0

Candid camera: Capturing the secret lives of carnivores

Erik demonstrating how to place a camera trap on a tree on Stockton Island.

The activities are as follows:

Carnivores, animals that eat meat, captivate people’s interest for many reasons – they are charismatic, stealthy, and can be dangerous. Not only are they fascinating, they’re also ecologically important. Carnivores help keep prey populations in balance. They often target old, sick, or weak individuals. This results in more resources for healthier prey. Carnivores also impact prey’s behavior and population sizes, which can have further effects down the food web. For example, if there are too many herbivores, such as deer, the plants in an ecosystem may be eaten to a point where they can’t survive. In this way, carnivores help the plant community by either reducing the number of herbivores in an ecosystem, or changing how or where prey forage for food. 

Despite their importance and our interest in carnivores, they are very hard to monitor. Not only do they have naturally low population sizes because they are at the top of the food chain, they also have a natural ability to hide and blend into their environment. Erik is a wildlife biologist who is interested in taking on this challenge. He wants to learn more about carnivores and what factors affect where they live. Learning more about where carnivores are found can help scientists with conservation efforts.

Erik lives on the southern shore of Lake Superior, the largest lake (by area) in the world. This area is home to the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore – including 21 islands and a 12-mile stretch of the mainland in northern Wisconsin. The Apostle Islands vary in many ways – size, distance from the mainland, highest elevation, historical and current human use, plant communities, and even small differences in climate. The islands are so remote that scientists really didn’t know which carnivores lived on the islands. There is evidence from historical reports that red fox and coyotes lived on some of the islands. More recently, black bears have been observed by visitors as they are hiking or camping. Erik wanted to know which species of carnivores are on each island. As he began to explore methods to document wildlife on the islands, Erik and his collaborators were shocked to discover that American martens, Wisconsin’s only state endangered species, live on some of the islands.

Erik thought a promising step in learning more about what drives carnivores to live on different islands in the archipelago would be to apply what has been learned from islands in the ocean. He referred to a fundamental theory in ecology called the theory of island biogeography. This theory predicts that island size and its distance to the mainland affects the biodiversity, or number of species, found on that island. Specifically, larger islands will have higher carnivore biodiversity because there are more resources and space to support more species than smaller areas. In contrast, islands farther away from the mainland will have lower carnivore biodiversity because more isolated islands are harder for wildlife to reach. 

Erik wanted to test whether the theory of island biogeography also applied to the Apostle Islands. Just like the classic research on island biogeography, some islands are closer to the mainland and they range in size. To inventory where each carnivore is found, Erik and his collaborators and students set up 164 wildlife cameras on 19 of the islands. They made their way out to the remote islands by boat and then bushwhacked their way to the sites, which are not along trails. Often this means they have to push through thick brush and climb over fallen trees, but it’s important to put the cameras in all habitat types, not just those that are enjoyable to walk through. When the research team arrived at a site, they mounted a camera on a tree at waist height. Whenever an animal came into the frame of a camera, a photo was taken and stored on a memory card. The cameras were left on the islands year-round from 2014-2019. Every 6 months Erik and his collaborators would traverse through the thick woods to swap out memory cards and batteries. During this time, they noticed that four of the cameras had not worked properly, so they used the pictures from 160 of the cameras. 

Back at the college, the research team spent countless hours identifying which animals triggered the cameras. The cameras had taken over 200,000 photos over three years including 7,000 wildlife visits. Of these visits, 1,970 were from carnivores! They found 10 different kinds of carnivores, including: American marten, black bear, bobcat, coyote, fisher, gray fox, gray wolf, raccoon, red fox and weasels. After the pictures were processed, Erik used this information to map out which islands the animals were found. For this study, he used species richness, or the number of different species observed on each island, to answer his question. 

Map of the Apostle Islands with the richness, or number of different carnivore species, detected on each island.

Featured scientists: Erik Olson from Northland College, Tim Van Deelen, and Julie Van Stappen from the National Park Service. Support for this lesson was provided by the National Park Service with funding from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 11.2

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget:

The study and results described in this Data Nugget have been published:

  • Allen, M.L., Farmer, M.J., Clare, J.J., Olson, E.R., Van Stappen, J., Van Deelen, T.R. 2018. Is there anybody out there? Occupancy of the carnivore guild in a temperate archipelago. Community Ecology 19(3): 272-280.

Citizen science site where students can view and identify animals found in pictures from cameras placed around Wisconsin.

There have been several news articles about this research:

Picky eaters: Dissecting poo to examine moose diets

Moose chomping on a forest plant

When you eat at a restaurant, do you always order your favorite meal? Or do you like to look at the menu and try something new? Humans have so many meal options that it can be hard to decide what to eat, but we also have preferences for certain food over others. Animals have fewer decisions to make. They have to choose from food options available in their environment. Do animals search for specific food types or eat any food they find?

Scientists who study the ecology of the remote Isle Royale National Park are interested in knowing more about how moose decide which plants to eat. Isle Royale is a large (44 miles long and 8 miles wide) island found within Lake Superior. On the island, wolves are the main predators of moose. The wolf and moose populations have been studied there for over 60 years, making it the longest continuous study of predator-prey dynamics.

In recent years, the wolf population struggled to rebound because there were very few adults reproducing. Without their natural predators, the moose population has increased dramatically, in 2000 there were approximately 500 moose, but since that time the population has grown to over 2,000 moose! Moose are browsers, meaning they eat leaves and needles, fruits, or twigs that are found on woody plants. Having too many moose on the island would take a toll on the island’s plant community. Bite by bite, moose may be chomping away at the forest and changing the Isle Royale ecosystem as we know it.

To try to fix this problem, the National Park Service is working to restore the wolf population by relocating adults from other Lake Superior packs to the island. However, this will take several years and in the meantime moose will continue to have an effect on the plant community. Scientists Sarah, John, and their colleagues realize how important it is to monitor which plants the moose are eating. The scientist team wanted to know whether moose simply eat the plants that they come across, or if they show preference for certain plants. 

Surveying woody plants in Isle Royale National Park

One thing that could affect moose food preference is the nutrition level of the different plants. In the winter, deciduous plants lose their leaves, unlike conifers that are green all year round. In the winter, moose end up eating the edges of twigs from deciduous plants, but can still eat needles of conifers. Needles are easier for moose to digest and have more nutrients than twigs so the scientists thought moose would seek out coniferous plants, like balsam fir and cedar, even if they were less common in the environment.

Starting in 2004, the scientist team selected 14 sites across the island and started collecting moose poop, also called fecal pellets, at the end of winter. Back in the lab, the fecal pellets were examined closely under a microscope to determine what the moose were eating. Many plants have identifiable differences in cellular structures, so the scientists were able to look at the magnified fragments and record how much balsam fir, cedar, and deciduous plants the moose had been eating. 

To understand preference, the scientists also needed to know which plants were in the area that the moose were living. They did plant surveys at the beginning and end of the study to estimate the percent of different woody plants that are in the forest. Because woody plants are long-living, the forest didn’t change too much from year to year. 

Once they had the forest plant surveys and the moose diets analyzed from the fecal pellets, they were able to analyze whether moose selectively eat. If a moose was randomly eating the plant types that it came across, it would have similar amounts of plants in its diet than what is found in the forest. If a moose shows preference for a plant type, it would have a higher percent of that food in their diet than what is found in the forest. Moose could also be avoiding certain food types, which would be when they have a lower percent of a plant type in its diet than in the environment.

Featured scientist: Sarah Hoy, John Vucetich and John Henderson from Michigan Technological University.Support for this lesson was provided by the National Park Service with funding from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 10.1

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget:

The study and results described in this Data Nugget have been published. If students are curious to know more about the study design and how sites were selected, there is an approachable methods section available in the article:

  • Hoy, S.R., Vucetich, J.A., Liu, R., DeAngelis, D.L., Peterson, R.O., Vucetich, L.M., & Henderson, J.J. 2019. Negative frequency-dependent foraging behavior in a generalist herbivore (Alces alces) and its stabilizing influence on food-web dynamics. Journal of Animal Ecology.

There have been several news stories about this research:

Website with more information on the Isle Royale Wolf-Moose Study, including additional datasets to examine with students.


Hold on for your life! Part II

In Part I the data showed that, after the hurricanes, anole lizards had on average smaller bodies, shorter legs, and larger toe pads. The patterns were clear and consistent across the two islands, indicating that these traits are adaptations shaped by natural selection from hurricanes. At this point, however, Colin was still not convinced because he was unable to directly observe the lizards during the hurricane.

Still shot of lizard clinging to an experimental perch in hurricane-force winds. Wind speed meter is displaying in miles per hour

The activities are as follows:

Colin was unable to stay on Pine Cay and Water Cay during the hurricanes and directly observe the lizards. To be more confident in his explanation, Colin needed to find out how lizards behave in hurricane-force winds. He thought there were two options for what they might do. First, he thought they might get down from the branch and hide in tree roots and cracks. Alternatively, they might hold onto branches and ride out the storm. If they tried to hold on in high winds, it would make sense that traits like the length of their limbs or the size of their toepads would be important for their survival. However, if they hid in roots or cracks, these traits might not be adaptations after all.

To see how the lizards behaved, Colin needed to design a safe experiment that would simulate hurricane-force winds. He bought the strongest leaf blower he could find, set it up in his hotel room on Pine Cay, and videotaped 40 lizards as they were hit with high winds. Colin first set up this experiment to observe behavior, but he ended up learning not only that, but a lot about how the traits of the lizards interacted with high winds.

To begin the experiment, Colin placed the anoles on a perch. He slowly ramped up the wind speed on the leaf blower until the lizards climbed down or they were blown, unharmed, into a safety net. He recorded videos of each trial and took pictures. 

Featured scientist: Colin Donihue from Harvard University

Written with: Bob Kuhn and Elizabeth Schultheis

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 8.4

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget:

  • This study was published in the journal Nature in 2018. Colin would like to thank his coauthors Anthony Herrel, Anne-Claire Fabre, Anthony Geneva, Ambika Kamath, Jason Kolbe, Tom Schoener, and Jonathan Losos. You can read the paper here.
  • Colin wrote a blog post about his experience. He shares more about the lead-up to the project and how a chance occurrence changed the entire trajectory of his research.
  • Colin also put together a story map with more images and animated gifs of this research.
  • We put together a PowerPoint of images from Colin’s research that you can show in class to accompany the activity.

To engage students in this activity, show the following video in class. This video gives some information on the experiment and Colin’s research.

Hold on for your life! Part I

Anolis scriptus, the Turks and Caicos anole, on Pine Cay.

The activities are as follows:

On the Caribbean islands of Turks and Caicos, there lives a small brown anole lizard named Anolis scriptus. The populations on two small islands, called Pine Cay and Water Cay, have been studied by researchers from Harvard University and the Paris Natural History Museum for many years. In 2017, Colin, one of the scientists, went to these islands to set up a long-term study on the effect of rats on anoles and other lizards on the islands. Unbeknownst to him, though, a storm was brewing to the south of the islands, and it was about to change the entire trajectory of his research.

While he was collecting data, Hurricane Irma was developing into a massive category 5 hurricane. Eventually it became clear that it would travel straight over these small islands. Colin knew that this might be the last time he would see the two small populations of lizards ever again because they could get wiped out in the storm. It dawned on him that this might be a serendipitous moment. After the storm, he could evaluate whether lizards could possibly survive a severe hurricane. He was also interested in whether certain traits could increase survival. Colin and his colleagues measured the lizards and vowed to come back after the hurricane to see if they were still there. They measured both male and female lizards and recorded trait values including their body size, femur length, and the toepad area on their forelimbs and hindlimbs.

Colin was not sure whether the lizards would survive. If they did, Colin formed two alternative hypotheses about what he might see. First, he thought lizards that survived would just be a random subset of the population and simply those that got lucky and survived by chance. Alternatively, he thought that survival might not be random, and some lizards might be better suited to hanging on for their lives in high winds. There might be traits that help lizards survive hurricanes, called adaptations. He made predictions off this second hypothesis and expected that survivors would be those individuals with large adhesive pads on their fingers and toes and extra-long legs – both traits that would help them grab tight to a branch and make it through the storm. This would mean the hurricanes could be agents of natural selection.

Not only did Hurricane Irma ravage the islands that year, but weeks later Hurricane Maria also paid a visit. Upon his return to Pine Cay and Water Cay after the hurricanes, Colin was shocked to see there were still anoles on the islands! He took the measurements a second time. He then compared his two datasets from before and after the hurricanes to see if the average trait values changed.

Featured scientist: Colin Donihue from Harvard University

Written with: Bob Kuhn and Elizabeth Schultheis

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 9.9

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget:

  • This study was published in the journal Nature in 2018. Colin would like to thank his coauthors Anthony Herrel, Anne-Claire Fabre, Anthony Geneva, Ambika Kamath, Jason Kolbe, Tom Schoener, and Jonathan Losos. You can read the paper here.
  • Colin wrote a blog post about his experience. He shares more about the lead-up to the project and how a chance occurrence changed the entire trajectory of his research.
  • Colin also put together a story map with more images and animated gifs of this research.
  • We put together a PowerPoint of images from Colin’s research that you can show in class to accompany the activity.

To engage students in this activity, show the following video in class. This video gives some information on the experiment and Colin’s research. For Part I stop the video at minute 1:30.

All washed up? The effect of floods on cutthroat trout

The activities are as follows:

Mack Creek, a healthy stream located within the old growth forests in Oregon. It has a diversity of habitats because of various rocks and logs. This creates diverse habitats for juvenile and adult trout.

Streams are tough places to live. Fish living in streams have to survive droughts, floods, debris flows, falling trees, and cold and warm temperatures. In Oregon, cutthroat trout make streams their home. Cutthroat trout are sensitive to disturbances in the stream, such as pollution and sediment. This means that when trout are present it is a good sign that the stream is healthy.

Floods are very common disturbances in streams. During floods, water in the stream flows very fast. This extra movement picks up sediment from the bottom of the stream and suspends it in the water. When sediment is floating in the water it makes it harder for fish to see and breathe, limiting how much food they can find. Floods may also affect fish reproduction. 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. Floods expand the stream, making it wider and adding more space. Moving water also adds large boulders, small rocks, and logs into the stream. These items add to the different types of habitat available. 

A cutthroat trout. It is momentarily unhappy, because it is not in its natural, cold Pacific Northwest stream habitat.

Ivan and Stan are two scientists who are interested in whether floods have a large impact on the survival of young cutthroat trout. They were worried because cutthroat trout reproduce during the spring, towards the end of the winter flood season. During this time juvenile trout,less than one year old, are not good swimmers. The fast water from floods makes it harder for them to survive. After a year, juvenile trout become mature adults.These two age groups live in different habitats. Adult trout live in pools near the center of streams. Juvenile trout prefer habitats at the edges of streams that have things like rocks and logs where they can hide from predators. Also, water at the edges moves more slowly, making it easier to swim. In addition, by staying near the stream edge they can avoid getting eaten by the adults in stream pools.

Ivan and Stan work at the H.J. Andrews Long Term Ecological Research site. They wanted to know what happens to cutthroat trout after winter floods. Major floods occur every 35-50 years, meaning that Ivan and Stan would need a lot of data. Fortunately for their research they were able to find what they needed since scientists have been collecting data at the site since 1987!

To study how floods affect trout populations, Ivan and Stan used data from Mack Creek, one of the streams within their site. They decided to look at the population size of both juvenile and adult trout since they occupy such different parts of the stream. For each year of data they had, Ivan and Stan compared the juvenile and adult trout population data, measured as the number of trout, with stream discharge, or a measure of how fast water is flowing in the stream. Stream discharge is higher after flooding events. Stream discharge data for Mack Creek is collected during the winter when floods are most likely to occur. Fish population size is measured during the following summer each year. Since flooding can make life difficult for trout, they expected trout populations to decrease after major flooding events.

Featured scientists: Ivan Arismendi and Stan Gregory from Oregon State University. Written by: Leilagh Boyle.

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 7.5

Additional teacher resource related to this Data Nugget:

Beetle, it’s cold outside!

Frozen lady beetles.

The activities are as follows:

Éste Data Nugget también está disponible en Español:

Walking across a snowy field or mountain, you might not notice many living things. But if you dig into the snow, you’ll find a lot of life!

Until recently, climate change scientists thought warming in winter would be good for most species. Warmer winters would mean that species could avoid the cold and would not need to deal with freezing temperatures as often or for as long. Caroline is a scientist who is thinking about winter climate change in a whole new way. Snow covers the soil, acting like an insulating blanket. Many species rely on the snow for protection from the winter’s cold. When temperatures climb in the winter, snow melts and leaves the soil uncovered for longer periods of time. This leads to the shocking pattern that warmer temperatures actually means the soil gets colder!

Caroline is interested in how species that rely on the snow will respond to climate change. She studies a species of insect called lady beetles. Lady beetles are ectotherms, meaning their body temperature matches that of their environment. Because climate change is reducing the amount of snow in the lady beetle habitat, Caroline wanted to know how they would respond to these changes.

Caroline and her team, Andre and Nikki, decided to investigate what happens to lady beetles when they are exposed to longer periods of time in cold temperatures. When soil temperatures drop below freezing (0℃), lady beetles go into a chill coma, or a temporary, reversible paralysis. When temperatures are below freezing, it is so cold that they are unable to move. When temperatures rise back above freezing, they wake from their chill comas. When lady beetles are in chill comas, they are easier for predators to catch because they can’t escape. They are also unable to find food or mates. Scientists can measure how fast it takes lady beetles to recover from chill coma, called chill coma recovery time, and use this as a measure of their performance.

Beetles in their pre-testing habitat are on the right; tubes with beetles about to be immersed in a cooler filled with crushed ice are on the left.

They designed an experiment to test whether the amount of time lady beetles spend in freezing temperatures affects how long it takes them to wake up from a chill coma. Caroline thought that lady beetles exposed to lengthy freezing temperatures would be harmed because freezing causes tissue damage and the insect must use more energy to survive. She predicted that the longer the lady beetles had been exposed to the cold, the longer it would take them to wake up from their chill comas.

To begin the experiment, Andre and Nikki placed groups of lady beetles in tubes. They then placed the tubes in an ice bath, bringing the temperature down to 0℃, the point when lady beetles enter chill coma. They varied the amount of time each tube was in the ice baths and tested chill coma recovery times after 3, 24, 48, 72, or 96 hours. After removing the tubes from the ice baths, they put the lady beetles on their backs with their legs in the air and left them at room temperature, 20℃. Andre and Nikki timed how long it took each beetle to wake up and turn itself over.

In the experiment, they used two different populations of lady beetles. Population 1 had been living in the lab for several weeks before the experiment began. They were not in great health and some had started to die. In order to make sure they had enough beetles for the experiment, Caroline purchased more lady beetles, which she called Population 2. Population 2 only spent a few days living in the lab before testing and were in much better health. Caroline noted the differences in these populations and thought their age, health, and background might affect how they respond to the experiment. She decided to track which population the lady beetles were from so she could analyze the data separately and see if the health differences between Population 1 and 2 changed the results.

Featured scientists: Caroline Williams & Andre Szejner Sigal, University of California, Berkeley, & Nikki Chambers, Biology Teacher, West High School, Torrance, CA

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 9.8

Clique wars: social conflict in daffodil cichlids

A male and female daffodil cichlid

The activities are as follows:

Have you ever thought about what it would be like to live completely alone, without contact with other people? Nowadays, humans are constantly connected by phones, texting, and social media. Our social interactions affect us in many unexpected ways. Strong social relationships can increase human lifespan, and lower the risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and depression. Social relationships are so important that they are actually a stronger predictor of premature death than smoking, obesity, or physical inactivity! Like humans, social interactions are important for other animals as well.

Jennifer is a behavioral ecologist who is interested in daffodil cichlids, a social species of fish from Lake Tanganyika, a Great Lake in Africa. Daffodil cichlids live in social groups of several small fish and one breeding pair. Each group defends its own rock cluster in the lake. The breeding male and female are the largest fist in the group, and the smaller fish help defend territory against predators and help care for newly hatched baby fish. About 200 social groups together make up a colony.

Social groups of daffodil cichlids in Lake Tanganyika

Behavior within a social group may be influenced by the presence of other groups in the colony. For example, neighboring groups can be a threat because they may try to take away territory or resources. After reading about previous research on social interactions in species that live in groups, Jennifer noticed there were very few studies that looked at how neighboring groups affected behavior within the group. Jennifer thought that the presence of neighboring groups may force the breeding pair to be less aggressive towards each other and work together to protect their group’s resources against the outside threat.

To test her idea, Jennifer formed breeding pairs of daffodil cichlids in an aquarium laboratory. She first observed the breeding pairs for any aggressive behaviors when they were isolated and could not see other groups. She observed each group for 30 minutes a day for 10 days. Next, Jennifer set up a clear barrier between the breeding pair and a neighboring group. The fish could see each other but not physically interact. Jennifer again watched the breeding pair and documented any aggressive behaviors to see how the presence of a neighboring group affected conflict within the pair. She again observed each group with neighbors for 30 minutes a day for 10 days.

During these behavioral tests, Jennifer counted the total number of behaviors done by the breeding pair. She measured several behaviors. Physical attacks were counted every time contact between the fish was made (biting or ramming each other). Aggressive displays were counted when fish give signals of aggression without making physical contact (raising their fins or swimming rapidly at another fish). Submissive behaviors, or actions used to prevent aggression between the breeding pair, were also counted. Finally, behaviors used to encourage social bonding were counted and are called affiliative behaviors. Jennifer predicted that the breeding pair would perform fewer physical attacks and aggressive displays when a neighboring group was present compared to when the breeding pair was alone. She also thought the breeding pair would perform more submissive and affiliative behaviors when the neighboring group was present. In this way, the presence of an outside group would impact the behaviors within a group.

Featured scientist: Jennifer Hellmann from The Ohio State University

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 11.3

Tree-killing beetles

A Colorado forest impacted by a mountain pine beetle outbreak. Notice the dead trees mixed with live trees. Forests like this with dead trees from mountain pine beetle outbreaks cover millions of acres across western North America.

The activities are as follows:

A beetle the size of a grain of rice seems insignificant compared to a vast forest. However, during outbreaks the number of mountain pine beetles can skyrocket, leading to the death of many trees. The beetles bore their way through tree bark and introduce blue stain fungi. The blue stain fungi kills the tree by blocking water movement. Recent outbreaks of mountain pine beetles killed millions of acres of lodgepole pine trees across western North America. Widespread tree death caused by mountain pine beetles can impact human safety, wildfires, nearby streamflow, and habitat for wildlife.

Mountain pine beetles are native to western North America and outbreak cycles are a natural process in these forests. However, the climate and forest conditions have been more favorable for mountain pine beetles during recent outbreaks than in the past. These conditions caused more severe outbreaks than those seen before.

Logs from mountain pine beetle killed lodgepole pine trees. The blue stain fungi is visible around the edge of each log. Mountain pine beetles introduce this fungus to the tree.

When Tony moved to Colorado, he drove through the mountains eager to see beautiful forests. The forest he saw was not the green forest he expected. Many of the trees were dead! Upon closer examination he realized that some forests had fewer dead trees than others. This caused him to wonder why certain areas were greatly impacted by the mountain pine beetles while others had fewer dead trees. Tony later got a job as a field technician for Colorado State University. During this job he measured trees in mountain forests. He carefully observed the forest and looked for patterns of where trees seemed to be dead and where they were alive.

Tony thought that the size of the trees in the forest might be related to whether they were attacked and killed by beetles. A larger tree might be easier for a beetle to find and might be a better source of food.To test this idea, Tony and a team of scientists visited many forests in northern Colorado. At each site they recorded the diameter of each tree’s trunk, which is a measure of the size of the tree. They also recorded the tree species and whether it was alive or dead. They then used these values to calculate the average tree size and the percent of trees killed for each site.

Featured scientist: Tony Vorster from Colorado State University

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 8.3

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

Students can complete this Data Nugget along with Tony! In this video, Tony provides more background on how he became interested in doing research, how he collects his data, and details on how to construct graphs.