6.7.24

Seagrass survival in a super salty lagoon

A researcher in the Dunton Lab measures seagrasses underwater using a mask, snorkel, and a white PVC quadrat.

The activities are as follows:

Seagrasses are a group of plants that can live completely submerged underwater. They grow in the salty waters along coastal areas. Seagrasses are important because they provide a lot of benefits for other species. Like land plants, seagrasses use sunlight and carbon dioxide to grow and produce oxygen in a process called photosynthesis. The oxygen is then used by other organisms, such as animals, for respiration. Other organisms use seagrasses for food and habitat. Seagrass roots hold sediments in place, creating a more stable ocean bottom. In addition, the presence of seagrasses in coastal areas slows down waves and absorbs some of the energy, protecting shorelines.

Unfortunately, seagrasses are disappearing worldwide. Some reasons include damage from boats, disease, environmental changes, and storms. Seagrasses are sensitive to changes in their environment because they have particular conditions that they prefer. Temperature and light levels control how fast the plants can grow while salinity levels can limit their growth. Therefore, it is important to understand how these conditions are changing so that we can predict how seagrass communities might change as well.

Ken is a plant ecologist who has been monitoring seagrasses in southern Texas for over 30 years! Because of his long-term monitoring of the seagrasses in this area, Ken noticed that some seagrass species seemed to be in decline. Kyle started working with Ken during graduate school and wanted to understand more about what environmental conditions might have caused these changes. 

Manatee grass (Syringodium filiforme) located within the Upper Laguna Madre.

Texas has more seagrasses than almost any other state, and most of these plants are found in a place called Laguna Madre. During his yearly seagrass monitoring, Ken noticed that from 2012 – 2014 one of the common seagrasses, called manatee grass, died at many locations across Laguna Madre. Since then, the seagrass has grown back in some places, but not others. Kyle thought this would be an opportunity to look back at the long-term dataset that Ken has been collecting to see if there are any trends in environmental conditions in years with seagrass declines.

Each year, Ken, Kyle, and other scientists follow the same research protocols to collect data to monitor Laguna Madre meadows. Seagrass sampling takes place 2 – 4 times a year, even in winter! To find the manatee grass density, scientists dig out a 78.5 cm2 circular section (10 cm diameter) of the seagrass bed while snorkeling. They then bring samples back to the lab and count the number of seagrasses. While they are in the field, they also measure environmental conditions, like water temperature and salinity. A sensor is left in the meadow that continuously measures the amount of light that reaches the depth of the seagrass.

Kyle used data from this long-term monitoring to investigate his question about how environmental conditions may have impacted manatee grass. For each variable, he calculated the average across the sampling dates to obtain one value for that year. He wanted to compare manatee grass density with salinity, water temperature, and light levels that reach manatee grass. He thought there could be trends in environmental conditions in the years that manatee grass had low or high densities.

Featured scientists: Kyle Capistrant-Fossa (he/him) & Ken Dunton (he/him) from the U-Texas at Austin

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level 9.8

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget:

There is another Data Nugget that looks at these seagrass meadows! Follow Megan and Kevin as they look at how photosynthesis can be monitored through the sound of bubbles and the acoustic data they produce.

Follow this link for more information on the Texas Seagrass Monitoring Program, including additional datasets to examine with students.

There are articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals related to this research, including:

National Park Service information about the Gulf Coast Inventory and Monitoring.

Texas Parks and Wildlife information on seagrass:

11.17.23

The prairie burns with desire

Stuart showing an Echinacea flower setting seed.

The activities are as follows:

Fire plays a crucial role for prairie habitats across North America. Native Americans have long observed that lush and green pastures grow after a wildfire. In many areas, it is part of current and historical native culture to imitate this natural process by deliberately burning the prairie in a controlled way. This land management practice has many benefits, such as helping native grasses form seeds, thinning out plants, and enhancing habitat for prairie animals. By using controlled fires to cultivate these areas, Native Americans increase the availability of food and connect to the environment and their cultural traditions.

Some land management agencies plan prescribed burns to increase the health of prairie ecosystems. However, fire is still suppressed in many North American prairies due to the possible damage to human development. In these areas, scientists have observed that fire suppression contributes to local plant species extinctions, but we do not know why.

Stuart is a scientist interested in how fire can help prairie plants. In the late 1990s, Stuart was in central Minnesota searching for prairie plants in the Echinacea genus. The prairie was ablaze with flowers, so he had no difficulty finding plenty of plants. He tagged each plant so that he could study them again in the future. However, when he returned the following year, the field had almost no flowers! He kept returning to this same field. A few years later he found the site was again filled with flowers. That year there had been a prairie fire. Visually seeing the impacts of fire on the landscape is a memory he will not forget.

Stuart became interested in learning more about how fire affects the reproduction of native prairie plants. He knew that Echinacea plants grow in many places, but they have a hard time making seeds. This genus cannot self-pollinate, meaning they must be fertilized with pollen from a genetically different plant. Echinacea plants are also dependent on insects, such as bees, to pollinate them.

Echinacea flower

In 1996, a research team started collecting data on Echinacea plants in a large research site in Minnesota. This prairie site had a schedule for prescribed burns, or controlled fires that are started by experts to manage the land. These burns would happen every 4-6 years during the spring.

The team established a set of plot locations that they visited each summer. They searched for and mapped the location of all flowering Echinacea plants within these plots. They took measurements on each Echinacea plant – whether it was flowering, and the distance to its second closest Echinacea neighbor.

Stuart decided to take a new look at this long-term dataset. He had two ideas for how fire might be helping Echinacea plants. First, fire might help all the plants get on the same schedule and make flowers at the same time. This synchrony, or flowering at the same time, could help pollen get from one flower to another. Second, fire might remove competing plants from the area, opening up bare ground for new seeds to establish. This would allow Echinacea plants to be closer to one another, again making it easier for pollen to move between flowers.

With these data, Stuart could compare years with and without prescribed burns to see whether fire helped Echinacea flowering. To look at whether fire decreased the space between blooming Echinacea plants, he looked at the distance between a focal plant and its second-closest neighbor. To see whether fire increased the synchrony of flowering, Stuart used the data to calculate the proportion of Echinacea plants that were in bloom during the summer sampling period.

Featured scientist: Stuart Wagenius from the Chicago Botanic Gardens Written by: Harrison Aakre

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 8.6

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget:

More information about the Echinacea project, based in Minnesota. There are additional datasets to explore, blog posts from the field, identification guides, and pictures of the experiments.

Article to learn about cultural perspectives that are traditionally not represented in textbooks. Native Americans have, and continue to incorporate ecology, observations, and making sense of patterns for millennia.

For more information about indigenous knowledges, or traditional ecological knowledge, check out the following websites:

Published journal article about this research. Wagenius, S. et al. 2020. Fire synchronizes flowering and boosts reproduction in a widespread but declining prairie species. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

9.15.23

A difficult drought

A field of switchgrass studied by biofuels researchers.

The activities are as follows:

Most people use fossil fuels like natural gas, coal, and oil daily. We use them to generate much of the energy that gets us from place to place, power our homes, and more. Fossil fuels are very efficient at producing energy, but they also come with negative consequences. For example, when burned, they release greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide into our atmosphere. The right balance of greenhouse gasses is needed to keep our planet warm enough to live on. However, because we have burned so many fossil fuels, the earth has gotten too hot too fast, resulting in climate change. Scientists are looking for other ways to fuel our lives with less damage to our environment.

Substituting fossil fuels with biofuels is one of these options. Biofuels are fuels made from plants. Unlike fossil fuels, which take millions of years to form, biofuels are renewable. They are made from plants grown and harvested every few years. Using biofuels instead of fossil fuels can be better for our environment because they do not release ancient carbon like burning fossil fuels does. In addition, the plants made into biofuels take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow.

To become biofuels, plants need to go through a series of chemical and physical processes. The sugar stored in plant cells must undergo fermentation. In this process, microorganisms, like yeast, transform the sugars into ethanol that can be used for fuels. Trey is a scientist at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Center. He is interested in seeing how yeast’s ability to transform sugar into fuel is affected by environmental conditions in fields, such as temperature and rainfall.

When there was a major drought in 2012, Trey used the opportunity to study the impacts of drought. The growing season had very high temperatures and very low rainfall. These conditions make it more difficult for plants to grow, including switchgrass, a prairie grass being studied as a potential biofuel source.

Trey knew that drought affects the amount and quality of switchgrass that can be harvested. He wanted to find out if drought also had effects on the ability of yeast to transform the plants’ sugars into ethanol. Stress from droughts is known to cause a build-up of compounds in plant cells that help them survive during drought. Trey thought that these extra compounds might harm the yeast or make it difficult for the yeast to break down the sugars during the fermentation process. Trey and his team predicted that if they fed yeast a sample of switchgrass grown during the 2012 drought, the yeast would struggle to ferment its sugars and produce fewer biofuels as a result.  

To test their idea, the team studied two different sets of switchgrass samples that were grown and collected in Wisconsin. One set of switchgrass was grown in 2010 under normal conditions. The other set was grown during the 2012 drought. The team introduced the two samples to yeast in a controlled setting and performed four fermentation tests for each set of switchgrass. They recorded the amount of ethanol produced during each test.

Featured scientists: Trey Sato from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Written by Marina Kerekes.

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 8.2

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget include:

There are other Data Nuggets that share biofuels research. Search this table for “GLBRC” to find more! Some of the popular activities include:

The Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) has many biofuel-related resources available to K16 educators on their webpage.

For activities related specifically to this Data Nugget, see:

6.1.23

Collaborative cropping: Can plants help each other grow?

The activities are as follows:

Alfalfa (middle) planted in a Kernza® field.

Most of the crops grown on farms in the United States are annual plants, like corn, soybeans, and wheat. Annual plants die every year after harvest and must be replanted the following year. Preparing farm fields for replanting every year can erode soils and hurt important bacteria and fungi living in the soil.

One way to change how we produce food is to grow more perennial crops. Perennial plants live for many years and don’t need to be replanted. Perennials stay in the ground all year and start growing right away in the spring before annual crops are even planted. This early growth also gives perennial crops a “head-start” in competing with annual weed species that emerge later in the season.

While there are potential benefits of perennial crops, they are not commonly planted because they tend to make lower profits for farmers than annual crops. Crop scientists are still examining potential options to make perennial crops work at a large scale for farmers. For twenty years, researchers at The Land Institute in Kansas and at the University of Minnesota have been looking at a new perennial grain, called Kernza®, that could be used as an alternative to wheat and rye annual crops. Kernza® comes from the seeds of a plant called intermediate wheatgrass. Because Kernza® is such a new crop, scientists still have a lot to learn about it. Before it can be widely used by farmers, they want to know what field conditions help the plants grow to ensure the crop makes money for farmers.

Dr. Jake Jungers taking a soil core in a Kernza® field.

One strategy to improve field conditions for perennial crops is to plant legumes in the field alongside them. Legumes can make nitrogen, a nutrient that plants need to grow, more available to the plants around them. Additionally, farmers can select legume species that typically don’t compete with the crop but may outcompete weeds.

Jake is an ecologist who uses his knowledge about plants to make agriculture more sustainable. Jake wanted to do some research into alfalfa, a type of perennial legume that might work well with Kernza®. Jake thought that growing alfalfa alongside Kernza® would lead to increased profit and yield for two reasons. One, because it would add nitrogen to the soil to boost crop growth. Two, because alfalfa would compete with agricultural weed species, making valuable resources available for the crop plants.

To test this idea, Jake set up an experiment with his team. Alfalfa was grown with Kernza® at three different locations in Minnesota in 2019. The study was replicated four times at each site, with the same amount of alfalfa and Kernza® planted into each field. At the end of the growing season, the fields were harvested, and the plants were sorted into three categories: Kernza®, alfalfa, and weed species. He further sorted Kernza® by grain, which can be used for food, and straw, which can be used for animal feed. Jake wanted to compare yield, or plant growth per unit area, across the plant categories. To do this, he weighed all the plants in each category to get the biomass and then divided by the area of the field.

Featured scientist: Jake Jungers (he/him) from the University of Minnesota

Written by Claire Wineman (she/her)

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 8.5

3.19.23

Mowing for Monarchs – Extension Activities

Gabe Knowles has developed and piloted several data activities to accompany these Data Nuggets activities. For the first activity, Gabe developed an extension to bring his data into elementary classrooms. Using beautiful art created by Corinn Rutkoski, the following are materials to print and use the activity in your classroom:

This activity was first piloted at Michigan Science Teachers Association Annual Meeting in 2023.
11.14.22

Does more rain make healthy bison babies?

A bison mom and her calf.
A bison mom and her calf.

The activities are as follows:

The North American Bison is an important species for the prairie ecosystem. They are a keystone species, which means their presence in the ecosystem affects many other species around them. For example, they roll on the ground, creating wallows. Those wallows can fill up with water and create a mini marsh ecosystem, complete with aquatic plants and animals. They also eat certain kinds of food – especially prairie grasses. What bison don’t eat are wildflowers, so where bison graze there will be more flowers present than in the areas avoided by bison. This affects many insects, especially the pollinators that are attracted to the prairie wildflowers that are abundant in in the bison area. 

Not only do bison affect their environment, but they are also affected by it. Because bison eat grass, they often move around because the tastiest meals might be scattered in different areas of the prairie. Also, as bison graze down the grass in one area they will leave it in search of a new place to find food. The amount of food available is largely dependent upon the amount of rain the area has received. The prairie ecosystem is a large complex puzzle with rain and bison being the main factors affecting life there. 

The Konza Prairie Biological Station in central Kansas has a herd of 300 bison. Scientists study how the bison affect the prairie, and how the prairie affects the bison. Jeff started at Konza as a student, and today he is the bison herd manager. As herd manager, if is Jeff’s duty to track the health of the herd, as well as the prairie. 

One of the main environmental factors that affect the prairie’s health is rainfall. The more rain that falls, the more plants that grow on the prairie. This also means that in wetter years there is more food for bison to eat. Heavier bison survive winters better, and then may have more energy saved up to have babies in the following spring. Jeff wanted to know if a wet summer would actually lead to healthier bison babies, called calves, the following year.

Jeff and other scientists collect data on the bison herd every year, including the bison calves. Every October, all the bison in the Konza Prairie herd are rounded up and weighed. Since most of the bison calves are born in April or May, they are about 6 months old by the time are weighed. The older and the healthier the calf is, the more it weighs. Very young calves, including those born late in the year, may be small and light, and because of this they may have a difficult time surviving the winter. 

Jeff also collects data on how much rain and snow, called precipitation, the prairie receives every year. Precipitation is measured daily at the biological station and then averaged for each year. Precipitation is important because it plays a direct role in how well the plants grow. 

Jeff and a herd of bison on the Konza prairie.
Jeff and a herd of bison on the Konza prairie.
Konza LTER logo

Featured scientist: Jeff Taylor from the Konza Prairie Biological Station

Written by: Jill Haukos, Seton Bachle, and Jen Spearie

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 8.7

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget include:

  • The full dataset for bison herd data is available online! The purpose of this study is to monitor long-term changes in individual animal weight. The datasets include an annual summary of the bison herd structure, end-of-season weights of individual animals, and maternal parentage of individual bison. The data in this activity came from the bison weight dataset (CBH012).
  • For more information on calf weight, check out the LTER Book Series book, The Autumn Calf, by Jill Haukos.
9.6.22

Changing climates in the Rocky Mountains

Lower elevation site in the Rocky Mountains: Temperate conifer forest. Photo Credit: Alice Stears.

The activities are as follows:

Each type of plant needs specific conditions to grow and thrive. If conditions change, such as temperature or the amount of precipitation, plant communities may change as well. For example, as the climate warms, plant species might start to shift to higher latitudes to follow the conditions where they grow best. But what if a species does well in cold climates found at the tops of mountains? Because they have nowhere to go, warming puts that plant species at risk.  

To figure out if species are moving, we need to know where they’ve lived in the past, and if climates are changing. One way that we can study both things is to use the Global Vegetation Project. The goal of this project is to curate a global database of plant photos that can be used by educators and students around the world. Any individual can upload photos and identify plant species. The project then connects each photo to information on the location’s biome, ecoregion, and climate, including data tracking precipitation and temperature over time. The platform can also be used to explore how the climates of different regions are changing and use that information to predict how plant communities may change. 

Daniel is a scientist who is interested in sharing the Global Vegetation Project data with students. Daniel became interested in plants and vegetation when he learned in college that you can simply walk through the woods and prairie, collect wild seeds, germinate the plants, and grow them to restore degraded landscapes. Plants set the backdrop for virtually every landscape that we see. He thinks plants deserve our undivided attention.

Daniel and his team wanted to create a resource where students can look deeper into plant communities and their climates. Much of the inspiration for the Global Vegetation Project came from the limitations to undergraduate field research during the COVID-19 pandemic. Students in ecology and botany classes, who would normally observe and study plants in the field, were prevented from having these opportunities. By building an online database with photos of plants, students can explore local plants without having to go into the field and can even see plants from faraway places. 

Daniel’s lab is based in the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming, where the plants are a showcase in both biodiversity and beauty. These communities deal with harsh conditions: cold, windy and snowy winters, hot and dry summers, and unpredictable weather during spring and fall. The plants rely on winter snow slowly melting over spring and into summer, providing moisture that can help them survive the dry summers. 

The Rocky Mountains are currently facing many changes due to climate change, including drought, increased summer temperatures, wildfires, and more. This creates additional challenges for the plants of the Rockies. Drought reduces the amount of precipitation, decreasing the amount of water available to plants. In addition, warmer temperatures in winter and spring shift more precipitation to rain instead of snow and melts snow more quickly. Rain and melted snow rapidly move through the landscape, becoming less available to plants in need. On top of all this, hotter, drier summers further decrease the amount of water available, stressing plants in an already harsh environment. If these trends continue, there could be significant impact on the types of plants that are able to grow in the Rocky Mountains. These changes will have an impact on the landscape, organisms that rely on plants, and humans as well.

Daniel and his colleagues pulled climate data from a Historic period (1961-2009) and Current period (2010-2018). They selected two locations in Wyoming to focus on: a lower elevation montane forest and a higher elevation site. To study climate, they focused on temperature and precipitation because they are important for plants. They wanted to study how temperature and precipitation patterns changed overall and how they changed in different seasons. They predicated temperatures would be higher in the Current period compared to the Historic period in both locations. For precipitation, they predicted there would be drier summers and wetter springs.

Featured scientist: Daniel Laughlin from The University of Wyoming. Written by: Matt Bisk.

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 10.5

Additional teacher resource related to this Data Nugget:

8.17.22

Mowing for monarchs, Part II

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

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

The activities are as follows:

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

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

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

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

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

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 8.2

Additional resources related to this Data Nugget:

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

Mowing for monarchs, Part I

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

The activities are as follows:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 8.2

Additional resources related to this Data Nugget:

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

Buried seeds, buried treasure

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Featured scientist: Marjorie Weber from Michigan State University. 

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

Written by: Elizabeth Schultheis and Melissa Kjelvik.

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 9.7

Additional teacher resource related to this Data Nugget:

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

YouTube video summarizing the search and the experiment:

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