In honor of Darwin Day Feb. 12, 精品SM在线影片 evolutionary biologist Daniel Medeiros explains what we get right and wrong about Darwinism

For evolutionary biologists, the big day is imminent.

No, not Valentine鈥檚 Day.

For many scientists, educators, historians and humanists, the upcoming event of note is , which supporters say is a time to reflect and act on the principles of intellectual bravery, perpetual curiosity, scientific thinking and a hunger for truth, as embodied by .

The noted British naturalist and biologist is widely recognized for his book  which is considered the foundation of modern evolutionary biology. Darwin Day is celebrated internationally every Feb. 12, the anniversary of Darwin鈥檚 birth on Feb. 12, 1809, outside of London.

Scientists say it鈥檚 hard to quantify the impact Darwin had on evolutionary theory. At the same time, , and some propagandists have used his scientific theories to support a variety of  and, in some cases, would likely be appalled by.

Recently, Professor Daniel Medeiros with the 精品SM在线影片 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology talked with Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine about some of the mistaken ideas associated with Darwin while also delineating why some of his scientific concepts can be so difficult to grasp. His responses have been lightly edited for style and condensed for space.

Question: One idea about Darwin is that he originated the idea of evolution. True or false?

Medeiros: False. I actually had a colleague, Ned Friedman, a plant evolutionary biologist, who taught a whole course on evolutionary thinking before Darwin. And in fact, Darwin鈥檚 own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, had some pretty clear evolutionary thoughts and logic. I think Darwin collected the most data and articulated the best case for evolution by natural selection, but he didn鈥檛 come up with it out of whole cloth.

That鈥檚 how things happen in evolution鈥攖here鈥檚 鈥榗onvergence.鈥� Similar solutions can occur in different lineages around the same time or given the same environmental pressures. That鈥檚 the idea of evolution by natural selection; I think several scientists came to that conclusion simultaneously. So, it wasn鈥檛 all Darwin, but I think he did the best, most comprehensive way of presenting things.

Question: What about the idea that Darwin鈥檚 theory on evolution encompasses the origins of life?

Medeiros: I think he may have hypothesized on the origin of the living creature from a primordial soup of chemicals, but I don鈥檛 think he knew enough about chemistry or cell biology to go beyond that. I don鈥檛 know how he would have even begun to hypothesize about cellular evolution.

Question: What about the idea that Darwin believed humans are descended from apes?

Medeiros:  That鈥檚 kind of a tough one, even for some of my students in my upper division class. The proper way to think about evolution is as a family tree. The idea that humans evolved from a chimp or humans evolved from a monkey; specifically, what you think of a modern monkey, is incorrect. It鈥檚 easy to conceive given that those modern species are clearly related to us, but we are not descended from them.

Now, our last common ancestor looked something like a chimp and would definitely be classified as a 鈥済reat ape鈥�. We also had an ancestor who looked something like a monkey, but technically, 鈥榳e came from a monkey鈥� is not how you would describe it in evolutionary biology terms. We evolved from species that were chimp-like, but we鈥檙e not chimps and we did not come from modern monkeys.

Any species that鈥檚 alive today is a successful modern species, as much as we are. If it鈥檚 around today, it鈥檚 a survivor. It鈥檚 a successful species that has its own set of innovations. If it鈥檚 living today, it鈥檚 its own success story.

Question: What about the idea some attribute to Darwinism that modern humans aren鈥檛 evolving?

Medeiros: That鈥檚 incorrect. That鈥檚 a property of all living things鈥攖hat they are always changing. It鈥檚 not something you can stop. DNA is always accumulating mutations. There鈥檚 always genetic variation, and that variation responds to the environment. In the short window of time we have been around, it鈥檚 hard to see, but it鈥檚 true.

I鈥檓 not sure how we鈥檙e evolving, but there鈥檚 no organism that鈥檚 not evolving. So, we鈥檙e changing for sure, in some way, but I don鈥檛 know how. It will be interesting to see.

Question: There鈥檚 also this idea associated with Darwinism that animals are deliberately attempting to adapt to their environments. Accurate or not?

Medeiros: That鈥檚 a misconception. The word 鈥榚volution鈥� means unfolding, originally, which implies that you have some truth or something that鈥檚 unfolded or revealed. But it鈥檚 actually much more chaotic and there鈥檚 a huge random factor.

From the organism鈥檚 perspective, they鈥檙e just throwing out babies with variations. And hopefully, one of them sticks. And if one sticks, your lineage hangs around and has another chance for more mutation. So, it鈥檚 random and it鈥檚 chaotic.

Andthere are limitations. Species go extinct all the time. Maybe their environment changed too quickly, and they were unable to adapt. Maybe they just didn鈥檛 hit upon the right mutations, or there could be constraints to their development or their genome that wouldn鈥檛 allow adaptive traits to evolve and they go extinct. That鈥檚 common.

(The word) 鈥榚volved,鈥� in terms of how people use it in common language, it鈥檚 like, 鈥極h, I evolved. I became better.鈥� It鈥檚 about this idea of better and more. But then extinction is evolution, too. It鈥檚 just change over time, however, that manifests itself.

A cool thing that I teach in my class is that a lot of animal evolution since the Cambrian or a little later鈥攈as been about loss; trimming down, getting rid of what you don鈥檛 need. I think that鈥檚 one thing that鈥檚 not really recognized too much, that evolution is not always鈥攐r even mostly鈥攁bout gaining fancy new features. It鈥檚 not necessarily this march toward more and more sophistication. It鈥檚 a lot about use it or lose it鈥攁bout losing features that are not adaptive anymore. A lot of evolutionary change, especially in animals, is loss.

Then you have these blockbuster new things, like feathers, which are a huge innovation, or a turtle shell, or the human brain, which is another huge innovation. But then, even more than that, what makes a lot of species different from each other is that they鈥檝e lost different things.

Question: Why do you think it seems so hard for people to grasp the idea of evolution?

Medeiros: Evolution is hard to understand because it鈥檚 inherently about processes beyond any individual鈥檚 experience. It鈥檚 about things happening on a scale of tens, hundreds, thousands and millions of years. That鈥檚 hard for us to fathom, and it鈥檚 not necessarily intuitive.

It鈥檚 kind of like the idea of the earth spinning around the sun. That鈥檚 not intuitive. If you look outside, that鈥檚 not what you see happening. You don鈥檛 feel like you鈥檙e spinning. The sun moves up over you. It defies your experience as a human.

So, it鈥檚 easy to have misconceptions and I don鈥檛 fault people for that. It鈥檚 a hard, hard concept just by itself, much less the implications where it could be perceived as taking human beings down several notches, as just another animal that evolved.

Question: There is an idea in some quarters that evolution and religion, whether it's Christianity or another faith, are incompatible. Any thoughts on the notion that if you believe in one of those ideas you can鈥檛 believe in the other?

Medeiros: I think that鈥檚 mostly on the religion side of things. It鈥檚 really up to you, whether you, as a religious person, can believe in evolution. That鈥檚 a great thing about religion: If you want to incorporate evolution into it, you could surely work it in, but if it somehow interferes with your beliefs, you won鈥檛. You can shape your religion to exclude any kind of science, if you want.

In my education, I鈥檝e had several biology teachers, evolutionary biologists and otherwise, who were quite religious people and (evolution) didn鈥檛 interfere with their belief.

As I understand it, Darwin himself was a religious person for most of his life, and finally ended up calling himself agnostic. You can see some of that in his writing. With some (discoveries) it was like, 鈥極K, where does this place God? This evidence maybe puts the role of God in a different place than I was taught when I was younger.鈥� I think he used some language like that in his writing.

I鈥檓 not a historian, but I don鈥檛 think Darwin ever excluded a role for religion.

Question: It seems like not long after Darwin published The Origin of Species, people began using his work to promote their own political, religious or ideological agendas?

Medeiros: Yes, 100%. I couldn鈥檛 give you the exact timing on when that started to happen, but I think it was while he was still alive that people began to formulate ideas around his work. I think that鈥檚 not uncommon: You figure out some scientific truth and there will be people to exploit it for good and bad.

Evolution by natural selection and survival of the fittest鈥攁ll of those touch phrases and concepts鈥攊n isolation have been used to justify some very horrible things.

Question: The Darwin Awards were created a few years back as a tongue-in-cheek honor bestowed on people who removed themselves from the gene pool by doing something really dumb. How far removed are those awards from anything associated with the actual British biologist?

Medeiros: I remember first hearing about them in graduate school. At the time, I thought it was humorous, but after I became a parent, the idea of people getting hurt and dying in weird ways was no longer so funny.

And really, that鈥檚 not how natural selection works. It鈥檚 not like, you鈥檙e an evolutionary loser, so you get attacked by a lion because you鈥檙e dim-witted.

Really, it鈥檚 all about the numbers at the margins. For example, with this particular adaptive allele, you have lineage that has 5% more offspring鈥攁nd you do that over many generations and throw in some random environmental change鈥攁nd they鈥檙e the fittest. But their fitness is just kind of at the margins and there鈥檚 a lot of luck involved, too.

So, it鈥檚 not as clear as, 鈥極h, this is person鈥檚 a ding-dong; they strapped themselves to a rocket' or whatever. That鈥檚 not an accurate representation of Darwin鈥檚 ideas.

Question: Will you be doing anything for Darwin Day this year?

Medeiros: In past years I鈥檝e given a talk about Darwin, mentioning some things about the 鈥榤odern synthesis鈥� concept, which includes things that Darwin was not aware of at the time鈥攆illing in some of the gaps he was unaware of鈥攍ike DNA and genes.

That鈥檚 not to take anything away from Darwin. It鈥檚 fun to read Darwin because he鈥檚 so modern in how he thought and deduced things. I think a lot of biologists feel like, 鈥榃ell, if I was back then, that鈥檚 how I would have figured things out, too.鈥�

But to answer your question, nothing special planned, like reading from Origins. I might celebrate by going to my lab and writing a grant.  Also, my youngest son has the same birthday as Darwin, so we will be focusing on that! I think Darwin would appreciate that 鈥� by all accounts he wasn鈥檛 just a great scientist, but a really devoted dad.

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精品SM在线影片 distinguished professor recognized for 鈥榯ransformative contributions to restoration ecology鈥�

Katharine Suding, a 精品SM在线影片 distinguished professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, has won The and Prize for Achievement in Science and been named a Franklin Institute Laureate.

Suding is recognized for making 鈥渢ransformative contributions to restoration ecology by increasing our understanding of degraded ecosystems and their recovery dynamics. Her work addresses urgent environmental and societal challenges, and guides policies and practices of ecological restoration, biodiversity conservation and sustainable ecosystem management,鈥� notes The Franklin Institute.

The Bower Awards honor extraordinary excellence in science, technology and business. Suding and her eight colleagues in the 2025 Franklin Institute Laureate cohort are cited as 鈥渢rue visionaries, pushing the boundaries of innovation to find solutions to some of the world鈥檚 most pressing challenges鈥攁nd their achievements are transformative.鈥�

鈥淚 am incredibly honored to receive The Franklin Institute鈥檚 Bower Award for Achievement in Science,鈥� Suding said. 鈥淓cosystem restoration is tasked with solving complex environmental challenges facing the world today, a discipline that well represents Benjamin Franklin鈥檚 spirit of innovation and application. I could not have done this work if not for amazing collaborations with students, postdocs and colleagues, as well as indispensable partnerships with restoration practitioners. This award is for them, for the field and for everyone working to bring back nature.鈥�

Suding is a plant community ecologist who works at the nexus of ecosystem, landscape and population biology. Her research aims to apply cutting-edge 鈥渦sable鈥� science to the challenges of restoration, species invasion and environmental change. She and her work with a range of conservation groups, government agencies and land managers to provide evidence-based solutions that take into account biodiversity, human well-being and management opportunities.

They employ a combination of long-term monitoring, modeling and experimental approaches in settings that range from alpine tundra to oak woodlands to grasslands. Common themes of their work include plant-soil feedbacks, functional traits, species effects on ecosystem processes and non-linear and threshold dynamics.

Founded in 1824, The Franklin Institute of Philadelphia strives to honor the legacy of Benjamin Franklin by presenting awards for outstanding achievements in science, engineering and industry. As the oldest comprehensive science and technology awards program in the United States, The Franklin Institute Awards Program has recognized more than 2,000 of the most pioneering scientists, engineers, inventors and innovators from around the world.

Previous laureates include Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Pierre and Marie Curie, Max Planck, Orville Wright, Albert Einstein, Edwin Hubble, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ruth Patrick, Jacques Cousteau, Stephen Hawking, Martin Rees, Gordon Moore, Shuji Nakamura, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Blackburn, Bill Gates, Jim West and Gerhard Sessler, Cornelia Bargmann, John Goodenough, Jim Allison and Frances Arnold.

Suding and the other members of her laureate cohort will be honored in Philadelphia the week of April 28鈥揗ay 2. Awards will be bestowed during a ceremony at The Franklin Institute on May 1 hosted by Chief Astronomer Derrick Pitts.

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Apparently, herbivores are not fond of chewing sandpaper

Sand verbena, Abronia fragrans, has a moth pollination syndrome, or a suite of floral characters modified by natural selection driven by moth pollination. Its flowers are open all night but closed all day, and long corolla tubes prevent bees from taking nectar but are ideal for moths with long tongues.

Moths follow plumes of floral fragrance from sand verbena until they are within sight of the bright, conspicuous white globes of 25 to 80 flowers, where they sip a nectar reward.

Although sand verbena has a large geographic range, it is limited to sandy habitats in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota. While sand verbena is described as having white flowers that open only at night, populations in northern Texas and southwestern Oklahoma have a range of flower colors from light pink through fuchsia, and they also differ from most populations in the times that flowers open and close.

The plants with pink or fuchsia flowers remain open until late morning, and they reopen in early evening, allowing considerable visitation by bees and butterflies. Measurements of pollination success in the pink and fuchsia populations showed that diurnal or daytime pollination contributed 18% of the pollination success, in contrast to nothing at all in the remainder of the geographic range of the species.

These data are consistent with the hypothesis that diurnal pollinators were a selective force producing and maintaining novel flower color and diurnal presentation of open flowers in the mornings and late afternoons. The long corolla tubes frustrate bee efforts to collect pollen or nectar but hold nectar available to virtually all butterflies.

Butterflies are visiting diurnally鈥攖he most common among them is the skipper Lerodea eufala, the Eufala skipper. These data and other observations suggest the hypothesis that the Eufala skipper applied selective pressure to change flower color from white to pink or fuchsia and to modify the times that flowers open and close.

How could a butterfly apply selection pressure? This terminology unintentionally suggests that the butterflies had a plan and the organization to apply it. But that was not the case. If some flowers did not close exactly at sunrise and if a small butterfly pollinated them, enhancing their seed set, the genes that influenced tardy closing of flowers would become more common in the next generation.

The butterfly did nothing more than sip nectar from a large globe of flowers, nor did the sand verbena do anything to achieve an intended goal. The metric of natural selection is the relative number of offspring produced by competing genotypes of sand verbena. Genes that had been rare produce more seeds, making those genes more common.

Sand verbena is in the genus Abronia, which has about 20 species, all in North and Central America. All thrive in sandy environments, and it is known that 14 of the 20 species have psammophory, a defense to herbivory that is more commonly called sand armor. The armor is assembled when wind-blown sandy grit adheres to sticky exudates on stems and leaves.

I first encountered psammophory when photographing dwarf lupine in the Maze in Canyonlands National Park, and since then I thought it was a rare defense. But a scientific article whose title begins with "Chewing sandpaper" lists more than 200 psammophorous species in 88 genera in 34 families.

Sand armor is not a rare defense; it is geographically widespread and has evolved many times. Experimental studies show that sand armor reduces herbivory鈥攔emove it from stems and leaves, and the plant suffers more herbivory than when the armor was intact. Add more sand, and the plant suffers less herbivory.

While sand verbena has a large geographic range, some species of Abronia have tiny geographic distributions. One example is Yellowstone sand verbena, A. ammophila, which is adapted to and endemic (found nowhere else) to the lake shores in Yellowstone National Park.

An obligate relationship was found recently when a new species of moth, Copablepharon fuscum, was discovered in 1995 on the shores of the Salish Sea between Georgia Straight and Puget Sound. The sand-verbena moth was found on just a few beaches and spits on Vancouver Island and Whidbey Island, and it only occupies sites with windblown sand and large and dense populations of A. latifolia, yellow sand verbena, which is found along Pacific Shores from Baja to British Columbia.

The sand-verbena moth uses yellow sand verbena as its host plant, meaning that it is the site of oviposition and the sole food consumed by the caterpillars. The caterpillars have specialized mouth parts allowing them to manipulate around grains of sand.

I know I will never see a sand verbena nor a dwarf lupine without the phrase "chewing sandpaper" popping into my thoughts.

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How a team of 精品SM在线影片 PhD students produced the first chromosome-level reference genome for humpback whales

Humpback whales are striking animals, not only because of their size, but also because of their complex vocalizations, acrobatic swimming and thousand-mile migrations.

Moreover, they hold a vital role in marine ecosystems, as their fecal matter, which is released as floating plumes, fertilizes the upper layer of the ocean and stimulates the growth of the photosynthesizing plankton there. These plankton are the basis of the marine food chain and are major contributors to the global carbon cycle.

PhD student Maria-Vittoria Carminati worked with colleagues to create the first chromosome-level reference genome for humpback whales.

Despite the importance and charisma of humpback whales, research into the species has been limited by the lack of complete genetic information.

Maria-Vittoria Carminati, a PhD student in the 精品SM在线影片 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, changed this when, along with Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Nolan Kane and a team of fellow graduate students*, she created the first chromosome-level reference genome for the species.

Moving the needle

Carminati became an attorney in 2008 and worked in that field until recently. 鈥淚 came to the realization that I wanted to do something more meaningful with my brain power,鈥� she says. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 why I switched to science: I thought it would allow me to make greater contributions to society.

鈥淪o, three years ago, I went back to college and got my bachelor鈥檚 in ecology and evolutionary biology.鈥� After that, she started her PhD at 精品SM在线影片. There remained the question of what she would do to 鈥渕ove the needle forward,鈥� but Carminati knew it would probably involve the ocean.

鈥淚鈥檓 a diver, I鈥檓 a dive instructor, I like to sail even though I鈥檓 not very good at it,鈥� she continues. After seeing a humpback whale in person one day, she started reading about them and found a paper that mentioned they were splitting into different subspecies. 鈥淚 thought the paper was trying its best, but I don鈥檛 think it had the tools it needed to be assertive about what it was saying.鈥�

One of those tools is a reference genome. So, Carminati went to  for funding and to  for the sequencing. She got a permit to sequence the humpback DNA sample from the  and obtained the sample itself from the .

The sample was from the kidney of an orphaned whale calf that was beached and died on the shore of Hawaii Kai.

Cantata Bio鈥檚 sequencing yielded half a terabyte of data, which Kane tasked a class to help Carminati process.

A humpback whale swimming off the coast of Moorea, French Polynesia. (Photo: /Wikimedia Commons)

The basics of genome sequencing

Genome sequencing is the process scientists use to determine a large amount, if not the entirety, of an organism鈥檚 DNA, which is packaged in threadlike structures called chromosomes. Because the entire length of a chromosome cannot be sequenced at once, several strips are sequenced and then combined in what is known as a genome assembly.

The product of the researchers鈥� work is called a reference assembly. According to Carminati, this means that the chromosomes are represented well enough to be used in comparison with the DNA of other organisms. 鈥淚t鈥檚 like having the full book of an organism鈥檚 DNA,鈥� she says. 鈥淚n our case, we are only missing 0.0003% of the entire genome.鈥�

This level of accuracy distinguishes their assembly from others, such as the scaffold-level assembly of the humpback whale genome that already existed. To continue the book analogy, this level of assembly can be compared to a collection of passages that cannot be definitively ordered or associated with a particular 鈥渃hapter,鈥� or chromosome.

Such uncertainty is partially the result of short read lengths. 鈥淪hort reads are cheaper, so often, labs will do short reads,鈥� Carminati says. 鈥淭he problem with a short read is that you are only getting, say, a couple of sentences from each page in the book.鈥� These few sentences are less distinctive than longer passages, which leaves more doubt in the final genome assembly.

The DNA in the researchers鈥� assembly was created from long reads, which allows it to be organized into chromosomes. Their assembly also had a high depth, which is to say that reads were performed 30 times to ensure accuracy, consistent with the platinum standard introduced by Philip Morin of the .

Insight and annotation

While this chromosome-level genome was created too recently for researchers to have made discoveries by using it, Carminati says that the resource can be expected to provide insights into interesting traits of humpback whales, such as their cell regulation, large size and cancer resistance, as well as the formation of subspecies and other elements of genetic variation.

A humpback whale breaches off the coast of Tahiti. (Photo: /Wikimedia Commons)

鈥淲e are right at the beginning of this process,鈥� Carminati explains, 鈥渂ut the reason that you can start making those insights is because if you have a platinum-level assembly, you have a far greater degree of certainty of what genes are and are not there.鈥� This will allow scientists to tell with certainty whether a gene exists, does not exist or exists and is expressed multiple times.

鈥淭hat goes to cell regulation and cancer resistance,鈥� Carminati says, 鈥渂ecause, for example, if you have a lot of genes that relate to cell regulation, cell repair and cell control, that indicates a cancer-preventing or cancer-halting mechanism because cancer is the result of the misregulation of cell division.

鈥淪o, if you have multiple genes like this, that might be one way that these enormous, 40-ton creatures are able to get so big and have so much cell division but not develop cancer.鈥�

Other insights could be provided by synteny analyses, which are comparisons between sets of chromosomes. According to Carminati, these comparisons can help identify conserved areas: regions of genes that are unlikely to be rearranged between generations. When genes are together in a conserved area, this could indicate that they work together or are necessary for each other鈥檚 function.

The researchers performed a synteny analysis between the chromosomes from the humpback whale reference genome and the chromosomes of a blue whale. Synteny analyses can also indicate evolutionary relationships, and their analysis showed that there is a high level of consistency in the evolutionary relationships between the two species.

They also used BUSCOs (benchmarking universal single-copy orthologs), which are genetic reference guides developed in Switzerland, to evaluate genome completeness. BUSCO genes for mammals correspond to common mammalian traits, Carminati says, like lactation, placentas and live births. This analysis showed high completeness, too, but also represents another possible application of the reference genome: comparing whales to other mammals.

鈥淲e said, 鈥榃hat genes within this mammal BUSCO reference list do both of these creatures [humpback and blue whales] have, but more interestingly, which ones do they not have?鈥欌�� Spending more time with this sort of analysis in the future could provide information about the evolution of whales, since missing mammalian genes would have either served no purpose to whales or even been counterproductive.

Finally, the researchers asked Cantata Bio start to annotate the reference genome. 鈥淎nnotation tells you what genes are where,鈥� Carminati says, and it is a necessary part of genome analysis. The annotation has not been made public yet, since the process is ongoing.

However, the research has already drawn attention, since Carminati presented it at the International Marine Conservation Conference in Cape Town, South Africa, last month. 鈥淪o,鈥� Carminati says, 鈥淚 went from seeing a humpback whale in Hawaii to presenting a genome in Cape Town. Four years ago, I was trying cases. It is a very surreal trajectory.鈥�

*Contributing graduate students are Vlonjat Lonnie Gashi, Ruiqi Li, Daniel Jacob Klee, Sara Rose Padula, Ajay Manish Patel, Andy Dick Yee Tan and Jacqueline Mattos.

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Flower was once thought to repel fleas, a belief long-since debunked

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, Boulder County was in severe drought in September and the beginning of October this year. On Oct. 14, I went up on Flagstaff Mountain to see what was blooming and to check the condition of some small cacti, Missouri foxtails.

The foxtails were shriveled and seemed to be shrinking into the earth, a common plight for cacti in drought conditions. But my attention quickly shifted to some delicate daisies鈥攖hese were the only flowers blooming in the prolonged drought.

The flowering species was flowering was Erigeron flagellaris. The plants were about 8 inches tall and had the typical daisy bloom with numerous slender, white petals radiating from a central yellow disc. Erigeron is a large genus in the family Asteraceae, commonly called composites, because each of the blooms is a composite of yellow disc florets in the center and white ray florets radiating.

Each "petal" is a ray floret, a flower that is solely female and fertile. Each of the disc florets is bisexual and fertile. An E. flagellaris bloom has 40 to 125 ray florets and even more disc florets.

In addition to seeds produced by both ray and disc florets, E. flagellaris reproduces asexually by producing stolons, stems that grow horizontally, touching ground at each node.

Erigeron flagellaris, or trailing fleabane, flowers and their mature seeds (Photo: Jeff Mitton)

Contact with the ground stimulates a node to grow a new cluster of roots that support the growth of upright stems, leaves and more flowers. This asexual reproduction creates a spreading clone that, under the best of conditions, resembles a mat. The proliferation of stolons suggests its common names, trailing fleabane and whiplash fleabane. Strawberry plants also spread with stolons, but gardeners usually call them runners.

The genus Erigeron has about 200 species, many of them in North America and all with the common name fleabane. The name, originally from Old English and first used in 1548, comes from the belief that the plant's smell would repel fleas from a dwelling. Plants were either burned or hung in sachets. Both belief and practice were dispelled long ago鈥攆leabanes do not banish fleas.

The Navajo were resourceful at finding preparations of plants that had practical uses for dyes and medicines, and they found a way to use the astringent properties released from crushed leaves of trailing fleabane. They would chew the leaves and then place the moist pulp directly on wounds to stop the bleeding.

Description of the scent of trailing fleabane is elusive. The website Southwest Colorado Wildflowers lists citations in which the scent has been described as spicy, camphor-like, ill-scented, mysterious and downright weird. Chemical studies of fleabanes shows that their fragrances come from essential oils, volatile liquids containing chemical compounds synthesized by the plant.

I was not able to find a study of the essential oil of trailing fleabane, but several other fleabanes have been studied, and all reveal a bewildering diversity of biologically active compounds. For example, a study of the essential oil in E. floribundus, which has the common names tall fleabane and asthma weed, has 85 biologically active compounds. Concentrations of the various compounds differ among fleabane species that have been studied, resulting in a diversity of fragrances.

The constituents in essential oils are undoubtedly expensive to synthesize, but many studies have shown that they contribute to the defense of the plant against herbivores, microbes and fungi. I see a parallel between the essential oils of fleabanes and the resins of pines, firs and spruces.

In fact, limonene is a component of both essential oils and resins. Laboratory studies have shown effective defensive activity of limonene in the oil of E. floribundus, and populations studies have shown that mountain pine beetles eschew ponderosa pines with high levels of limonene.

In summer months, as people camp, hike and generally play in the mountains, one often hears comments about the pleasant fragrance of stands of ponderosa pine, or a spruce and fir forest. But I have never noticed the smell of fleabanes. It is a certainty that herbivores such deer and rabbits note the smell and shun the plants; it is the primary defense of daisies.

The essential oils extracted from several fleabane species can be purchased on the web, but I am sure that sniffing a concentrated concoction of biologically active chemicals from a bottle and nasally inhaling in a field of fleabanes would be different experiences. Let's remember to go fleabane sniffing next summer. 

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精品SM在线影片 researchers demonstrate how knowledge gaps hinder conservation efforts

Over the past century, conservationists have become more effective in sounding the alarm about species at risk of extinction. However, some groups, such as fungi, remain understudied, and the level of risk they face is unknown.

This isn鈥檛 because fungi are insignificant; according to the , fungi are important contributors to soil health and soil carbon sequestration, or the process of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it in soil. However, because so many fungi are poorly studied, the full extent of their contributions to global ecosystems remains unknown.

精品SM在线影片 scientist Alisha Quandt and her research colleagues argue for the importance of closing taxonomical knowledge gaps related to fungi.

The importance of closing these gaps in taxonomical knowledge, or knowledge from the field of science concerned with the classification of organisms, are by C. Alisha Quandt and Danny Haelewaters of the 精品SM在线影片 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, as well as colleagues from several European institutions.

In the study, Laboulbeniomycetes, a taxonomic class of fungi that either parasitize arthropods or use them for dispersal, represent fungi and understudied taxa generally.

Knowing what we don鈥檛 know

While there will always be some things that scientists don鈥檛 know, taking stock of knowledge gaps, or 鈥渟hortfalls,鈥� is necessary to correct these blind spots and avoid unjustified certainty. To this end, Quandt and her co-researchers created a list of gaps in ecological knowledge, specifically those that can hinder conservation efforts. These four types of gaps are the Linnean, Wallacean, Latimerian, and Scottian shortfalls.

The Linnean shortfall, named after Carl Linnaeus, father of modern taxonomy, is the difference between the number of species that exist and those that scientists have described, Quandt says. While many species of macro-organisms, and some groups in particular (such as birds) have been discovered and described, this is not true of micro-organisms and groups like fungi. As to the shortfall鈥檚 significance for conservation, Quandt continues, species that are unknown cannot be conserved.

The Wallacean shortfall, named after Alfred Russel Wallace, a biologist who was an early proponent of the theory of evolution, has to do with incomplete information on species鈥� geographical distribution, according to Quandt. 鈥淭he example from our paper is a species of Herpomyces [a genus of fungi] that we know from the Northeast, Panama and an area in eastern Africa.鈥� Since these places are distant and apparently unrelated, it is unlikely that this species occurs only in those places.

The Latimerian shortfall, named after Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, a naturalist who rediscovered a supposedly long-extinct fish, is expressed as the number of species in a taxonomic group that may or may not be extinct, 鈥渂ecause they haven't been seen or recorded officially, or even unofficially in some cases, for 50 or more years,鈥� Quandt says. Fifty years may seem like a long time for an existing species to go unobserved, but the fish Latimer documented was thought to have been extinct since the discovery of its fossils in the prior century.

Finally, the Scottian shortfall, named after Sir Peter Markham Scott, founder of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)  of Threatened Species, is the difference between the number of described species in higher taxonomic groups (e.g., kingdom, phylum, class) and the number that have been assigned an IUCN classification. The IUCN is a global authority on the conservation status of various species, particularly via its Red List.

Why are some taxa understudied?

Laboulbeniales parasitic fungi growing on a Harmonia axyridis, or Asian ladybug. (Photo: ) 

There are several characteristics that make members of particular taxonomic groups difficult to study鈥攖hey are often relatively uncommon, microscopic, lack distinctive form or do not grow in culture.

鈥淭here is a bias for scientists in general to describe things that are really common,鈥� Quandt says. 鈥淪o, things that many people are encountering on a regular basis get described sooner than rare taxa that you don't encounter that often.鈥�

Of course, size plays into this, as does the lack of morphological traits: organisms the size of Laboulbeniomycetes will tend to go unnoticed even when they are encountered. For example, a fly agaric mushroom can be easily identified by its distinctive red-and-white cap, but the same is not true for the microscopic Laboulbeniomycetes.

The ability to grow cells in a cell culture鈥攁n artificial environment outside of a living organism鈥攊s similarly important, as it allows researchers to both manipulate and define the environment in which cells develop. This makes things that grow in culture easier to describe, Quandt says.

Another potential issue in poorly described taxa that Laboulbeniomycetes exemplifies is cryptic speciation. Cryptic speciation is when a new species forms without any traits that are clearly different from other species鈥�.

Quandt gives an example: 鈥淭he (study鈥檚) first author, my former postdoc Danny Haelewaters, worked on one ladybug-associated taxon that people thought was one species because, morphologically, it looked like one thing; but when he was able to get samples from all over the globe, he used genetic data to separate them into separate clades, which he is now describing formally as individual species.鈥�

There were morphological differences between the species, including size variation in some of their cells, but that sort of thing can be easily missed.

Knowledge shortfalls in Laboulbeniomycetes

In looking for the Linnean shortfall for Laboulbeniomycetes, the researchers first tried to use the class鈥� discovery curve data. Ideally, a discovery curve  represents the gradually increasing number of discovered species within a group. However, this approach produced unrealistic results, likely because the species discovery curve data for Laboulbeniomycetes is flawed, as is typical in poorly studied taxa.

Laboulbeniales parasitic fungi growing on a Scaphidium quadrimaculatum, or shining fungus beetle. (Photo: )

鈥淥ne of the reasons that it's misleading for poorly studied taxa is because there are different rates of study for these groups,鈥� Quandt says. For instance, certain specialist taxonomists may contribute significantly to the known number of species in a short time, creating a rapid increase in discoveries after several decades of little progress.

This 鈥渟kewed specialist effect鈥� isn鈥檛 the only problem with discovery curves of understudied taxa though, Quandt continues, since a species can become popular and receive a lot of study from different labs around the world. 鈥淭his is like something my lab is working on: describing some new species related to the fungus that causes White Nose Syndrome of bats. Because that was just discovered in 2009, there has just been this exponential rise in the number of people studying it.鈥�

So, while the lack of solid discovery curve data prevents a certain estimate of the Linnean shortfall, this proves the difficulty of creating conservation strategies for members of understudied taxa, as such strategies cannot be effectively applied to species that have not been found.

To examine the Wallacean shortfall, the researchers created a heatmap of reports of Laboulbeniomycetes species. This heatmap showed that the highest reported diversity existed in the United States, with several other unconnected hotspots around the world. Quandt says that this is likely the result of the geographical bias in field work and taxonomy toward North America and the northern hemisphere generally.

For example, many countries that have been characterized as megadiverse, such as Colombia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, report very few species, and many in the southern hemisphere report zero. However, the presence of a single species in distant places without reports from intervening countries (e.g., Guatemala, Spain and Ukraine, but not in between) suggests a significant Wallacean shortfall.

This shortfall makes it hard to estimate a species鈥� range size, which is a major consideration in conservation assessments such as the Red List. It also interferes with the use of species distribution models, which are similarly important for conservation efforts targeting rare species.

The Latimerian shortfall for Laboulbeniomycetes was determined using species description dates and published records of species sightings. The researchers found that at least 71% of Laboulbeniomycetes species were not reliably observed after their initial description, and the last reliable observation was 50 or more years ago for 51% of species, compared to 1.7鈥�3% for land-dwelling vertebrates.

The number of species that have not been seen for a long time is an issue for conservationists because it means that it is unknown whether these species are in danger of extinction or have already gone extinct.

As to the Scottian shortfall, not a single species of Laboulbeniomycetes has been assessed for the Red List. While less than 100%, the Scottian shortfall for all fungi is pronounced too, Quandt says, as 鈥渁t the time we wrote this paper, there were only 625 Red List assessments for all fungi,鈥� compared to 150,000 described fungal species, which is likely a vast underrepresentation .

Stigmatomyces scaptomyzae fungi, a species of Laboulbeniomycetes, on a vinegar fly. (Photo: )

This is important because the Red List is a significant tool for conservationists and, Quandt says, it is difficult to act to conserve a species if it hasn鈥檛 been assessed for its Red List status.

Addressing knowledge shortfalls

All of this raises the question of how gaps in scientists鈥� knowledge of microscopic and otherwise difficult-to-study species like Laboulbeniomycetes can be filled. Quandt and her research colleagues say that emerging technologies and trends in scientific data collection may help, and list several examples: DNA metabarcoding, environmental DNA analysis and citizen science.

鈥淒NA metabarcoding is a way to use a barcode, which is a section of the DNA that is unique to a specific species, and sequence those regions of the DNA for all the organisms in that DNA sample,鈥� Quandt explains. 鈥淪o, if I took a gram of soil, and I extracted all the DNA from that soil, I could use the barcode to see which species of fungi are in that one gram of soil.鈥�

Environmental DNA analysis is very similar, she continues, as it is also DNA that is sequenced from the environment. That 鈥渃ould be a gram of soil, it could be a leaf; but it's DNA that is not from a pure culture that we have in the lab, or from a fruiting body like a mushroom. It's a whole community of DNA from some environment.鈥�

Both technologies could be useful for surveying understudied taxa, as their presence may not be immediately apparent but would show up in DNA analysis of soil or other places where they live.

Citizen science is a movement in which regular people help scientists by contributing data, Quandt says. One example of a citizen science platform is , whose website says that every user observation 鈥渃an contribute to biodiversity science,鈥� and that findings will be shared with a data infrastructure organization 鈥渢o help scientists find and use your data.鈥�

The data provided by citizen scientists are generally useful, but in particular might help correct the Wallacean and Latimerian shortfalls鈥攁t least in more easily observable species鈥攁s more people looking will yield more sightings, and these can be used to fill out information about a species鈥� geographical distribution and/or reduce uncertainty about whether it has gone extinct.

Most importantly, Quandt continues, 鈥渨e're at an important moment in the fungal conservation movement. There's a lot of momentum right now, among my colleagues, to start pushing fungal conservation forward, and that's really different than when I started in the field 15 or more years ago.

鈥淭he big take home from this paper that we wrote is that we need to be mindful, as we have all this momentum towards trying to help push fungal conservation, that we don't leave behind some of these groups that are already understudied, and that we try to bring them in and help conserve them, and think about their conservation status, and also keep them in mind when we're talking about fungal conservation as a whole.鈥�

Researchers Thomas Matthews, Joseph Wayman, Jonathan Cazabonne, Felix Heyman and Thomas Martin also contributed to this study.

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精品SM在线影片 researchers use a unique, noninvasive method to determine the environmental factors contributing to several symptoms among tropical fish

For many researchers in biology and other natural sciences, dissecting specimens may not be desirable, though it is often necessary. This is because dissection means killing the animal a researcher is trying to study鈥攁 big issue, especially if the species is experiencing population decline.

Over time, such concerns have led scientists to develop a number of non-invasive techniques, including video transects. This is a type of video recording used in marine biology, in which divers film along a line of fixed length and depth to record images for computer-assisted analysis, obtain permanent data that can be reassessed later and survey wider areas in shorter amounts of time.

精品SM在线影片 scientist Pieter Johnson and his research colleagues use a unique, noninvasive method to determine the environmental factors contributing to several symptoms among tropical fish.

A by Pieter Johnson, a 精品SM在线影片 professor of distinction in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and lead author Cheyenna de Wit of the University of Amsterdam, demonstrates the benefits of recording rather than dissecting specimens.

In their paper on black spot syndrome in ocean surgeonfish, the researchers use video transects to measure the severity of the disease among thousands of fish and identify the environmental factors contributing to its distribution.

What is black spot syndrome?

Black spot syndrome is a collection of several symptoms, the most prominent being the dermal lesions or spots for which the condition is named, according to Johnson. In many species, Johnson says, these lesions are black, 鈥渂ut in some species they鈥檒l show up as white.鈥� They form on the skin, scales and fins of fish.

The spots appear when the free-swimming, larval form of trematodes鈥攃ommonly known as flukes, a type of parasitic flatworm鈥攑enetrate the skin of the fish and form cysts inside them. The distinctive coloration occurs when fish surround the cyst with melanin in response to the invasion, similar to the formation of pearls in oysters.

Relatively little is known about the genus of trematode that causes black spot syndrome, Scaphanocephalus. 鈥淧rior to us detecting it in 2017,鈥� Johnson says, 鈥渋t had never been reported from Caribbean fish. So, it was wholly undescribed from that area.鈥� Much remains unknown about this trematode, including the type of snail that Scaphanocephalus infects before moving on to fish.

However, trematode infection is clearly very common in certain regions: In Johnson鈥檚 study, 70% of observed fish showed signs of infection, while demonstrated both how high the parasite loads are in that region, and how many different fish species seem to be affected, according to Johnson.

As to the consequences of infection for fish, there is some evidence, Johnson says, that infected fish may graze less and have more trouble maintaining buoyancy. Researchers also hypothesize that they are more conspicuous to predators.

鈥淥ne in particular, of course, is osprey, which are visual, fish-specialized predators that are looking for fish through the water,鈥� Johnson says. 鈥淲hen these infected fish tend to flash or turn sideways, and you can see those black spots, it probably makes it a lot easier for the bird to detect them.鈥�

If this hypothesis is true, black spot syndrome could bolster the numbers of the trematodes that cause it, as Johnson says osprey are their definitive host. That means these trematodes must enter the body of an osprey to reproduce. The transmission of the parasites is trophic, so they are passed along when infected fish are eaten.

Noninvasive methods

While black spot syndrome can have negative effects on infected fish, the most important consequences could be for reef ecosystems. According to Johnson, black spot syndrome has been increasingly prevalent in important herbivorous grazing fish in the Caribbean, such as surgeonfish and parrotfish.

For more information on the complex lifecycles of digenetic trematodes, see this article about other research from CU involving the parasites.

鈥淚n tropical coral reef ecosystems,鈥� Johnson explains, 鈥渟urgeonfish and parrotfish, and other herbivores play a key role by grazing on algae.鈥� Since infected fish are evidenced to graze less, and since they may be more likely to be eaten by osprey, the population of algae in the affected area can increase.

鈥淎lgae and coral are in a dynamic balance,鈥� Johnson says, and if there is enough algal growth, 鈥渋t can start to overwhelm and kill corals. So, in these areas, we try to keep those populations of surgeonfish and parrotfish as viable as possible, so that they can continue to regulate and graze down the algae.鈥�

In fact, some studies have even said that , with particular emphasis on parrotfish because the prior primary grazer in the Caribbean, spiny sea urchins, were killed off by disease in the 1980s. Also, trematode infection isn鈥檛 the only thing threatening surgeonfish and parrotfish populations, as they are popular catches for fisheries.

Because the fish being studied are ecologically important, it is particularly important to avoid interfering with their populations. Ordinarily, this is difficult, since dissection is the surest way to confirm a trematode infection鈥攖he parasites being clearly visible inside the fish鈥檚 bodies. In this case, though, the black spots characteristic of black spot syndrome allowed for a different approach: the video transect method.

To record as many surgeonfish as possible, and therefore provide an accurate estimate of how many fish were infected, SCUBA divers filmed at 35 sites along the coast of Cura莽ao, an island in the southern Caribbean. They recorded two and five meters below water for either 10 minutes or until 20 adult surgeonfish had been filmed.

An ocean surgeonfish with black spot syndrome. (Photo: Cheyenna de Wit)

Environmental factors

Besides determining that 70% of surgeonfish showed visible signs of black spot syndrome, Johnson and de Witt correlated different environmental factors with the severity of the syndrome, which they based on the average number of spots per fish.

One of the most significant effects the researchers observed arose from longitude鈥攖hat is, the position of fish from east to west along the leeward (downwind) shore. Both the prevalence and intensity of black spot syndrome was lower toward the east and higher toward the west.

Johnson hypothesizes that this effect is caused by urban and industrial development, as the east end of Cura莽ao, where a portion of the research took place, is privately owned and less developed. The researchers observed the same association between development and infection intensity in Bonaire, the neighboring island.

The first component of the effect was wave intensity, which was negatively associated with infection intensity because the larval form of trematode that infects fish can鈥檛 swim well enough to overcome opposing tides. Wave energy is usually greatest at the eastern end of Cura莽ao, so this will have contributed to the lower intensity of infection at the east end.

The other components were positively associated with infection intensity. Nitrogen concentration increases with sewage and domestic runoff, which can contain nutrients and other pollutants. Nutrients can increase the population of trematode hosts, and pollutants can weaken the immune systems of fish that trematodes infect.

While fishing pressure can be either positively or negatively correlated with parasite abundance, Johnson says, this depends on the species involved. In the case of Scaphanocephalus, fishing pressure could increase abundance if it removed predatory fish from the environment, resulting in an increased snail population.

精品SM在线影片 students also play an important role in this research. Undergraduates in the field course Coral Reef Ecology and Conservation (EBIO 4090, taught by Johnson) spend their fall semester learning about coral reefs and the factors that threaten them before traveling to Cura莽ao over winter break. During a week-long SCUBA expedition, students learn how to collect video transect data using the same methods Johnson and his research colleagues use and are contributing valuable data to the understanding of black spot syndrome. For the upcoming trip, students will be revisiting some of the same sites as in the study to assess how black spot severity has changed through time, particularly following recent warm water bleaching events that have killed many corals.

Since most of the factors composing the difference between the east and west ends come from human action, it is possible that the severity of black spot syndrome could be significantly reduced if the handling of runoff and/or fishing behavior were changed.

A unique methodology

One noteworthy part of the way Johnson and de Witt鈥檚 study was conducted is that, with the videos collected, the researchers had observers record the number of lesions on each fish. This is unique, as prior studies have simply noted whether lesions were present, leaving the severity of infection uncertain.

Moreover, methods like the one used in this study may help to solve the challenges that come with observing ocean life. 鈥淭here's a lot of ocean out there and not a tremendous number of people to study it,鈥� Johnson explains, 鈥渟o I think approaches like this could be applied in other areas where we're detecting blackspot syndrome.鈥� Photos are an especially useful way to study the ocean because they are easy for anyone to take thanks to digital technology, he adds. For this reason, community science platforms like can be used to aggregate a large amount of data.

鈥淲hen people are on vacation, or they鈥檙e diving, or they鈥檙e swimming,鈥� Johnson says, 鈥渢hey upload all of their observations and fish photos, and we鈥檝e been using that to scan across large sections of the Caribbean and lots of different fish species; and now some of the undergrads in the lab are also extending that to look into parts of the Indo-Pacific and other regions of the world where Scaphanocephalus occurs.

鈥淪o, I think those kinds of approaches, video transects and these community science-uploaded images, together start to give a much bigger picture of patterns of infection over large geographic areas.鈥�

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In her Distinguished Research Lecture, 精品SM在线影片 Professor Christy McCain will highlight how certain traits in some mammal and insect populations indicate who is at greatest risk from climate change

Colorado鈥檚 small, mountain-dwelling mammals are moving higher鈥攏ot for better views or real estate, but because climate change is forcing them to.

This finding is based on a 13-year study of 27 rodent and four shrew species in Colorado鈥檚 Front Range and San Juan mountains鈥攔esearch that included trapping, tagging and releasing the various mammals to better understand their range.

While the findings are more complex than a simple trend of animals moving up the mountain, they spotlight the sobering possibility that climate change could force some mammals from Colorado entirely.

Christy McCain, a professor in the 精品SM在线影片 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and curator of vertebrates in the CU Museum of Natural History, will discuss mountain biodiversity and climate change in her Distinguished Research Lecture Nov. 14.

鈥淲e鈥檝e been talking about climate change in the Rockies for a long time, but I think we can say that this is a sign that things are now responding and responding quite drastically," Christy McCain, lead author, in Feb. 2021.

McCain, a professor in the 精品SM在线影片 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and curator of vertebrates in the CU Museum of Natural History, uses mountains as natural experiments to study biodiversity, ecological theory, global change, montane ecology and range limits.

She will discuss mountain biodiversity and climate change in her Distinguished Research Lecture Nov. 14, highlighting the research her lab has done to understand how animals鈥攎ostly vertebrates and insects鈥攁re distributed on mountains around the world.

She and her research colleagues have found that different groups of animals, driven by their evolutionary history and climate, show distinctive patterns. For example, mountain biodiversity for rodents, salamanders and moths is quite different from birds, bats and reptiles. 

The conservation priorities for each group of mountain organisms are closely tied to elevational diversity patterns, land-use change and complex interactions with a rapidly warming and drying climate. McCain will explore these topics through case studies of mammal populations in the Front Range and San Juan Mountains and carrion beetles鈥攅xamining how various physiological traits like heat and desiccation tolerance may be critical to responses to climate change.

About Christy McCain

McCain received dual bachelor鈥檚 degrees in wildlife biology and studio art from Humboldt State University, was a natural-resources and protected-areas specialist in the Peace Corps Honduras and earned her PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Kansas.

She was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California Santa Barbara before coming to 精品SM在线影片 as an assistant professor in 2008.

   What: 124th Distinguished Research Lecture, Mountain Biodiversity and Climate Change

  Who: Professor Christy McCain of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and CU Museum of Natural History

  When: 4-5 p.m. Nov. 14, followed by a Q&A and reception

  Where: Chancellor's Hall and Auditorium, Center for Academic Success and Engagement (CASE)

McCain studies how montane organisms are distributed on mountains around the world and how those populations and species are influenced by human land use and climate change. Her research spans topics across ecology and evolution to understand and conserve biodiversity.

Funded by the National Science Foundation through several grants, her research has appeared in more than 60 peer-reviewed journals, including Science, Ecology Letters, Ecology and Global Change Biology, among others.

McCain is the curator of vertebrate collections in the CU Museum of Natural History, where she is a steward for the continued protection and use of museum specimens for understanding and conserving the world鈥檚 biodiversity. Over the years, she has taught mammalogy as well as other topics in field biology, creative conservation messaging and mountain ecology and conservation.

About the Distinguished Research Lectureship

The Distinguished Research Lectureship is among the highest honors given by faculty to a faculty colleague at CU Boulder. Each year, the Research and Innovation Office requests nominations from faculty for this award, and a faculty review panel recommends one or more faculty members as recipients. 

The lectureship honors tenured faculty members, research professors (associate or full) or adjoint professors who have been with 精品SM在线影片 for at least five years and are widely recognized for a distinguished body of academic or creative achievement and prominence, as well as contributions to the educational and service missions of CU Boulder. Each recipient typically gives a lecture in the fall or spring following selection and receives a $2,000 honorarium.

McCain and Jamie Nagle, a professor of physics, have been recognized with 2024-25 Distinguished Research Lectureships. Nagle will give his lecture Feb. 6, 2025.

Top image:

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Once frightened of insects, Ramsey has become a leader in the field of entomology

Samuel Ramsey, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the 精品SM在线影片, is one of this year鈥檚 recipients of the .

The Lowell Thomas Award, named after broadcast journalist and explorer and given by , recognizes 鈥渆xcellence in domains or fields of exploration,鈥� according to the award announcement. In particular, the award celebrates 鈥渋ndividuals who have grit, tenacity, are undaunted by failure, and endure all obstacles, finding a way forward to discovery and results that expand the limits of knowledge.鈥� 

Samuel Ramsey (left) working with the chieftain of a hill tribe village in Thailand to sample domesticated bees for parasites. (Photo: /.)

, also known as 鈥測our friendly neighborhood entomologist,鈥� didn鈥檛 always like insects. They used to terrify him. But in the second grade he conquered his fears by learning about insects at his local library.

Now, more than 25 years later, Ramsey is one of the most innovative and distinguished thinkers in the field of entomology. His research has won him numerous awards, including first place in the , the American Bee Research Conference鈥檚 Award for Distinguished Research and the Acarological Society of America鈥檚 Highest Award for Advances in Acarology Research.

Ramsey鈥攁 member of the , class of 2024鈥攁lso runs a nonprofit, the , which seeks to protect pollinator diversity.

Ramsey鈥檚 fellow awardees this year are zoologist , ocean conservationist and geothermal scientist . Past recipients include , , , , and .

The takes place in Austin on Nov. 1.

Top image: Samuel Ramsey researching bee biodiversity in Thailand. (Photo: /.)

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I鈥檝e visited the same Rocky Mountain subalpine meadow weekly for a decade of summers looking at plant-pollinator interactions鈥�here鈥檚 what I learned

Imagine a bee crawling into a bright yellow flower.

This simple interaction is something you may have witnessed many times. It is also a crucial sign of the health of our environment鈥攁nd one I鈥檝e devoted hundreds of hours of field work observing.

Interactions between plants and pollinators help plants reproduce, support pollinator species like bees, butterflies and flies, and benefit both .

Julian Resasco is an assistant professor in the 精品SM在线影片 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

These one-on-one interactions occur within complex networks of plants and pollinators.

In my lab at the 精品SM在线影片, we鈥檙e interested in how these networks change over time and how they respond to stressors like climate change. My team emphasizes long-term data collection in hopes of revealing trends that would otherwise be unnoticed.

Working at Elk Meadow

Ten years ago, I began working in Elk Meadow, which is located at 9,500 feet (or 2,900 meters) elevation at the University of Colorado鈥檚 Mountain Research Station.

I wanted a local field site that allowed for frequent observations to study the dynamics of plant-pollinator networks. This beautiful subalpine meadow, bursting with wildflowers and just 40 minutes from campus, fit the bill perfectly.

Since 2015, often joined by members of my lab, I have made weekly hikes to Elk Meadow. We visit from the first flower in May to the last in October. We observe pollinators visiting flowers at plots scattered throughout the meadow, walking the periphery to minimize trampling. The morning is the best time to visit because pollinator activity is high and thunderstorms often roll in at midday during the summer in the Rocky Mountains.

Observing the network

Elk Meadow is rich in biodiversity. Over the years, we have observed 7,612 interactions among over 1,038 unique pairs of species. These pairings were made by 310 species of pollinators and 45 species of plants.

Pollinators include not only a wide variety of bees, but also flies, butterflies, beetles and the occasional hummingbird. Expert entomologists help us identify some of the insects.

Plants include species that are widespread, like the common dandelion, and some that are only found in the Rocky Mountains, like the Colorado columbine.

Common but vital

Collecting data in Elk Meadow is fun, but it is also serious science. Our data is useful for understanding the dynamics of plant and pollinator interactions within and across seasons.

For example, we learned which interactions between plants and pollinators are stable and which change over time and space. We  interactions between generalist species and their many partners over time and in different plots across the meadow.

Generalist species can tolerate a range of environmental conditions, meaning they are more frequently available to interact.

In other words, generalist species are more likely to be alive, active and foraging in the case of pollinators鈥攐r flowering in the case of plants鈥攃ompared with species that can only survive if environmental conditions like temperature, sunlight and rainfall are just right to support them.

Generalist species are vital in networks, but they often don鈥檛 receive the same conservation attention as rare species. Even these common species  destabilizing entire ecosystems. Protecting these species is important for maintaining biodiversity.

Julian Resasco at Elk Meadows at 精品SM在线影片's Mountain Research Station. (Photo: Julian Resasco)

In it for the long term

As we gather more years of data, our study is becoming increasingly useful for understanding how networks and pollinator populations are changing鈥攅specially with signs of climate change increasingly emerging. Most ecological studies are only designed or funded for one or a few years, making our 10-year dataset one of only a few for plant-pollinator networks.

It is only with long-term ecological data that we can detect  to climate change, particularly because of high year-to-year variability in weather and populations.

The National Science Foundation supports a network of  across the U.S., including  near Elk Meadow, which is dedicated to the study of high-mountain species and ecosystems.

Colorado鈥檚 climate, like much of the world, is experiencing , such as rising temperatures, earlier snow melt and more late-winter and spring rain instead of snow. These changes lead to earlier water runoff from mountains, drier soils and more severe droughts. These shifts can have important consequences for plants and pollinators, including changes in where species are found, how many there are, and when they flower or forage.

High-elevation plant and pollinator communities may be especially vulnerable to climate change impacts since these areas are experiencing  compared with lower elevations.

We have seen warmer and drier conditions at Elk Meadow. Overlaid in this trend, we have observed  that can help us understand and predict how different species will fare in a hotter and drier future.

Climate change is  and is predicted to become increasingly important in the coming decades. Immediate threats also include pesticide use, light pollution and the  for farming and development.

The state of Colorado recently commissioned a study to  of Colorado鈥檚 native pollinators and make recommendations on how to protect them.

Appreciating the current pollinator landscape

Working at Elk Meadow has provided opportunities for my students to conduct independent research and receive valuable training and mentoring.

Seeing the beauty of the living things in the meadow and observing their cycles inspires my students and me.

Elk Meadow is a place to clear my mind and come up with new research ideas. It is also a place to observe and record how one tiny patch of our planet is changing in reaction to bigger changes happening around it.

Julian Resasco is an assistant professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the .

This article is republished from  under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

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