Study Is More About The Bees Than The Trees

Syrphid fly feeding on False Dandelion

Syrphid fly feeding on False Dandelion
Photo from Watauga County CES

Christmas tree growers might not realize that the diverse mixes of groundcovers growing underneath their trees provide important habitat for pollinators.  Pollinators which are responsible for an estimated 75% of the average food products that we eat each and every day!

Dr. Jill Sidebottom, with NC State University’s Christmas Tree Program, and county agents are working on a pollinator study specifically looking at tree farms in Watauga, Ashe, Allegheny, Avery and Mitchell counties.

The study will follow these farms for an entire year, taking data on the mix of specific plants growing under the trees, what’s flowering and when, and what types of pollinators and other insects are observed. This study is unique in that the majority of the fieldwork is not actually focused on the Christmas trees… but rather what’s growing underneath them! 

The best practices specific to the Christmas tree industry on pollinator protection and conservation which result from the study will help tree growers and beekeepers collaborate to sustain pollinators.

Adapted from Christmas Tree Pollinator Study, Watuga County Cooperative Extension Blog 7/9/2012

Renee Strnad Honored as Tarheel of the Week

Renee Strand, Extension Forestry Associate at NC State University

Photo by Corey Lowenstein – clowenst@newsobserver.com

Renee Strand, NC Project Learning Tree Coordinator and an environmental educator with Extension Forestry at NC State University, has been honored as Tarheel of the Week by North Carolina’s largest daily newspaper, the News and Observer.  Over her career, Strnad has evolved a part-time job as an environmental education coordinator into a position as a highly respected and well-known leader in environmental education policy and advocacy in North Carolina. Strnad has a passion for making sure children are exposed to nature and aware of its limited resources.

According to Lisa Tolley, program manager with the state office of environmental education and public affairs, “She is one of the strongest advocates for environmental education in the state.  She’s reached a lot of people, and her passion for her work is contagious.”

Read the complete article in the News and Observer>>

Rodent Robbers Good for Tropical Trees

An agouti with the black palm tree's orange fruit, which contains large seeds.

An agouti with the black palm tree’s orange fruit, which contains large seeds.

There’s no honor among thieves when it comes to rodent robbers—which turns out to be a good thing for tropical trees that depend on animals to spread their seeds.

Results of a yearlong study in Panama, published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of July 16, suggest that thieving rodents helped the black palm tree survive by taking over the seed-spreading role of the mighty mastodon and other extinct elephant-like creatures that are thought to have eaten these large seeds.

Dr Roland Kays, Research Associate Professor, NC State University Department of Forestry & Environmental Resources and Director of the BioDiversity Lab at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences Nature Research Center

Dr. Roland Kays

“The question is how this tree managed to survive for 10,000 years if its seed dispersers are extinct,” says Roland Kays, a zoologist with North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. “There’s always been this mystery of how does this tree survive, and now we have a possible answer for it.”

The study showed that agoutis, rainforest rodents that hoard seeds like squirrels, repeatedly stole from their neighbors’ underground seed caches. All that pilfering moved some black palm seeds far enough from the mother tree to create favorable conditions for germination.

“We knew that these rodents would bury the seeds but we had no idea that there would be this constant digging up of the seed, moving it and  burying it, over and over again,” says Kays, a member of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute team. “As rodents steal the same seed many, many times, it adds up to a long-distance movement of the seed that one animal by itself could have never done.”

One seed was buried 36 times before an agouti dug it up and ate it. About 14 percent of the seeds survived until the following year.

The study, funded with a National Science Foundation grant, caught the furry thieves in the act via individual tags on agoutis, video surveillance of seed caches and tiny motion-activated transmitters attached to more than 400 seeds.

Applying such sophisticated animal tracking techniques to the plant world has the potential to improve scientists’ understanding of forest ecology and regeneration, Kays says.

“When you think about global climate change and habitats shifting, for a forest to move into new areas, trees need to have their seeds moved into new areas. This opens up a route to study how animals can help trees adjust to climate change through seed dispersal.”

Kays, a faculty member with NC State’s College of Natural Resources, was part of an international team that included scientists from Ohio State University and institutions in the Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom and Germany.

– ford –

Media Contacts: 
Dr. Roland Kays, roland_kays@ncsu.edu or via Skype at roland.kays
D’Lyn Ford, News Services, 919/513-4798 or 919/480-9493 dlyn_ford@ncsu.edu

Note to editors: An abstract of the paper follows.
 
“Thieving Rodents as Substitute Dispersers of Megafaunal Seeds”
Authors: Patrick A. Jansen, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Centre for Ecosystem Studies -Wageningen University, Center for Ecological and Evolutionary Studies-University of Groningen; Ben T. Hirsch, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, School of Environment and Natural Resources-Ohio State University; Willem-Jan Emsens, Centre for Ecosystem Studies-Wageningen University, Ecosystem Management Research Group-Department of Biology-University of Antwerp; Veronica Zamora-Gutierrez, Centre for Ecosystem Studies-Wageningen University, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge; Martin Wikelski, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology; Roland W. Kays, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, North Carolina State University

Published: Online the week of July 16, 2012, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Abstract: The Neotropics have many plant species that seem to be adapted for seed dispersal by megafauna that went extinct in the late Pleistocene. Given the crucial importance of seed dispersal for plant persistence, it remains a mystery how these plants have survived more than 10,000 years without their mutualist dispersers. Here we present support for the hypothesis that secondary seed dispersal by scatterhoarding rodents has facilitated the persistence of these largeseeded species. We used miniature radio transmitters to track the dispersal of reputedly megafaunal seeds by Central American agoutis, which scatter-hoard seeds in shallow caches in the soil throughout the forest. We found that seeds were initially cached at mostly short distances and then quickly dug up again. However, rather than eating the recovered seeds, agoutis continued to move and recache the seeds, up to 36 times. Agoutis dispersed an estimated 35 percent of seeds for >100 m. An estimated 14 percent of the cached seeds survived to the next year, when a new fruit crop became available to the rodents. Serial video-monitoring of cached seeds revealed that the stepwise dispersal was caused by agoutis repeatedly stealing and recaching each other’s buried seeds. Although previous studies suggest that rodents are poor dispersers, we demonstrate that communities of rodents can in fact provide highly effective long-distance seed dispersal. Our findings suggest that thieving scatter-hoarding rodents could substitute for extinct megafaunal seed dispersers of tropical large-seeded trees.

Dr. Mary Watzin Named Dean of NC State’s College of Natural Resources

Dr. Mary Watzin, incoming dean of the NC State College of Natural ResourcesDr. Mary Catherine Watzin, dean of the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont, has been named dean of the College of Natural Resources at North Carolina State University, effective Oct. 15. Provost Warwick Arden announced the appointment today.

“I’m very pleased that Dr. Watzin will be joining us to lead the College of Natural Resources,” Arden says. “She has demonstrated significant administrative leadership skills and experience, and brings a broad perspective on natural resources and the environment that will serve this highly regarded college extremely well moving forward.”

An expert in marine sciences, aquatic ecology and management, Watzin has served as dean of the Rubenstein School since 2009 and as professor since 2005. Before becoming dean, she founded and directed the University of Vermont’s lakefront ecosystem science laboratory, which also oversees the university’s research vessel and collaborates closely with an adjacent science center and aquarium.

“I am deeply honored by the opportunity to lead NC State’s nationally prominent College of Natural Resources,” she said. “The college and the university have a bold vision for the future and I am inspired by the transformational change that is under way across the campus. Solutions to the challenges of today’s world will come through new collaborations and the kinds of interdisciplinary teaching, research and global engagement that NC State is pursuing. I am very excited to join this effort.”
 
Watzin has received numerous awards for her work, including the Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Award, the Ibakari-Kasumigaura Prize from the International Lake Environment Committee in Shiga Prefecture, Japan, and the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry Partner of the Year Award in 2006. 

Dr. Mary Watzin at workWatzin has collaborated with a wide range of partners to explore topics ranging from toxicology to aquatic food web dynamics, harmful algae blooms, hydrodyanamics and stream habitat conditions, nonpoint source pollution, and the effectiveness of environmental management approaches and policies.  She has won more than $8.7 million in grants to support her efforts.  She has also worked continuously to bring science into the policy arena, especially around water quality issues.

From 1992 to 2009, Watzin served as chair of the technical advisory committee to the Lake Champlain Steering Committee while also serving on the steering committee itself. She oversaw all technical aspects of the Lake Champlain Basin Program, a collaborative effort between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of the Interior along with the state of Vermont, state of New York and the province of Québec. About $70 million has been invested in the program.

A prolific scholar and noted speaker, Watzin has authored or co-authored more than 60 refereed journal articles and book chapters and more than 45 refereed technical reports and other publications. For the last decade she has presented local talks on research and environmental topics of interest to her community. 

She is a member of numerous scientific societies, including the Ecological Society of America, the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Watzin received her bachelor’s degree in marine science from the University of South Carolina in 1978 and her Ph.D. in marine sciences from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1984. After receiving her Ph.D., she worked as an ecologist for the National Wetlands Research Center, part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in Slidell, La.

– gardiner mccullough –

 Media Contact:  Tracey Peake, News Services, 919/515-6142 or tracey_peake@ncsu.edu

(Photos –  Rubenstein School of Environmental and Natural Resources, University of Vermont)        

Genetic Data Analysis Summer Course Draws Students From 11 Countries

Genetic Data Analysis Summer Course - Prague

Faculty and Students in the 2012 Genetic Data Analysis Summer Course In Prague

Fikret Isik, Associate Professor and Associate Director of  the Tree Improvement Program at North Carolina State University, was invited to teach a one week ‘Summer Course in Genetic Data Analysis – Applications for Plant and Animal Breeding’ by the Czech University of Life Sciences.

The summer course was organized by the Czech University of Life Sciences took place on June 11-15, 2012 in Prague in the Czech Republic.

Jim Holland, Professor of Crop Science and Research Geneticist (USDA) and Christian Maltecca, Animal geneticist with the Department of Animal Science at NCSU joined Dr. Isik to teach the summer course.

The course covered advanced quantitative genetics for analysis of genomic and phenotypic data for plant and animal breeding.  Twenty-five professionals, graduate students and faculty from 11 different countries attended the course.

For More Information, Contact:
Tilla Fearn, Communication Director, (919) 513-4644 or tilla_fearn@ncsu.edu