Same office, new program

Same office, new program

As of May 2014, I officially graduated with my Master of Science in Biology from Central Michigan University:

Yea! Made it! Clip art provided by Microsoft Clip Gallery

I laughed, I cried, I stressed, and now, September 2014, I’m sitting at the same desk I’ve worked at for the last few years. How could this be? 

My desk in its current incarnation.
I have no idea how that plant is still alive. 

In the Fall of 2013, I was presented with an amazing opportunity: Central Michigan University was starting a new interdisciplinary science doctoral program in the Fall of 2014: Earth and Ecosystem Science. Under the continued advisement of Dr. Anna K Monfils, I could expand my work in prairie fen plant diversity to answer some of the questions I formed over the course of my Master’s degree. I had developed a growing interest in biogeography and remote sensing, and I was eager to apply those ideas to my research.

I was not the only one interested in the remote sensing of prairie fens at CMU: Dr. Benjamin Heumann, a professor in the Geography department, had been using a privately owned prairie fen as a test site for his research into spectral variation hypothesis. On a few occasions this summer I accompanied Dr. Heumann as a part of his flight team to gather imagery using an unmanned aerial system (UAS) for several different projects. Central Michigan University Communications accompanied us to Wilderness State Park to gather imagery of the federally threatened pitcher’s thistle (Cirsium pitcheri).

The Pitcher’s thistle (Cirsium pitcheri) is a
federally threatened species that grows four
to eight years underground before emerging
as a basal rosette for one year, and
flowering and dying the next year.

Even Michigan Radio was interested in the remote sensing of prairie fens and came out to Dr. Heumann’s test site with us.

Dr. Benjamin Heumann and his Master’s student John Gross
prepping the unmanned aerial system for takeoff at a prairie fen.

Brian Stark, Rachel Hackett, and John Gross
working behind the scenes to gather imagery
data at Wilderness State Park.
Photograph by Steve Jessmore, Central Michigan University Communications.

With all this publicity around the UAS, I didn’t forget my plant identification roots this summer. I managed to sneak out into the field with labmate Clint Pogue and undergrad Riley Zionce to identify plants at a Nature Conservancy owned and managed prairie fen in Jackson County. Clint and Riley are continuing the prairie fen diversity sampling in southeast Michigan and surveying for the state threatened butterfly Poweshiek Skipperling (Oarisma poweshiek). I hoped to go out with them again at the end of the season, but these boys are too efficient and hardworking; they were finished before the new semester began!

Clint Pogue, biologist, graduate student, and rain enthusiast.

Riley Zionce, undergraduate biologist and wilderness explorer.

I guess I’ll have to wait until next summer to get my hands dirty again. Now: planning my doctorate project at that desk….

Rachel

Thoughts on Gardening

Growing up I lived in a nice house on 1 acre of land.  Along all of the edges of the rectangular lawn I loved were curved garden plots filled with flowers, trees, and other beautiful plants.  Unfortunately, in order to have such beautiful gardens we needed to maintain them; and we I mean me.  Every summer Saturday I, alongside my mother, was delegated the job to weed, plant, and mulch for hours until I could go swim at the beach or hang out with my friends.  It became a dreaded task that I looked for every opportunity to avoid.

A beautiful as impatiens are they were my worst
enemy growing up in the summer.
Source: http://puckettsnursery.com/images/impatiens.jpg

Fast forward to my junior year of college, through one of my student groups I heard of the club Campus Grow.  This group maintained a community garden on CMU's campus where students could rent a plot of land and garden that 10x10ft square.  My boyfriend and I jumped at the chance and decided to start our journey from the beginning, starting our first seeds in mid February.  A week after we transplanted our measly seedlings more then half were dead and the others looked like they were barely hanging on to life.  We plucked the dead ones, replacing them with hearty store bought seedlings, and nurtured the ones that seemed distressed.  As the summer went on I had flashbacks to those Saturdays in the summer, weeding in the hot sun and began making excuses.  Our plot quickly exploded with weeds and it seemed all was lost, on the bright side our plot was the most 'productive' of all the plots in the garden.  We did get a harvest from the plants that managed to survive and not be totally choked out by weeds, however not as large of a harvest as I had been hoping.  After clearing our plot Rob and I decided it would be easier to garden if we didn't have to ride 15min to the garden and opted to not renew our plot for the next summer.

This is pretty much what my flower seedlings look
like, but with more leaves.
Source: http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums
/annuals/msg112301343544.1112561123716.jpg

This year we decided to try something new, potted plants.  Instead of planting a large number of plants in the ground we would do a few of our favorites and grow them in pots in our apartment instead.  We started cherry tomatoes, parsley, spearmint, and flowers; and began a little later then the previous year, in late March.  The tomatoes, spearmint, and parsley we started in egg cartons then transplanted to larger pots, the flowers however we started directly in a decorative pot. 

None of the plants we started are doing very well.  The parsley is spindly, only has on true leaf on each plant, and cannot support itself.  The tomatoes are doing will but are very small compared to how I remember they were this time last year.  I also left them outside for some direct sun only to inadvertently uproot two and damage the others.  I have since replanted them and added significantly more soil for support, however one that got uprooted doesn't look like it is going to make it.   The flowers are also spindly and not supporting themselves, however they are the most promising of all the others.
   
 Even though it seems hopeless as of now we will press on and hopefully are plants will not just improve but Thrive!

Hopefully my bachelors buttions survive and I get some nice blooms like this.

I cannot wait for my tomatoes to grow so I can make this and a bunch of other yummy food!

Writing an Invasive Species Management Plan

My story begins last fall, towards the end of my first ever botany class.  One day my professor, Dr. Anna Monfils, asked a classmate, and friend of mine, and myself to stay after.  Invariably I thought the worst and readied myself to be chastised for some unknown cause.  In fact the exact opposite happened, she offered both of us jobs in her lab!  I am very interested in both invasive species and aquatic habitats so when she gave me the option of working on the AIS grant I jumped at the chance.  Fast-forward to the beginning of this semester; first the whole lab met to get to know each other then all of the individuals working on the AIS grant met to learn our process and pick plants.  As I read through the plant list as soon as I read the words curly-leafed pond weed I knew I had to do that one. Over the summer part of my job was snorkeling in the middle of mats of aquatic weeds, I have distinct, murderous memories of this weed and how irritated it would make my skin when I inevitably brushed against it.  Knowing that a large part of this project was learning about management methods I thought the perfect way to exact my revenge was to learn how to kill it and help provide that information to as many people as possible.

A non-flowering piece of curly-leafed pond weed or Potamogeton crispus

The first step of the writing process as outlined by our graduate student supervisor was to collect as many publications as possible.  I fear I did this to the word and without enough discrimination for content.  After uploading dozens of articles it was time to annotate them into an annotated bibliography.  I had never written an annotated bibliography before so it took me a few tries before I truly understood what I was suppose to be doing.  As I annotated the many papers I had retrieved I realized my mistake of getting as many papers as possible with no regard to content.  I began quickly screening the papers before I read them and would only annotate those that had information that was not covered by another paper and was relevant to the task at hand.  As I read and annotated scientific paper after scientific paper I began to hate this project I had signed up for.  There is no duller, more technical, harder to read writing ever written as a scientific paper; but I plugged on knowing that soon I would be able to start writing my first draft.  As I read, annotated, read, annotated, and read some more I began to realize the papers were getting easier to digest.  Technical terms became common knowledge, experimental techniques became basic procedures, and those big words I had to look up began making their way into my vocabulary.  I finally felt like I could confidently read, understand and annotate an entire paper the first read through when I found no more papers to annotate!   

The next step was to begin my first draft.  I am a painfully slow writer, I can never decide what wording sounds best and where to put what detail.  As I began the process of writing my draft I found many places where the knowledge gathered from the papers I had retrieved lacked and found myself going back through papers and finding more sources and clarifying facts that other papers left questionable.  This began the confusing process of write a little, look up a paper, correct what I had written, then annotate the new paper I put in my draft. I found the hardest section to write being the life history section, mainly because my species had a life-cycle very different from other plants.  Really, what plant goes dormant in the summer, germinates in the fall, and grows in the winter under the ice?  but that is what by nemesis Potamogeton crispus does.   It does so through the use of its dormant summer form pictured above called a turion.  After writing the life history the rest was fairly easy, and then I finally arrived at the methods of control section.  I  had spent most of my time learning about ways to kill this plant and was to excited to beginning writing about all of the methods I had learned.  I don't know what method of control was my favorite; mechanically cutting it down in the prime of its growth before it can reproduce, poisoning it before it has a chance to reach the surface, or essentially starving it to death by cutting it off from the sunlight above.  After I completed this section, I read through the whole, thing and felt a great sense of accomplishment; I had done it, my first draft was done!  I turned it in to Rachel and got back a highly marked, changed, and critical review.  The shear amount of changes and suggestions on the corrected draft was extremely discouraging as I though my draft was perfect.  As I worked through the paper again, comment by comment, I found that most were simple comma changes, sentience re-wording, and questions or clarifications.  I quickly found that I had finished these edits and again felt a sense of accomplishment because most of the content of my paper was acceptable.  Now that only the final edits remain I find myself excited to start working on another plant, and now that I know the problems I faced with my first one I am confident this time around I will be more efficient.

Even though my ultimate goal was complete Potamogetion crispus annihilation, learning about this plant gave me a new respect for it and for life itself.  This plant grows in the harshest conditions of winter, can survive high concentrations heavy metals, fast moving water, and countless other pollutants.  In many areas this plant is loved as it has that ability to accumulate toxins in a water system and return that system to relative health.  Potamogeton crispus grows during the harshest part of the year just so it can have a leg up on the plants of the next season.  Writing this plan showed me that while we may hate something for a wrong we feel has been inflicted upon ourselves, there is often more to the story that has not been considered.  I also confirmed my belief that life is amazing and will find any way to thrive, even if it means being subjugated to the worst possible conditions just to survive.

Don’t worry about what Phil said; spring will come!

Don’t worry about what Phil said; spring will come!

In these dreary days when the thermometer reads 4°F, but it "feels like -15°F" (exactly what my weather channel app told me yesterday), don’t forget that winter won’t last forever. 

"Punxsutawney Phil” and Bill Murray try and escape the February woes. 
Photo from
 http://snakkle.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/bill 
-murray-phil-groundhog-day-actor-movie-photo-GC.jpg

I’ve lived many places: Michigan, Costa Rica, Pacific northwest… well I’ve lived 3 places. And whenever I lived outside of the Mitten, I was disappointed by their seasons. 

In Costa Rica, sure it was 50 - 70°F all year long, but, for me, there was little differentiation between the times of year. There was those few months when the green trees had some extra flowers thrown in there, when the machete trees (Erythrina berteroana) lost their leaves and kept their bright red flowers, but as a newcomer, the dry, wet, and wetter seasons weren’t all that pronounced. Maybe if I had lived there longer than 10 months, I would have grown accustom to the change of seasons, but I really missed spring and autumn. 

A green-crowned brilliant hummingbird perches in a flowering
machete tree (Erythrina berteroana).

I never stayed a full winter in the Pacific northwest, but they definitely lacked autumn. Sure, all the Douglas fir, Sitka spruce, and cedar trees were green all year long, but there was a definite lack of color.

Beautiful, but evergreen on San Juan Island, Washington.

Michigan never disappoints with its season, weather good or bad. Sure, I curse it often, especially when it keeps me from my adventures, but where do you get such diversity and colors every single year?

Winter 2014 at Deerfield County Park, Mount Pleasant, Isabella County, Michigan.

We are almost to the point where flowers bloom in May 2012 in Ives Road Fen, Tecumseh, Lenawee County, Michigan (The Nature Conservancy).

Summertime at the prairie fen in August 2013 in Park Lyndon County Park, Chelsea, Washtenaw County, Michigan

The trees are turning in November 2013 at Ives Road Fen, Tecumseh, Lenawee County, Michigan (The Nature Conservancy)

Sometimes I wish I could go dormant like a plant in the winter, but the rest of the year is definitely worth the wait.

Wood lily (Lilium philadelphicum)
blooming in July 2013 at
Brandt Road Fen in Holly
Recreation Area, Oakland
County, Michigan.

-Rachel H

Meet that Dylan guy

soaking in the Rocky Mountain view

     Hello herbarium blog readers!  My name is Dylan Hilts and I am relatively new to Dr. Monfils' plant biology laboratory.  Since this is my first blog, I guess I'll take this opportunity to tell you all what makes me tick.  I am a Biology major with a focus on natural resources.  Wildlife conservation and management is an area of study that is of great interest to me and largely the reason that I came to study at CMU.  I grew up in northern Michigan on the Au Sable River.  Those of you that are not familiar with the Au Sable, I would strongly recommend that you check it out sometime.  It is a beautiful trout stream, that is absolutely loaded with biodiversity and character.  Growing up near this pure resource has endowed me with the love and respect of our Mother Earth (she's gorgeous isn't she?!) and the drive to become a significant contributor to conserving natural resources like the Au Sable River, and all the wildlife and vegetation that inhabits it's amazing ecosystem.  Outside of my biology "geekery" I spend a lot of my free time playing a variety of sports such as basketball, baseball, golf, and disc golf.  My love for disc golf has really escalated over the last couple of years, prompting me to play year round.  Most view this as crazy considering this is Michigan, but to me is an excuse to get outside, exercise, and enjoy nature even in the harsh winter conditions.

playing disc golf at 11,000 ft 

     I'm also into canoeing, camping, music, movies, and hot wings... naturally.  Anyways, enough about me.  The purpose of this blog is to tell you what I do in Dr. Monfils' lab.  I am currently working on an a grant studying aquatic invasive plant species in Michigan.  The grant is headed by the Department of Environmental Quality and is focused on generating effective management strategies for these plants.  The goal is to minimize their spread, thus reducing the damage they impose on their surrounding environment.

Reading a Tree

Before I first started working at CMU, I could have told you what a family tree was and could trace the genealogy of my family back, seeing how distantly related I was to past relatives in the process.  But a phylogeny?? What’s that? What information could possibly come from a plant systematics tree with no information on long-dead ancestors present on its branches?

Well, those ancestors are the links that show us how present day species are evolutionary connected. We don’t need to be told what color their flowers were, or how their leaves look, because we can make a pretty good guess based on what their lineages evolved into. By tracing character traits of morphology or genetics through a tree, we can make a decent hypothesis as to how a group of organisms is related to each other and apply this information in taxonomical and population studies.

But how do you read a tree if all you have are the tips of the branches? It all comes down to monophyletic groups, or clades (there’s a jeopardy word for you).  Below you can see a pretty simple tree, showing the evolution through time to the organisms at present day, numbers 1-5. Each horizontal line is a lineage, evolving from a common ancestor at the “node”.  We call the organisms that have evolved from an ancestor descendants.  

As you can see from the diagram, there are two groups displayed, the ingroup and the outgroup. The ingroup is all the species you have chosen and that you want to understand relationships among. All the ingroup species are more closely related to each other than they are to the outgroup, which serves to root the tree.  The outgroup should have enough similarities to help define relationships among ingroup taxa, while at the same time helping show where the ingroup falls on a bigger biodiversity tree. 

A group made of ALL the descendants from a common ancestor is called a monophyletic group.  This is similar to looking at a family of two parents with three children, and grouping all the children together.  A group made of SOME BUT NOT ALL of the descendants from a common ancestor is known as a paraphyletic group. This is a little like looking at a family with five children, but grouping males and females separate, and disregarding all the males. This would not give a very accurate representation of the current generation of the lineages present from the parents, would it?

  

Monophyletic groups of organisms are those most closely related to each other, and aid in describing and organizing species.  Not only that, but our herbarium is arranged according to the evolution of plants, so understanding a phylogeny of plants can help everyone find what they are looking for in our shelves!

 http://ohioplants.org/bryophytes-introduction/

Not all trees are set up the same way either, and you could see a variety of trees representing the same relationships. 

 http://www.tree-thinking.org/intro.html

Want to become better at reading phylogenies? Check out this paper “Tree Thinking” that was recommended to me and is tremendously helpful!

Cheers!

~ Heather