Intern Project Ideas For 2007
Mentor List:
This is a list of researchers who have volunteered to answer questions and/or mentor a project.
Jennifer Powers
Research interest: Biodiversity and climate experiment
powers@umn.edu
Sarah Hobbie
Research interest: Ecosystem ecology, carbon and nutrient cycling, decomposition, species effects on ecosystem processes, plant-soil interactions
shobbie@umn.edu
Linda Kinkel:
Research interest: research focused on the ecology of plant-associated micro-organisms in native prairie and in agricultural soils
kinkel@umn.edu
Brian Pelc:
Graduate student under the direction of Rebecca Montgomery and Peter Reich. He works with corylus regeneration in savanna plots.
pelc0002@umn.edu
Joe Fargione:
Research Associate in the Ecology department at the U of Minnesota.
Research interests: Focuses on the effect of climate changes on plant community structure in a desert grassland communities at the Sevilleta LTER station.
fargione@umn.edu
Application for Submitting a Research Proposal
Your research proposal is to be submitted electronically to the Associate Director at jcorney@umn.edu. Please provide the following:
1. An abstract consisting of (1) the title of project and names of the people who will be working on the project and (2) no more than 250 words detailing the goals, purpose, importance, and objectives of the research and summarizing its size and location, its design and methods, and its potential impacts.
2. Research Proposal (maximum total length 1000 words, covering all of the following topics): (A) Description of research (design of experimental or observational study, methods, types of data to be collected, where data and voucher specimens will be archived). (B) Size and location of study area. Indicate possible locations on map and show relation to any existing nearby studies. (C) Environmental impact on CCNHA and on any existing nearby field studies. (D) Starting date and duration.
Please submit the completed application via E-mail to the Associate Director (jcorney@umn.edu).
If you have questions about this proposal please contact Jeff Corney or your immediate supervisor.
Project Ideas:
The following is a list of potential projects provided to us by various researchers. The person who provided the idea is listed below the project idea.
More project ideas:
Experimental ideas provided by Chris Clark:
Feedback effects between plants-soil fauna-and nitrogen
Current literature suggests that plant communities may be permanently affected once a “critical level” of N-deposition is reached. This level is estimated to range between 1-3g/m2, a level that is exceeded in much of Europe and the northeastern US due to anthropogenic emissions. While the process of species loss (~30-60%) loss in a Minnesota grassland is well documented, the “why” it occurs is not. Many hypotheses have been presented. One includes the change in the microbial community following fertilization and changes in the plant community. I propose a potted plant experiment to test this phenomenon, growing two representative species (Agro and Schiz) representing the species poor and original species rich communities respectively, in low-N and high-N soils. Plants will be grown for a period of 8 weeks and then sampled for ANPP, BNPP, number of microbial infections, etc.
Long-term sampling of blowdown plots
Blowdowns are violent ecological phenomenon that are also known as “straight line winds,” often exceeding 100mph in force. One of these events occurred in Cedar Creek in 1983 (E013). Regeneration processes were studied the following field season, measuring tree dbh, heights of damage, extent of damage, understory growth, etc. I propose resampling the disturbed site 20 years later to examine the differences between short-term and long-term dynamics of forest response to blowdown.
Seed dispersal as a mechanism for coexistence
Many researchers have proposed that differential seed dispersal may be a major contributor to the maintenance of species rich communities. Alan Turing, a mathematician in the 1950’s, demonstrated that simply having two interacting entities (an activator and a suppressor in his case, an inferior and superior species in competition for us) could lead to the formation of complex patterns. I propose that this process may contribute to the coexistence many wind-dispersed grassland species of Cedar Creek. To demonstrate this, we will measure the weight of seeds of common plants in CC and measure their propagation potential in a make-shift wind tunnel. Inclusion of these parameters into a Turing stability model will allow us to determine which species may differ in propagation for coexistence via this mechanism.
The Golden Ratio at Cedar Creek
Mathematician Fibonacci in the 16th century described the mathematical series made up of sums of two previous elements, beginning with zero and one…
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc. It was found that the ratio of one number with its previous entry converges upon a number, the Divine or Golden ratio, 1.618. This ratio was touted by artists and scientists at the time as being ubiquitous in nature, the ratio of your arms length to the length of your forearm, the ratio of the diameter of subsequent rings in a seashell, the ratio of branch diameters, the numbers of petals on a sunflower all fall in the Fibonacci series and/or on the Golden Ratio. I propose sampling many different aspects of the flora of Cedar Creek to find its presence at this great research site.
All of the above ideas have been provided by Chris Clark, a graduate student in Dave Tilman’s lab. If you have questions about the projects please contact him at clark134@umn.edu for more information.
Experiment ideas provided by Linda Kinkel:
Enemy Exclusion Experiment
Questions:
Soilborne pathogen antagonists at Cedar Creek
How widely do antibiotic-producing pathogen antagonists vary in the rhizosphere of different plant species at Cedar Creek? This would require some time in the laboratory.
In order to find out more information about the above projects contact Linda Kinkel at kinkel@umn.edu.
Experiment ideas provided by Anita Antoninka:
How do plant community richness and resource availability (CO2 and N) affect ecosystem invasibility?
This could be easily tested by looking at the weeds collected from biocon. It would be interesting to see the total number of plants and the number of individuals by weed species found in the different treatments along with biomass.
How are plant communities affected by different communities of soil organisms?
There is a mesocosm experiment that was set up in May of 2005 that is available for intern projects. The following is a description of the mesocosm experiment and what it was set up to study.
This two year experiment was initiated in May 2005 to: 1)
examine feedbacks between above- and belowground communities
(including AM fungi and other soil organisms), and 2) compare the
symbiotic function of AM fungi and other soil organisms from different
resource and host plant environments. A full factorial design is being used:
7 (plant and N) histories X 2 current N levels (with and without N
fertilization ~12g N per year) X 6 replicates = 84 mesocosms (Table 1). I
added sterile Cedar Creek soil to the mesocosms and a band of live soil
taken from the appropriate treatment plots from the FACE rings. All of the
mesocosms were seeded with the same mix of seeds of each of 8 species.
In order to find out more information about the above projects contact Anita Antoninka at Anita.Antoninka@NAU.EDU
Experiment ideas provided by Ramesh Laungani
The availability of nitrogen often times limits plant community productivity and so interspecific competition for this resource is strong in many terrestrial ecosystems. However the supply of N to the plant community is mediated by a series of microbial transformations in the soil. There is also growing evidence that individual plant species have unique microbial communities associated with them. These two lines of evidence lead to the question “What is the role of the soil microbial community in mediating plant competition for soil N?” The projects outlined below are focused around this central question.
In order to find out more information about the above projects contact Ramesh Laungani at Ramesh_Laungani@yahoo.com.
Experiment idea provided by Jim Krueger
There is a piece of land in front of the newly built outreach center that is currently a dirt area. This piece of land is approximately 10 x 30 yards. The hope is that this area will be planted with a diverse array of prairie grasses and wildflowers.
The project for this summer would be to plant this area with native plants. Every aspect from researching and choosing the species that will be planted in the area to actually planting the area will be covered in this project. Jim Krueger will advise this project and will be available to answer questions throughout the summer.
In order to find out more information about the above project contact Jim Krueger at krue0043@umn.edu.
Experiment ideas provided by Ray Dybzinski:
Idea # 1:
Here’s almost a sure thing. In fact, a lot of you interns should hop on this as a team under the direction of one ambitious leader. The leader will be the lead author on the paper we will submit to The American Midland Naturalist. The contributing interns will be the contributing authors. I will be the last author. Then you will all have at least one publication, which is quite useful when applying for grad school. Sound enticing?
At Cedar Creek, we have a repository of truly excellent long-term data (E001, E002, E14, E54, E120, et al.), but our species trait data is truly weak. A garden experiment, E111, gathered some trait info on 50 or so species, and Craine et al. (2001, Oikos) gathered leaf and root traits of 76 species. There is huge overlap between these two efforts, and they measured different things. I have recently had some insights using the Craine et al. (2001) species trait data to predict patterns in the old field data (E14 & E54). But it’s quite frustrating to only have trait data on ~40 of the 100+ species in the data set!!!
I propose a Craine et al. (2001) style analysis (see their Appendix 1) of ALL the species at Cedar Creek. It would involve finding a small number of individuals of each species (maybe even one!), measuring its leaf angle, pulling it out of the soil (top half at least partially intact so that roots could be properly separated), measuring leaf area (I believe there is a device for this at CC), drying and weighing the leaves, cleaning and separating root biomass into coarse/fine (kind of a pain, indeed), and then using a scanner and software that is on campus to scan the roots for diameter and length (easy as pie), and finally weighing the dried roots. With a lot of people helping, this would be possible to do on a lot of species. If you can think of other things that could be relatively easily measured, so much the better.
I think the real value in the paper would be the data themselves, but we could also relate the measured traits to abundance data in the old field surveys (E14 & E54). Such a paper would greatly benefit future CC researchers and, when they use that data, they would cite your paper! Now that’s contributing to science!
For those species not already covered in the Craine el al. (2001) paper, it would be great to cover all the species found in:
It would be easy for me to compile lists of the species found in these experiments. We would only need to find species in “unofficial” areas or obtain permission to remove single individuals. I think we could get that permission in the service of such awesome trait data!
Idea # 2:
1. Conventional wisdom at CCNHA is that water is only limiting in severe droughts (e.g. 1988). However, I conducted a seed germination and seedling survival experiment which suggested that the typical mid-summer “drought” of ~25 days has a dramatic negative effect on seedling survival. Since these communities are unsaturated (Tilman 1997 Ecology), that typical mid-summer drought may play a strong role in structuring CCNHA communities.
I have noticed in many of the old fields that the prairie community is richer toward the forest edge, which, I am tenuously hypothesizing, may be because seedlings have less risk of desiccation when they (and the soils) are shaded for part of the day. Importantly, the old field long term data sets (E14 & E54 – see the CCNHA website for details) come from transects that vary in their proximity to the forest edge (T. Mielke, personal communication).
Thus, it would be relatively easy to go to all of the transects and measure: 1. distance to forest edge, 2. orientation of forest edge (N, E, S, W), 3. height of the forest canopy (foresters must have some trigonometric trick for this…). From those data, along with some facts about the sun’s summertime path through the sky, one could, in principle, calculate the hours of full sunlight to which each transect is exposed. Along with this, it would be great to get an accurate measure of elevation for each transect so that we know its depth to groundwater. Perhaps there is a device for measuring elevation??? Perhaps there is a detailed topographical map of CCNHA???
With those two variables, hours of full sunlight and depth to groundwater, we could analyze the old field data for species composition and diversity. For E54 (for which data have been gathered every year since 1988), we could also look at community changes over time.
Of course, doing that – and only that – could be very insightful (or there could be no response – oh science! how cruel your bloody maw!). But any response we saw might be attributable to any number of things that correlate with moisture, only one of which is seedling survival. What might take it to the next level would be getting measures of those same two variables for the 30 plots in E93 (seed addition experiment in savanna Field D, reported in Tilman 1997 Ecology) and whatever experiment was reported in Foster & Tilman (2003, J. Ecol). Then we would have an experimental (not “merely” observational) insight into seedling survival. I have the E93 data, including a recent (2004) resurvey. I’m sure I could get the Foster & Tilman (2003) data. Would plots exposed to less direct sunlight be more species rich in response to the experimental seed addition? If yes, and if the old field data tell a similar story, that’s a publishable paper.
For more information on this project please contact Ray Dybzinski at dybz0001@umn.edu.
updated 5/31/07