New Publications
Zalamea, M., G. González, C.L. Ping, and G. Michaelson. 2007. Soil organic matter dynamics under decaying wood in a subtropical wet forest: effect of tree species and decay stage. Plant and Soil296: 173-185. (See attached file: Zalamea and Gonzalez_2007.pdf)
LTER Decadal Plan
All LTER people should read the decadal plan for the LTER network attached here at posted at http://www.lternet.edu/planning/. (See attached files: The Decadal Plan for LTER.pdf & Cover letter for decadal plan.pdf)
This was submitted to NSF and may lead to increased funding for LTER.
Mini-sabbatical
Bob Waide will be taking the second in a series of mini-sabbaticals in Puerto Rico beginning December 17th. He’ll be around until March 9 working on various papers and gathering data for Hypothesis 5. He also anticipate being in PR for 2-3 weeks in May.
LTER Decadal Plan
The LTER Network has submitted its Decadal Plan to NSF. This plan hopes to stimulate additional resources from the Foundation to support cross-site and Network synthesis over the next 10 years. The plan includes research, education, and cyberinfrastructure strategic plans and is the result of a three-year planning effort involving LTER site representatives and a broad rage of other members of the ecological community.
Metals and Nutrients
Should you be in need of analytical services for determination of levels of nutrients (http://www.cese.uconn.edu/nutlab.html) or metals (http://www.cese.uconn.edu/metlab.html) in soil, water, air, or biological tissues, CESE (http://www.cese.uconn.edu/index.html) maintains state of the art capabilities to assist in these determinations. We also have considerable capabilities for determination of levels of organic compounds. As part of general laboratory protocols, we adhere to strict standards of QA/QC using EPA approved methodologies.
Teale Lecture Series
As part of the UConn’s prestigious Teale Lecture Searies, Ariel Lugo will be giving a presentation to the academic community and interested public on “Emerging new forests in the shining star of the Caribbean” – Puerto Rico (I assume).
Theory of Ecology
In preparation for a book (Theory of Ecology) that Sam Scheiner (NSF) and I are editing, the Center for Environmental Sciences and Engineering (CESE) at UConn, recently hosted a meeting of ecologists to advance the theoretical unification of ecology by using a similar approach (see Scheiner, S.M., and M.R. Willig. 2005. Developing unified theories in ecology as exemplified with diversity gradients. American Naturalist 116:458-69) to expose the state of theory within each of a number of constituent domains of ecology, and to integrate them in a fashion that will more fully develop a unified theory sensu Scheiner and Willig (2007 see below).
A diverse representation of the sub-fields of ecology (participants and authors in parentheses) were present at the meeting and included foraging theory (Sih), niche theory (Chase), population and meta-population theory (Hastings), predatory-prey and disease dynamics (Holt), metacommunity theory (Leibold), disturbance and successional theory (Pickett), island biogeographic theory (Lomolino), ecosystem theory (Burke), scaling theory (Peters et al.), ecological gradient theory (Fox et al.), geographic gradient theory (Colwell), metabolic theory (Enquist et al.) extremum theory (B. Milne). In addition, historical (J. Collins) and philosophical (J. Odenbaugh) perspectives on the role of theory in ecology provided additional insights to importance of theory in liberating or directing ecological research.
Products of recent research in my lab include the following publications
*****LUQ-LTER Research*****
Bloch, C.P., C.L. Higgins, and M.R. Willig. 2007. Effects of large-scale disturbance on metacommunity structure of terrestrial gastropods: temporal trends in nestedness. Oikos 116:395-406.
Yee, D.E., and M.R. Willig. 2007. Colonisation of Heliconia caribaea by aquatic invertebrates: resource and microsite characteristics. Ecological Entomology 32:1-10.
Willig, M.R., C.P. Bloch, N. Brokaw, C.L. Higgins, J. Thompson, and C.R. Zimmermann. 2007. Cross-scale responses of biodiversity to hurricane and anthropogenic disturbance in a tropical forest. Ecosystems (Accepted March 2007).
Willig, M.R., S.J. Presley, C.P. Bloch, and H.H. Genoways. 2007. Bats of the Caribbean : Effects of area, elevation, latitude, and hurricane-induced disturbance. Pp. 000-000 in: Island Bats: Evolution, Ecology, and Conservation (T.H. Fleming and P.A. Racey, eds.). University of Chicago Press, Chicago , Illinois (Accepted October 2006).
Gannon, M.R., and M.R. Willig. Island in the storm: disturbance ecology of plant-visiting bats in the hurricane-prone island of Puerto Rico . Pp. 000-000 in: Island Bats: Evolution, Ecology, and Conservation (T.H. Fleming and P.A. Racey, eds.). University of Chicago Press, Chicago , Illinois (Accepted March 2007).
*****LTER Cross-Site Research*****
Grace, J.B., T.M. Anderson, M.D. Smith, E. Seabloom, S.J. Andelman, G. Meche, E. Weiher, L.K. Allain, H. Jutila, M. Sankaran, J. Knops, M. Ritchie, and M.R. Willig. 2007. Integrating abiotic factors and biotic interactions into our understanding of diversity and primary production in natural grassland communities. Ecology Letters 10:680-689.
*****LTER-Related Research*****
Castro-Arellano, I. , S.J. Presley, L.N. Saldanha, M.R. Willig, and J.M. Wunderle, Jr. 2007. Effects of low-intensity logging on bat biodiversity in terra firme forest of lowland Amazonia . Biological Conservation 138:269-285.
Willig, M.R., S.J. Presley, C.P. Bloch, C.L. Hice, S. P. Yanoviak, M.M. Diaz, L. Arias Chauca, V. Pacheco, and S.C. Weaver. 2007. Phyllostomid bats of lowland Amazonia : effects of anthropogenic alteration of habitat on abundance. Biotropica. (Accepted January 2007).
Presley, S.J., M.R. Willig, J.M. Wunderle, Jr., and L.N. Saldanha. Effects of reduced-impact logging and forest physiognomy on bat populations of lowland Amazonian forest. Journal of Applied Ecology (Accepted May 2007).
Scheiner, S.M., and M.R. Willig. A general theory of ecology. Theoretical Ecology (Accepted May 2007).
Willig, M.R., S.K. Lyons, and R.D. Stevens. 2007. Spatial methods for the macroecological study of bats. Pp. 000-000, in: Ecological and Behavioral Methods for the Study of Bats (T.H. Kunz and S. Parsons, eds.). Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore , Maryland (Accepted July 2006).
From El Verde
As many of you know, El Verde Field Station is part of the National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP) that monitors rainfall chemistry all over the US and its territories. El Verde is the only monitoring station in Puerto Rico and has been operational since 1985.
NADP has very strict criteria and thanks to the efforts of John Bithorn, technician in charge of the weekly samples, and Samuel Matta, back up for John, we had been able to maintain the station running. As a result of their effort, during 2006 we were able to collect all samples and only 3 were invalidated due to contamination (e.g., insect parts falling in the rain collector). Congratulations to John and Samuel!
Information on the program and data can be found at: http://nadp.sws.uiuc.edu/. El Verde is named PR20, and the page for the station is:
http://nadp.sws.uiuc.edu/sites/siteinfo.asp?id=PR20&net=NTN
Bill McDowell and Jorge Ortiz-Zayas had produced several publications using NADP data (http://luq.lternet.edu/publications/). One interesting trend, for example, is an increase in NO3 and NH4 concentrations in rain samples since 1985.
Compiled by Jody Potter, University of New Hamshire (Jody.Potter@unh.edu)
Web-published by Eda C. Meléndez-Colom (emelendez@lternet.edu)
January 17, 2008