Laurel R Fox - US grants

Three-trophic-level interactions among cruciferous plants, one of their major herbivores, the diamondback moth Pluetella xylostella and its major parasitoid Diadegma insulare will be studied. Sex ratios and population sizes of both the moth and the parasitoid are correlated with differences in food plants; and the trophic levels are likely to have major effects on the regulation of population size and the dynamics of interactions between these insect species and other components of the community. The variations in the sex ratios of the herbivore and its parasitoid, using both wild and cultivated crucifers will be explored. Selection of species from both wild and cultivated habitats will allow the scanning of a large array of plant properties, from individual variation in such factors as nitrogen, defensive chemistry and morphology, up to population variation in patch size and density. The primary goal of the research is to identify factors affecting both moth and wasp sex ratios within population and community contexts. The secondary goal is to compare these interactions on wild vs. cultivated crucifers. Together, these different systems cover an array of community situations from the high density, agricultural environments in which population interactions and sex ratio variation are usually studied, to the low density, patchy communities in which these interactions and insect behaviors probably evolved.

GER-9553614 Fox Natural ecosystems are rarely pristine, almost all are modified by anthropogenic effects to varying degrees. Human activities are rarely treated as integral parts of those systems, either in research or training. Ecological communities are structured by top-down and bottom-up processes and interactions between them; human activities affect the same ecological processes in similar ways. The University of California at Santa Cruz recently initiated an interdepartmental, multidisciplinary program of research and training (the Monterey Bay Regional Studies (MBRS) program ) focused on basic understanding of regional coastal processes and their relation to specific regional issues. The regional approach provides a foundation for integrating research and training across different research scales and traditions. Scientists from different disciplines engage in multidisciplinary studies to examine complex environmental processes. Recently hired new faculty, high student interest and new doctoral program have rapidly increased our capacity to train students, but limited funds for their support restrict our ability to reach our potential. The quality and innovation of our program and the established need for multidisciplinary training programs in environmental biology make a strong case for support of this proposal. A Graduate Research Traineeship will allow us to expand the MBRS training component significantly, and to attract students seeking a broader, multidisciplinary foundation for their research. GRT students will participate in symposia, discussions, seminars and research in projects supported by MBRS. In addition, we will develop a graduate seminar course, student seminars and an apprenticeship program aimed to encourage multidisciplinary awareness and respect.

A Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Sites award has been made to the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) to provide research training for eight students for eight weeks during the summers of 2013-2015. Climate change, the overriding environmental issue of our time, causes drastic changes in the distributions and abundances of many species and potentially threatens peoples' ways of life. This REU will train students to use critical tools to understand mechanisms underlying biological responses to climate change, including: 1) physiological/ecological limits of species; 2) changes in species' interactions; and 3) hypothesis testing that enables one to discriminate between climate change and other natural or anthropogenic factors affecting species diversity and geographical distributions. Students will work on a diversity of organisms, systems, and specific questions guided by mentors from UCSC's Dept. of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Dept. of Environmental Studies, and several regional organizations. The common threads among projects include 1) testing hypotheses; 2) assembling long-term data sets from museums and faculty research; 3) measuring key physiological/behavioral traits or ecological interactions; 4) predicting changes in species' distributions and/or ecosystems based on future climate scenarios; and 5) conducting field work to ground-truth their predictions. This REU will select and train 24 undergraduates, including many minority students, based on their academic records and research potential. All students will be mentored to help them improve communication skills, discover resources for their education and careers, and recognize and value their own contributions to science. The REU program includes talks, discussions and workshops on methods and concepts key to their projects, and relevant field trips. These students will also join with an existing UCSC undergraduate research program targeting minority students in STEM disciplines for workshops on scientific ethics and communication. Students will be tracked to determine their continued interest in science, career paths, and lasting influences of their REU experience. The program will be assessed by various means, including an REU common assessment tool. More information is available by visiting http://reu.eeb.ucsc.edu/, or by contacting the PI (Dr. Barry Sinervo at lizardrps@gmail.com) or the co-PI (Dr. Laurel Fox at fox@ucsc.edu).

Climate change has widespread regional impacts on diverse biotic systems but most field stations are not yet instrumented with automated data collection systems that would allow integrated measurements of ecophysiology of plants and vertebrates at micro-climate scales needed for detailed studies of physiology, ecology, behavior, evolution and ecosystems, both locally and across large regions. The central hypothesis motivating this instrument investment is that the risk of extinction of organisms due to climate change arises from: a) the direct effects of climate, acting via evolved physiological adaptations that exacerbate extinction risk, and b) the cascading effects of climate change impacts on plant diversity and habitats. These data, together with research that uses them, will allow us to forecast future climate impacts on biotic systems, and to eventually assess historical impacts of climate in and around each of the field stations. The Institute for the Study of the Ecological and Evolutionary Climate Impacts (ISEECI) organizes diverse scientists across the UC System and are integrating these studies with the scientists using Northern Arizona University's Southwest Experimental Garden Array (SEGA). This array of ecophysiological plant and animal sensors will ensure cross-site consistency and comparability at a sufficiently large spatial scale to address regional impacts of climate on coastal, central valley, montane and desert ecosystems of the Southwest.

This new sensor network will instrument 12 sites in the California and 8 sites in Northern Arizona with data loggers and sensors designed to measure environmental parameters relevant to a wide range of animal and plant species. Selected conifers and coastal redwoods will be monitored for sap flow and soil temperature and moisture, and more open grassland/forb and shrub communities with soil temperature and moisture sensors as well as surface temperature at biologically salient heights to complement the existing system of upgraded weather stations already present at NRS and SEGA sites. Temperature sensors will collect similar data on environmental temperatures of endothermic and ectothermic animal taxa, and install phenocams to record phenological changes in trees driven by climate change. The system can be upgraded with new sensors, is expandable with respect to the kinds of data we gather and biotic systems we can instrument, and will be very adaptable for future research. The instruments will capture salient measurements of temperature and drought impacts on terrestrial systems that will allow a unified analysis of ecosystem functioning in the face of changing climate, adding scientific value to each individual field station with a more in-depth biotic record of historical change, and also across the system of field stations enhancing collaboration across the west coast and southwest region of the US. Sensor data will be available immediately online to all ISEECI and SEGA scientists groups, and once fully operational to other researchers. Integration with education and public outreach will give hundreds of students critical messages about climate change and using science to help mitigate its impacts. NAU and the UC system provide graduate and undergraduate students with many experiential learning opportunities in environmental sciences, and detailed, long-term data will supplement and contextualize classwork and research projects. UC and NAU actively work to enhance student diversity: NAU has particular expertise in reaching Native American students, while the Hispanic representation at universities in both states is increasing and being actively incorporated into campus programs and labs.

Long-term records documenting the effects of climate variability on ecological interactions among species are rare, but this type of information is critical to making accurate predictions of ecological consequences of climate change. Lacking long term data, an alternative approach is to examine shorter-term change in species interactions in response to rapid climate shifts, and combine that information with a detailed understanding of long-term climatic trends. This project extends a detailed study of pollinator abundance and species diversity (primarily bumblebees) with plant flowering patterns in coastal, central California. This region had been experiencing an increasingly severe drought, and average temperatures that have been increasing for decades. The current warm, wet El Nino event presents a unique opportunity to assess the responses and resilience of this system of pollinators and plant species. A diverse and abundant assemblage of pollinator species is critical to the maintenance of native plant species in this region. This study will inform the management of nature reserves and will also provide important information on how pollinators, which are essential to US agriculture, respond to climate change. The project will help broaden participation in science through graduate student training, and through a workshop to engage land managers of relevant habitats.

The work addresses three specific, testable hypotheses: (1) plant flowering and pollinator activity will be temporally disconnected in the wet El Nino year; (2) bumblebees respond immediately to the resource boom provided by heavy, extended flowering in the El Nino, but solitary bee responses will be delayed a year; and (3) pollinator networks will be more specialized in the wet El Nino year than during the drought, because bees will select more preferred plant species when flowers are abundant. The potential temporal mismatch is an important ecological problem in the context of changing climatic variability.