EBIO News
April 13th 2007 - Friedman Nature paper featured in BioEssays article
Ned Friedman has been studying the developmental steps that produce endosperm, and he has seen something that has not been reported previously. When considered in an evolutionary context, it challenges some established conventions, and suggests new hypotheses concerning the early evolution of plants. His original work was published in Nature recently; attached is a highlight of his research that appeared in BioEssays.
April 12th 2007 - CU Honors Professor Russ Monson
CU has just announced that it is bestowing the honorary title of Professor of Distinction on Russ Monson.
Those of us who know Russ are not surprised that he has garnered another honor. He has compiled a truly outstanding record of achievement, and he has balanced research, teaching, and service admirably.
Although another honor comes as no surprise, this honor is really special; this honorary rank was only established a year ago, and after this round of announcements, Russ is one of only eight professors to have been granted this distinction.
Mark your calendars - GREEBs meeting this September 15th-17th
The 2nd annual Guild of Rocky Mountain Ecologists and Evolutionary
Biologists (GREEBs, formerly known as GRMPBs) will be held at the
Mountain Research Station, the field station of the University of
Colorado, on September 15th-17th. The meeting will include 2 keynote
addresses on Friday and Saturday nights, and contributed papers on
Saturday and Sunday morning. This is an excellent chance to share ideas
and information with colleagues in an informal setting, and to enjoy the
fall weather in the mountains of Colorado. The meeting is open to
anyone working in the realms of ecology and evolutionary biology,
regardless of location of the research or the home institution.
Additional registration information will follow. Please share this information with anyone you think will be interested.
Elizabeth Costello and Steve Schmidt have just captured the cover of
Environmental Microbiology.
An abstract of their article, entitled "Microbial diversity in alpine tundra wet meadow soil: novel Chloroflexi from a cold, water-saturated environment" follows:
Elizabeth K. Costello and Steven K. Schmidt
Cold, water-saturated soils play important biogeochemical roles, yet almost nothing is known about the identity and habitat of microbes active under such conditions. We investigated the year-round microenvironment of an alpine tundra wet meadow soil in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, focusing on the biogeochemistry and microbial diversity of spring snowmelt ? a dynamic time for alpine ecosystems. In situ measurements revealed spring and autumn periods of long-term temperature stability near 0 degrees C, and that deeper soil (30 cm) was more stable than surface soil, with more moderate summers and winters, and longer isothermal phases. The soil was saturated and water availability was limited by freezing rather than drying. Analyses of bioavailable redox species showed a shift from Mn reduction to net Fe reduction at 2?3 cm depth, elevated sulfate and decreased soluble Zn at spring snowmelt. Terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism profiles detected a correlated shift in bacterial community composition at the surface to subsurface transition. Bacterial and archaeal small-subunit rRNA genes were amplified from saturated spring soil DNA pooled along a depth profile. The most remarkable feature of these subsurface-biased libraries was the high relative abundance of novel, uncultivated Chloroflexi related sequences comprising the third largest bacterial division sampled, and representing seven new Chloroflexi subdivisions, thereby dramatically expanding the known diversity of this bacterial division. We suggest that these novel Chloroflexi are active at near-0 degrees C temperatures, under likely anoxic conditions, and utilize geochemical inputs such as sulfide from upslope weathering.
Nice photo, Elizabeth, and Congratulations to you both!
Good News for Professor Mike Breed
Mike Breed has been elected as a Fellow of the Entomological Society
of America. This honor was extended to just 6 entomologists this
year, and the Fellows will be recognized at the Annual Meeting in
Indianapolis, and on the society's web site.
Congratulations to Mike!
Cory Cleveland and Alan Townsend have just published a paper in PNAS
Cory Cleveland and Alan Townsend have just had a paper appear in PNAS. Its title is:
Nutrient additions to a tropical rain forest drive substantial soil carbon dioxide losses to the atmosphere
Here is the Abstract:
Terrestrial biosphere?atmosphere carbon dioxide (CO2) exchange is dominated by tropical forests, where photosynthetic carbon (C) uptake is thought to be phosphorus (P)-limited. In P-poor tropical forests, P may also limit organic matter decomposition and soil C losses. We conducted a field-fertilization experiment to show that P fertilization stimulates soil respiration in a lowland tropical rain forest in Costa Rica. In the early wet season, when soluble organic matter inputs to soil are high, P fertilization doubled soil respiration. Although the P-stimulated increase in soil respiration was largely confined to the dry-to-wet season transition, the seasonal increase was sufficient to drive an 18% annual increase in CO2 efflux from the P-fertilized plots. Nitrogen (N) fertilization caused similar responses, and the net increases in soil respiration in response to the additions of N and P approached annual soil C fluxes in mid-latitude forests. Human activities are altering natural patterns of tropical soil N and P availability by land conversion and enhanced atmospheric deposition. Although our data suggest that the mechanisms driving the observed respiratory responses to increased N and P may be different, the large CO2 losses stimulated by N and P fertilization suggest that knowledge of such patterns and their effects on soil CO2 efflux is critical for understanding the role of tropical forests in a rapidly changing global C cycle.
Congratulations to both Cory and Alan!
(Cory received his Ph.D. in our Department in 2001, and is currently a Research Scientist at INSTAAR)
Friedman Lab's Paper on Embryology is Celebrated Worldwide
Ned Friedman has mad a splash with a recent paper in Nature. In addition to making the local news, the Christian Science Monitor, New Scientist, the Denver Post, and the Boulder Daily Camera have all interviewed him. The London Daily Telegraph is also covering the story. Ned's work is featured in the News and Views in Nature.
Congratulations to Ned!
Professor Andy Martin has both the cover art and a paper in the latest version of Evolution!
The the cover art for the May issue of Evolution, Parnassius smintheus attending Sedum lanceolatum, illustrates a paper by Eric DeChaine and Andy Martin entitled:
Using coalescent simulations to test the impact of Quaternary climate cycles on divergence in an alpine plant-insect association.
Eric has been a post doc at Harvard this last year, and has taken an assistant professorship at Western Washington University. Andy is on a faculty fellowship, dividing his time among field sites in Hawaii, Australia, and New Zealand.
Mike Breed and David Norris have been awarded the Robert L. Stearns Award
The Robert L. Stearns Award recognizes outstanding members of the current CU-Boulder faculty and staff. It honors exceptional achievement or service in any one, but usually a combination, of the following areas: outstanding teaching, extraordinary service to the University, exemplary work with students, significant research and/or off-campus service to the community. The Awards Committee considers the qualifications of staff nominees separately from the qualifications of faculty nominees
Congratulations to both Mike and Dave.
Monson Lab Receives a Grant for Graduate and Post-doc Research
The Monson lab received good news last week that it will receive a three-year grant from the Human Frontiers in Science Program (HFSP), which is administered as an international consortium from Strasbourg, France.
The grant($450 K per year to be split among four labs) is intended to support international collaboration on a topic that concerns the molecular and biochemical basis for improvement in the human condition. The grant will be split equally among researchers in Boulder, Lund (Sweden), Garmisch (Germany) and Tartu (Estonia), and will be dedicated to developing new molecular and biochemical approaches to understanding the emissions of volatile organic compounds from forest trees and their effects on atmospheric quality. The funds will be primarily used to support Graduate Research Assistanships and post-docs, and for frequent travel opportunities for the PIs and students to conduct research in other countries.
Congratulations to Russ and his collaborators.
No Colloquium this Summer!
The Semester has ended and our Colloquia are set to resume again September 1st, at the beginning of the Fall Semester! Make sure to bookmark our Colloquia schedule page at http://www.colorado.edu/eeb/events/colloquia/current.html. We anticipate another good series next year, so check back with us in late Summer for an updated list of speakers.
Check out Barbara and William?s new Book!
Hot off the press is "Photoinhibition, Photoprotection, Gene Regulation,
and Environment" edited by our own Professors Barbara Demmig-Adams and William W. Adams III along with Autar Mattoo. Springer is the publisher and everything ? well, almost everything ? you wanted to know about it can be found at: http://www.life.uiuc.edu/govindjee/newbook/Vol%2021.html.
Professor Alex Cruz has been awarded the Hazel Barnes Prize.
The Hazel Barnes Prize is the major award provided by the Boulder campus that focuses on the enriching relationship that occurs between teaching and research. Nominees should be regionally and nationally recognized, tenured faculty members who are not only outstanding teachers but also have distinguished records in research and scholarship over a substantial period of time at CU-Boulder.
Congratulations, Alex!
Henderson Mine Research Project Update
EBIO is participating in an effort to establish a new federal laboratory for deep underground studies of biology, geology, and physics. The laboratory would be in the Henderson Mine, on the eastern flank of Berthoud Pass. Tentatively termed the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL), this project could bring millions of research dollars to Colorado, annually, should the Henderson Mine be chosen as the final site for funding. Our Chair, Dr. Jeff Mitton, took the picture below on his most recent visit to the site.
Taking Samples:
Biologists are shown preparing to sample 50 degree Centigrade water that has been resident 5,000 feet below the surface for many thousands of years. Alexis Templeton, Tom Kieft, Cal Callahan, and Kevin Mandernak plan the strategy to plug a drill hole. The goal is to sample the anoxic water that is resident in the rock. Its residence time will be estimated with stable isotope ratios, and the diversity of microbes will be surveyed with molecular techniques.
Professors Barbara Demmig-Adams and William Adams Honored
The life and work of Professors Barbara Demmig-Adams and William Adams will be highlighted in a biographical feature in the 2007 edition of the textbook ?The Life of the Green Plant? by Peter Davies (as the leading author) from the Department of Plant Biology at Cornell University.
Congratulations to both William and Barbara!
Another Paper in Nature for the Schmidt and Monson Labs
This week's issue of Nature includes a paper by Russ Monson, Steve
Schmidt, former EBIO Ph.D. student David Lipson and others from CU and
the Boulder scientific community. The citation of the paper is:
Monson, R.K., Lipson, D.A., Burns, S.P., Turnipseed, A.A., Delany, A.C., Williams, M.W., and Schmidt, S.K. (2006) Winter forest soil respiration controlled by climate and microbial community composition. Nature 439: 711-714
In this study, we used six years of data on CO2 fluxes from our Niwot Ridge subalpine forest site to show that recent declines in the snow pack due to climate warming have caused decreased soil temperatures, which in turn have caused reduced soil respiration rates and increased rates of carbon sequestration. This is a glimmer of good news in the otherwise dark cloud of bad news concerning decreased snowpacks and forest health in the Rocky Mountains. To explain the linkage between beneath-snow soil temperature and microbial respiration we conducted the first continuous set of observations of soil respiration rate beneath a winter snow pack and we used DNA sequence analysis to show the existence of a novel microbial community that thrives beneath the snow and is several orders of magnitude more sensitive to changes in soil temperature than previously reported. Our studies should draw the attention of those interested in climate change, the global carbon cycle, forest ecology, microbial ecology and life in extreme environments.
Congratulations to all involved.
Good News from the Monson Lab
An NSF grant entitled
"Elevated Atmospheric CO2 and Cytosolic Control of Leaf Isoprene
Biogenesis" has been recommended for funding with a start date in
mid-March. The grant, which will last three years and totals $526 K
in funds, will be shared between the Monson Lab and Ray Fall's lab in
Chemistry and Biochemistry. A significant portion of the grant will
be used to continue collaborations with Dr. Todd Rosenstiel, who will
depart for a new tenure-track position at Portland State University in
August. The grant will fund studies to continue exploring the role of
cytosolic metabolic processes involving the enzyme phosphoenol
pyruvate carboxylase as a control over chloroplast isoprene
metabolism, particularly in atmospheres of enriched carbon dioxide.
We aim to explain why forest isoprene emissions, which cause a unique
type of atmospheric chemistry, may decrease in response to future
increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration. The studies will focus on
poplar leaves and will take advantage of the new proton-transfer
reaction mass spectrometer that was obtained through a separate NSF
grant last fall, and the new elevated-CO2 growth chambers that were
obtained with EPA funds last year.
Congratulations to Russ, Todd, Ray, and all the graduate students involved.
Marc Bekoff continues to make headlines
Having just been interviewed by CNN for the recent essay he published in the New York Times (http://nytimes.com/2006/01/03/science/03cute.html?hp), Marc Bekoff will be making an appearance on Good Morning America the morning of January 20th.
CRCW Grants Given to Several Faculty Members
This year, Ned Friedman, Pam Diggle, Yan Linhart, Carol Wessman, and Deane Bowers received research grants from the Committee on Research and Creative Work (CRCW).
The work they will be doing can be summarized as follows: Ned will be digging through Darwin's correspondence and notebooks at Cambridge; Darwin might have been less than forthright in summarizing the accomplishments of the evolutionary biologists who preceded him. Pam will be traveling to the most prestigious and beautiful botanical gardens in Europe to make measurements of plants in flower. Yan is studying how the various fragrances of thyme ( 7 genetically determined terpene phenotypes) interact with herbivores (rabbits, snails, goats, sheep) to structure communities, and maintain genetic diversity within plant populations. Carol will be examining the ecological dynamics in the massive blow-down in the spruce-fir forest in the Mount Zirkel Wilderness Area. Deane will conduct experiments to determine if parasitoids avoid herbivores with high levels of iridoid glycosides, which they sequester from plants
Congratulations to each of them!
Professor Sharon Collinge and Chris Ray have published a new book
Just back from Africa, Sharon Collinge and Chris Ray have edited a new work titled, "Disease Ecology: Community structure and pathogen dynamics". It is available now through all good bookshops, or direct from Oxford University Press at: http://www.oup.co.uk/isbn/0-19-856708-1
Professor Noah Fierer Making News
The newest addition to the department, Professor Noah Fierer has just published his paper:
N. Fierer and R.B. Jackson. 2006. The diversity and biogeography of soil bacterial communities. PNAS. 103: 626-631.
in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.In addition, Noah was just interviewed on National Public Radio's "All things Considered" and an abstract of his work and the audio of the interview are available at:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5139508
New sources of funding for student research and development - Fall 2005
Beatrice (Betty) Willard, most famous for "Land Above the Trees" has left part of her estate to our department. At her request, some fund will be used to enhance the John Marr Fund, and some will be used to set up an annual lecture by a prominent ecologist.
One of our past Ph D students, Hsiu-Ping Liu, has worked with her family to set up an endowment that would provide an RA for a graduate student each year.
An endowment is being set up to honor the memory of Professor Bob Pennak, and supply a scholarship to an EBIO student.
Mel Cundiff is setting up an endowment that will be used to provide an annual scholarship to the best EBIO undergraduate.
