Reports | Ecology of the past

AFQUA 2018 – day 1

July 15, 2018
WDG

AFQUA: The African Quaternary environments, ecology and humans
2^ndInternational Conference and Workshops
14-22 July 2018-07-15 National Museum, Nairobi, Kenya

My first AFQUA conference really began the day before the conference proper started in the Kenyan immigration queue where I met a number of fellow delegates who were flying in from all over the world. It was great to start to put faces to names of people who’s work I had read for many years. Once out of the airport transfer to the hotel was smooth, and it was with some excitement that the following morning I made the short walk from the hotel to the famous Nairobi National Museum for the start of the conference.

Day 1

Prof. Andy Cohen (one of my fellow delegates in the immigration line) kicked off the AFQUA conference with a plenary giving an overview of African continental drilling projects. He traced the dream of the recovery of long continental records back to Daniel Livingstone and Neil Opdyke’s workshop from 1980 that set out the dream of obtaining long records from the continent. He then went on to give examples of how multi-millennial lake records, including Lake Malawi, can be used to understand the tempo of ecological change.

The first session of the conference, entitled “East Africa”, included: exciting evidence of Deinotherium the largest land mammal of the Quaternary (J.-P. Brugal), the use of d13C in determining homonin ecology (V.M. Iminjili), and evidence from a new c. 200,000 year old site at Natodomeri (Kenya) that contains evidence of homonids, elephids, giant lions and pigmy hippos (F.K. Manthi).

The second session of AFQUA covered “The environmental context for homonin evolution and dispersal”. This started with geochemical data from Chew Bahir that sheds light on potential drivers of climatic shifts (F. Schabitz), and included examination of changes climate between c. 500,000 and 320,000 years ago that coincided with the shift from hominid use of large cutting tools to smaller implements (R. Potts), and discussion of the environment the route which hominids took out of Africa (F. Henselowsky).

Netherlands Annual Ecology Meeting 2018 – day 2

February 15, 2018
WDG

Having fun with bingo at #NAEM2018 #NAEMbingo

Yesterday was the second, and final, day of the Netherlands Annunal Ecology Meeting (NAEM) for 2018. Having stayed up rather later than I would normally for a Tuesday night, due to the the gezellig atmosphere, the scrambled eggs and coffee were very welcome for breakfast. We were then on with the conference with parallel sessions starting at 08:30.

First up I opted for the session on “Monitoring biodiversity change: Essential biodiversity variables and beyond” organised by Daniel Kissiling (University of Amsterdam) and Rob Jongman (Wageningen University & Research). In the session new IBED PhD research Zsofia Koma presented a nice talk on the potential of LiDAR for evaluating ecosystem change, and Franziska Schrodt (University of Nottingham) looked at how we can link biodiversity and geodiversity. I found the talk by Franziska highlighting the importance of linking the abiotic and biotic components of the landscape particulalry stimulating as it links very well with much ongoing work within both the Department of Theoretical & Computational Ecology (Biogeography & Macroecology) and Ecosystem & Landscape Dynamics (Biodiversity & Geodiversity in the tropics) here at IBED.

Having fun online at #NAEM2018

To take us to lunch were two plenary lectures on the theme of these were given by Katja Poveda (Cornell University) and Erik Polman (replacing Marchel Dicke; Wageningen University). Both talks illustrated the complexity of natural systems and landscapes.

After lunch I chose the “Animal Ecology” session charied by Chris Smit (University of Groningen) and Patrick Jansen (Wageningen Research & University). I really enjoyed the first two talks in this session which highlighted the complexity that animals add to ecosystems. First up Esther Rodriguez (PWN) showed the differential impact of European bison and wild horses on vegetation (Cromsigt et al., 2017). Then Annelies van Grinkel (University of Groningen) presented her work trying to discover if deer in the Netherlands are still scared of wolves after the absence of wolves from the Netherlands for the last 150 years; this included some nice camera trap footage of deer running away from hand soap!

Overall a fun meeting, I met lots of new people, and saw lots of great talks so will definatly be back next year. Thanks to all the organisers for putting on such as show.

Netherlands Annual Ecology Meeting – bingo

February 14, 2018
WDG

“Global distribution patterns of mycheterotrophic plants”. The research of Sofia Gomes (Naturalis Biodiversity Centre) is captured by Milan Teunissen van Manen (@MilanaTvM).

Ancient human disturbances may be skewing our understanding of Amazonian ecology. The research of Crystal McMIchael (University of Amsterdam) is captured by Judith Westveer (@water_science).

This year at the Netherlands Annual Ecology Meeting participants have been challenged to draw a pictire about a talk that they see as part of the science bingo event #NAEMbingo #NAEM2018

Netherlands Annual Ecology Meeting 2018 – day 1

February 13, 2018
WDG

Today the Dutch ecological community has convened at the Netherlands Annual Ecology Meeting (NEAM) in the forest near Lunteren. The meeting was kicked off by plenary lectures by Trisha Atwood and Han Olff who talked to the theme of “Ecosystem functioning in a changing world”. Trisha highlighted the importance of animals in modifying plant communities and their consequent importance for understanding changes in carbon storage. Han illustrated the complexity of ecological networks and posed the significant challenge of understanding changes in competing networks. Following the plenaries I chose two sessions to follow. The first on “Plant Ecology” and the second on “Ecosystem Resilience”. There were many exciting talks in both sessions, two of which grabbed my attention. Mara Baudena (Utrecht University) highlighted the complexity of modelling forest-grassland interactions in Africa, while Sofia Gomes (Naturalis Biodiversity Centre) showed surprising (to me) variation in mychorizal fungi across the globe.Furthermore four talks were presented by researchs at my home, the Institute for Biodiversity & Ecosystem Dynamics (University of Amsterdam):

Crystal McMichael “Ancient human disturbances may be skewing our understanding of Amazonian ecology”
Milan Teunissen van Manan “Species specific responses in leaf wax n-alkane composition from six tropical tree species”
Kenneth Rijsdijk “Assessing the resiliance of insular species to past climate change”
Seringe Huisman “Characterization of phytoliths in premontance western Amazonian forests”

So an exciting day, now for food and beer, and back on it tomorrow! Follow live on Twitter #NAEM2018

Amazonian coring isn’t boring

February 2, 2018
WDG

By Seringe Huisman (MSc Biological Sciences, Institute for Biodiversity & Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam)

Hello all! You might have been wondering if I died in the middle of Amazonian nowhere, since I haven’t come back to writing a blog after we left for fieldwork in July. Given we were in an Amazonian region full of venomous snakes that could have been the case, but the good news is I just didn’t get around writing it because I got carried away by the findings of my project! We actually had a very successful field trip – apart from some minor issues like the lake swallowing equipment, sinking waist-high into the mud each step of our 7 hour long ‘trail’ to the lakes, and almost not getting my precious samples through airport security.

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Off to the tropics!!

December 26, 2017
cmcmicha

On Jan 1, 2018 I (Crystal McMichael) get to ring in the New Year in the best way possible by heading off to the tropics to do fieldwork! And this time I get to take two students with me. Britte Heijink and Veerle Vink are both in the Biological Sciences MSc program (Ecology and Evolution track), and they are going to work on research projects that are associated with a recent grant that I was awarded through the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute CTFS-ForestGEO Research Grants Program.

Veerle examines a cliff exposure during the Palaeoecology course, and has loved microfossils ever since!

Britte (far left) raises her first sediment core during the Palaeoecology course in 2016!

Ecology & Evolution

November 24, 2017
WDG

Come study with us! New and improved Ecology & Evolution masters track within the MSc Biological Sciences at the University of Amsterdam

To find out more click here.

Environments Through Time – weeks 2 & 3

November 19, 2017
WDG

Britte reconfiguring the chronology for Lake Pata

The second and third weeks of the Environments Through Time course at the University of Amsterdam has focused on obtaining practical experience of developing chronologies, analyzing multi-variate data-sets, and conducting time series analysis. The focus of the course has been on Quaternary environmental change, however, the skills learnt can be applied to almost any time-scale so long as you have time control points you want to tie together, and multiple things you can track changing through that time.

Over the two week period the students worked on a previously published paper that they had selected that contains: (i) chronological information (at least 3 control points), and (ii) multiple variables that change through the time series (at least 9 variables). In week two they deconstructed the chronologies and generated their own revised versions. For example students have (re-)calibrated radiocarbon dates, made different decisions on dates to include/exclude, and used different approaches to constructing the age vs. depth model, e.g. contrasting linear point-to-point vs. Bayesian methodologies. In week three they have taken the data-set(s) associated with their paper and re-evaluated it in light of the revised chronologies using cluster analysis, ordination techniques, and wavelets.

The joy of wavletes

Through this exercise students have gained experience of how to critically assess scientific literature and gained an appreciation of where re-analysis of data-sets can (and cannot) make a difference. Personally I have be delighted with the high level of engagement and enthusiasm for the material and have been excited to have a chance to delve into literature that I would not otherwise be aware of.

For more information on this course see: Environments Through Time – week 1

Environments Through Time – week 1

November 3, 2017
WDG

Me teaching human impacts on environmental change…

The first, ever, week of the Environments Through Time course at the University of Amsterdam has just finished. The course sits within the MSc Biological Sciences (Ecology & Evolution) and MSc Earth Sciences (Geo-ecosystem Dynamics) but is also avaliable to other masters students. In the first week we have thought about four main topics:

Scales of change (ecological, geological, and human).
Humans as drivers of environmental change.
Extra-terrestrial forcing of environmental change.
Earth system feedbacks.

The week was completed with each student giving a three (3) minute presentation of their favourite paper. The papers presented ranged from the extinction of giant sharks, through forest-savannah transitions, to how climate change thwarted Ghengis Kahn. Next week we continue by disecting how chronologies are constructed.

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The Enviornments Through Time course is taught by: William Gosling, Crystal McMichael, and Milan Teunissen van Manen.

Exploring the Llanos de Moxos, Bolivia

November 1, 2017
cmcmicha

By Crystal McMichael

The Llanos de Moxos in Bolivia is an area the size of England that has one of the highest densities of archaeological sites in the Amazon basin. I travelled there for the first time earlier this month for the fourth International Meeting of Amazonian Archaeology. As the airplane crossed from the Andes into the Amazon plains, I could tell this was a very different ‘Amazonia’ compared with the forests that I know from Peru, Ecuador, and western Brazil. The Llanos de Moxos is a seasonally flooded savanna and it was so…open! I immediately realized that the perception of ‘Amazonia’ varies widely among individuals, and I think that is one of the reasons why those of us who study the human history of Amazonia tend to disagree so frequently.

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