Ecology of the past

Netherlands Annual Ecology Meeting 2016 – day 2

February 10, 2016
WDG

Netherlands Annual Ecology Meeting (NAEM) 2016
10 February 2016
Conference Centre “De Werelt”, Lunteren

Day 2 of the NAEM breakfast 07:30, first lectures at 08:30… Two keynotes today thinking about ecological stoichiometry the first by Stan Harpole (Martin-Luther-Universitat-Halle-Wittenberg) focused on resource ratio theory, and then Martin Wassen (Utrecht University) thinking about N and P limitations. I also attended, parts of, three sessions today “Linkages between fire, vegetation, soil and ecosystem services”, “Novel ecosystems”, and “Scaling from trait to environment and back”. My top talks for today were:

Elmar Veenendaal (Wageningen University) Fire effects on tropical woody vegetation structure have been exaggerated?
Working on long-term fire study plots (Kokondekro since 1932) suggest that for forest-savannah transition zones fire alone is insufficient to mediate a change between states; human manipulation of ecosystems is required as well to trigger the change.
Frank van Langevelde (Wageningen University) Feedbacks between fire and patches of woody vegetation in tropical grassland savannah
Examination of tree distributions and fire within the Kruger National Park shows that landscapes contain more clustered tree populations when fire frequency is higher.

Plus today I have done lots of talking and made many new contacts. I have lots of follow up emails to write and promised papers to send around! Overall this has been a super meeting for meeting people – perfect for expanding my network of Dutch based ecologists – in a nice location, with good food and beer. Looking forward to next year already.

Coring with the Livingstone Well-Aijen (The Netherlands)

February 10, 2016
WDG

Next to La Meuse river, near the villages of Welland Aijen, there is a large archaeological site with a long history of human occupation, including the remains of a large Mesolithic hunter gatherer community (see Marion Zijlema article for more details) The history of the site is deeply linked to the expansion and flooding of the river. In collaboration with archaeologists (Hanneke Bos) four UvA bachelor students are going to study the fossil pollen, phytoliths and charcoal from the Well-Aijen site to captured the environmental change that accompanied the human occupation. Yesterday (20 January – WDG late uploading post, sorry!) we visited the site to see what it was like, and to test out some equipment!

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We decided to bring out the Livingstone corer (Geo-core), which is usually used from a boat in a lake (e.g. Lake Erazo), to test its capacities on terrestrial sediment. Knowing that the peat formation was not deep below and given that the corer-system gives a nice continuous record, it seemed worthy of giving it a try. We ended up learning a lot about how the corer functions and about problem solving in the field – almost everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. We really fought for every centimeter of sample! The team never suffered from low spirits though, despite it all. With jokes and hot tea on site we ended up having a very fun and insightful expedition. Any remaining low morale or cold feet quickly faded by the sight of pie at the end of the day.

(Photos: W.D. Gosling)

Netherlands Annual Ecology Meeting 2016 – day 1

February 10, 2016
WDG

Netherlands Annual Ecology Meeting (NAEM) 2016
9 February 2016
Conference Centre “De Werelt”, Lunteren

The annual Dutch ecology conference is being held over two days at the in “remote” Lunteren and I am pleased to be able to attend all of the conference this year. The conference was kicked off this morning with a recognition that this year is 150 years since the birth of ecology as a science (Haeckel, 1866). The opening two keynotes focused on aspects of ecology which have sometimes been overlooked firstly, parasitism (Peter Hudson, Penn State University) and secondly, immunology (Irene Tieleman, University of Groningen). Following these I focused on just two sessions in the morning “linking diversity to function”, and in the afternoon “ecosystem cascades”. From the range of excellent talks in the sessions I have picked one from each as my favourite:

Masha van der Sande (Wageningen University) The role of biodiversity and environment on productivity in tropical forests; evidence across scales
By examining long-term tropical forest monitoring data van der Sande demonstrated that through time ecosystem traits changed significantly. She hypothesised that the lack of stability in ecosystem traits was due to past disturbance; although it is unclear what caused this disturbance (climate or humans), or when it occurred.
Dries Kuijper (Mammal Research Institute, Poland) Landscapes of fear in Europe: Wolves and humans shaping ungulate top-down effects
By tracking Wolf pack distributions in the Bialowieza forest (Poland) Kuijper showed that ungulates avoided Wolf pack “core areas” for fear of predation, that the exclusion of ungulates lead to reduced browsing of the vegetation, and so consequently forests regenerated faster in Wolf pack core areas.

The evening lecture was given by Bart Knols (in2care) who gave an impassioned talk on the importance of communicating science beyond the academic sphere. Arguing that now is the time for ecologists to have an influence on policy making, politics and business, as well as showing us how he has done this.

Great day.

Introducing Milan Teunissen van Manen

February 9, 2016
WDG

My name is Milan Teunissen van Manen and I just finished my first week as a Ph.D. researcher with the Palaeoecology & Landscape Ecology (P&L) group in the Institute for Biodiversity & Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED) at the University of Amsterdam (UvA)!

My undergraduate studies were interdisciplinary in nature: I did a BSc Beta-Gamma (Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies (IIS), UvA) where students are taught to collaborate between different disciplines. Ecology has always been an interest of mine, so I was quick to specialize in that field. In my final year of my bachelor I came in contact with paleoecology and did not hesitate to make sure my first master’s project (MSc Biological Science, IBED, UvA) would be with the P&L research group (IBED) – a worked on a project on tropical rainforest dynamics in Miocene Amazonia. After that I got the chance to test my skills outside research institutes: during the Tesla consultancy Minor (IIS) I got firsthand practical experience in developing urban green areas from start to finish for the municipality of Amsterdam. The focus of that project was to increase the ecologic, educational, scientific, and social value of the natural areas on Amsterdam Science Park. It was great to see my scientific background put to good use outside the research community. The project is still active today.

After a short period of working in education and sustainability consultancy I seized the opportunity to, once more, join the P&L research group – this time as a Ph.D. student under the watchful eyes of William Gosling and Boris Jansen. My project revolves around characterizing biomarker and modern pollen-rain signals across the altitude of the Ecuadorian Andes vegetation. A great opportunity at the frontier of tropical research!

If the first week is any indication, I foresee to a lot of collaboration, hard work, exploration and adventure in the coming years!

To find out more about me visit:

Just published two articles in a special issue on Gnetales:

Rydin, C. & Hoorn, C. (2016) The Gnetales: past and present. Grana 55, 1-4. DOI: 10.1080/00173134.2015.1118530

Bolinder, K., Norback Ivarsson, L., Humphreys, A.M., Ickert-Bond, S., Han, F., Hoorn, C. & Rydin, C. (2016) Pollen morphology of Ephedra (Gnetales) and its evolutionary implications. Grana 55, 24-51. DOI: 10.1080/00173134.2015.1066424

In the news

Ancient ‘massacre’ unearthed near Lake Turkana, Kenya, by Anon. BBC News: Africa

Bronze Age houses uncovered in Cambridgeshire are Britain’s ‘Pompeii’ , by Anon. BBC News: Cambridgeshire

Scientists weigh in on ‘giraffe relative’ fossil by Helen Briggs. BBC News: Science & Environment

Sex with Neanderthals may be the cause of modern allergies, studies suggest by Doug Bolton. Independent: Science

Scientific articles

Patterson, R.T., Huckerby, G., Kelly, T.J., Swindles, G.T. & Nasser, N.A. (2015) Hydroecology of Amazonian lacustrine Arcellinida (testate amoebae): A case study from Lake Quistococha, Peru. European Journal of Protistology 51, 460-469. DOI: 10.1016/j.ejop.2015.06.009

Pitulko, V.V., Tikhonov, A.N., Pavlova, E.Y., Nikolskiy, P.A., Kuper, K.E. & Polozov, R.N. (2016) Early human presence in the Arctic: Evidence from 45,000-year-old mammoth remains. Science 351, 260-263. DOI: 10.1126/science.aad0554

Moseley, G.E., Edwards, R.L., Wendt, K.A., Cheng, H., Dublyansky, Y., Lu, Y., Boch, R. & Spotl, C. (2016) Reconciliation of the Devils Hole climate record with orbital forcing. Science 351, 165-168. DOI: 10.1126/science.aad4132

Quantifying late-Holocene climate in the Ecuadorian Andes using a chironomid-based temperature inference model

January 21, 2016
WDG

Our latest manuscript has just been made available, via Climate of the Past Discussions, for comment and review. Click here to check it out. We look forward to hearing what people think.

Quantifying late-Holocene climate in the Ecuadorian Andes using a chironomid-based temperature inference model
Matthews-Bird, F., Brooks, S.J., Holden, P.B., Montoya, E. & Gosling, W.D.

Abstract below

Published open access:

Hoogakker, B.A.A., Smith, R.S., Singarayer, J.S., Marchant, R., Prentice, I.C., Allen, J.R.M., Anderson, R.S., Bhagwat, S.A., Behling, H., Borisova, O., Bush, M., Correa-Metrio, A., de Vernal, A., Finch, J.M., Frechette, B., Lozano-Garcia, S., Gosling, W.D., Granoszewski, W., Grimm, E.C., Gruger, E., Hanselman, J., Harrison, S.P., Hill, T.R., Huntley, B., Jimenez-Moreno, G., Kershaw, P., Ledru, M.-., Magri, D., McKenzie, M., Muller, U., Nakagawa, T., Novenko, E., Penny, D., Sadori, L., Scott, L., Stevenson, J., Valdes, P.J., Vandergoes, M., Velichko, A., Whitlock, C. & Tzedakis, C. (2016) Terrestrial biosphere changes over the last 120 kyr. Climate of the Past 12, 51-73. DOI: 10.5194/cp-12-51-2016

In the news:

Jonathan Amos (2016) ‘Case is made’ for Anthropogenic Epoch. BBC News: Science & Environment.

Scientific publications:

Sarmiento, F.O. (2002) Anthropogenic change in the landscapes of highland Ecuador. Geographical Review 92, 213-234. doi: 10.1111/j.1931-0846.2002.tb00005.x

Swindles, G.T., Lamentowicz, M., Reczuga, M. & Galloway, J.M. (online) Palaeoecology of testate amoebae in a tropical peatland. European Journal of Protistology. doi: 10.1016/j.ejop.2015.10.002

Tellkamp, M.P. (2014) Habitat change and trade explain the bird assemblage from the La Chimba archaeological site in the northeastern Andes of Ecuador. Ibis 156, 812-825. doi: 10.1111/ibi.12179

Waters, C.N., Zalasiewicz, J., Summerhayes, C., Barnosky, A.D., Poirier, C., Galuszka, A., Cearreta, A., Edgeworth, M., Ellis, E.C., Ellis, M., Jeandel, C., Leinfelder, R., McNeill, J.R., Richter, D.d., Steffen, W., Syvitski, J., Vidas, D., Wagreich, M., Williams, M., Zhisheng, A., Grinevald, J., Odada, E., Oreskes, N. & Wolfe, A.P. (2016) The Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene. Science 351, . doi: 10.1126/science.aad2622

2015 in review

December 30, 2015
WDG

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 11,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.