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Budke Receives NSF Collaboration Grant to Digitize Lichens and Bryophytes

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Across the planet’s terrestrial surface lives a layer of organisms that cannot be seen with the naked eye. Lichens and bryophytes are hosts to these cryptobiotic communities that play a critical role in stabilizing soil, preventing erosion, absorbing rainfall, and providing nutrients for the growing plants around them. This hidden life creates a critical miniature forest that serves as an important habitat for tiny animals and forms a “living skin” found throughout the world, from canyon deserts to polar icecaps.

Budke

Jessica Budke, director of the UT Herbarium (TENN) and her colleagues from 25 institutions across the United States received a grant from the National Science Foundation to image and digitize associated metadata for close to 1.2 million lichen and bryophyte specimens housed in their collections.

“Natural history collections are a physical record of our planet’s biodiversity across space and time,” said Budke, who is also an assistant professor in the UT Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. “These specimens not only serve as records of the past, but they are a critical resource for our future. They help us to answer important questions surrounding invasive species, conservation biology, and help us to describe species that are new to science.”

The project, Building a Global Consortium of Bryophytes and Lichens: Keystones of Cryptobiotic Communities (GLOBAL), will enable researchers from around the world to access specimen metadata and photos of the plants. Budke is the lead principal investigator for the project.

“For the first time we will be taking photos not just of the label information, but also the physical organisms, which will enable researchers to digitally peek inside the packet to collect data from these specimens remotely,” Budke said. “The more data about these specimens that is available online enables researchers to expand the scope and impact of their research questions.”

plantsThe UT Herbarium is one of the largest plant natural history collections in the southeast with more than 640,000 specimens, including more than 180,000 mosses and lichens.

“Digitization is a game changer,” said Eric Tepe, curator of the Margaret H. Fulford Herbarium at the University of Cincinnati, one of the institutions involved in the project. “For centuries, natural history collections have been locked up in museums, available only to a handful of visitors. Large-scale digitization efforts, like this project, open the museum doors to the world, making specimen data and, in many cases, images freely available to everyone.”

Researchers with the project will partner with Zooniverse, a citizen science web portal, to develop an online platform for citizen scientists to make observations on character traits that can improve the information and fill in some of the gaps not covered by the scientific labeling process.

These integrated data will form a critical resource for evolutionary and ecological studies that researchers hope will lead to a deeper understanding of the role bryophytes and lichens play in carbon and nitrogen cycling, the evolution of biodiversity, and more.

In addition to collecting information about the specimens, undergraduate students at the partner institutions will have an opportunity to receive funding for professional training in image capture and processing, digitization, and collections management. Researchers will leverage local resources to promote underrepresented students in STEM fields and integrate a public outreach component to K-12 science classes and other science youth groups.

“This project represents a collaborative effort of 25 major research institutions,” Budke said. “It will push the field of organismal biology forward by leaps and bounds, enabling us to tackle large-scale biology questions that none of us could answer alone.”

Partner Institutions

NSF-DDIG Grants for Grant and Borstein

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Alannie-Grace Grant (Kalisz Lab) and Sam Borstein (O’Meara Lab) have been awarded Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grants from the National Science Foundation.  Congratulations to you both!

Grant’s dissertation research is entitled, “Selection, niche breadth and plant mating system evolution: Are wider niche breadths of selfing species shaped by water limitation?”

Borstein’s dissertation research is called, “Morphological consequences of trophic evolution.”

Evolution Grant for Benoit

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Amanda Benoit, a grad student in Susan Kalisz’s lab, has received a Rosemary Grant Award for Graduate Student Research from the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE-RGA). The goal of these grants is to identify and support innovative and potentially high impact research by beginning graduate students. Congratulations, Amanda!!!

NSF S-STEM Grant for Schussler

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Beth Schussler is co-PI on a $2,887,974 collaborative NSF S-STEM grant, which will provide scholarships and research opportunities for four cohorts of STEM-focused students from rural Appalachia to attend UT, Knoxville, or UT, Chattanooga. Beth will be working with PI Erin Hardin (Psychology), and co-PIs Melinda Gibbons, Marisa Moazen, and Denise Gardner, to provide students with research opportunities and cohort-building support programs to increase their success rate in STEM.

Eppley Foundation Grant Awarded for Hemlock Woolly Adelgid Research

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Professor Daniel Simberloff and postdoc Christy Leppanen have been awarded a $16,500 grant from The Eppley Foundation for Research for their proposal:  Effects of Evolutionary Ecology and Ecosystem Variability in Native and Introduced Predator-Prey Systems.

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Simberloff and Leppanen study interactions involving introduced predators and their prey, the hemlock woolly adelgid, Adelges tsugae, or HWA.  A sap-feeding insect native to Asia, HWA has spread to eastern North America where infestations have caused sharp declines in native hemlocks, including in some locations complete losses of eastern hemlock and Carolina hemlock, which is now vulnerable to extinction.  Predators transplanted from Asia are considered a long-term solution.  Little is known, however, about HWA and predator behavior and interactions in their native or introduced ranges.

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Funds from the Eppley Foundation will be used to study HWA where it is introduced and native, where trees seem relatively unharmed by the insect.  Hemlock species, climate, and invertebrate communities differ between native and invaded areas.  Simberloff and Leppanen are interested in understanding what influences HWA population size, for example, whether predators experience different levels of success in their native and introduced habitats, much like HWA imparts different levels of damage where it is native and introduced.  They suspect that HWA control likely involves a variety of influences and interactions that vary by location.  In their research, they will evaluate interactions involving HWA, its predators, and other native and non-native species in different locations.  For example, they have documented and will assess the significance of predator entrapment in droplets of HWA’s liquid waste, a previously unreported phenomenon that may influence predator success and thus HWA populations; and, if the outcome of entrapment differs by predator species, HWA populations may differ further where predator communities differ.  They will also consider interactions among mites, lichen, and another invasive predator, the multicolored Asian lady beetle, Harmonia axyridis, which shares its native range with HWA.

The results of this research will be included in a review of what is known about evolutionary ecology and ecosystem variability in native and non-native HWA systems relevant to its population size and impacts.  This is a model system with broad applicability in education; information from the review will also be used to develop a teaching lesson.

The Eppley Foundation for Research was incorporated in 1947 for the purpose of “increasing knowledge in pure or applied science…in chemistry, physics and biology through study, research and publication.”  The Foundation funds projects in biological and physical sciences. Particular areas of interest include innovative medical investigations, endangered species and ecosystems in the U.S. and abroad, and climate change.

 – From The Eppley Foundation for Research website

NSF DDIG for Van Nuland

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Michael Van Nuland (Schweitzer Lab) has been awarded a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation.

The goal of his project is to understand the mechanistic basis of plant genetic-by-soil microbial phylogenetic-by-abiotic environment interactions that will determine plant and soil function across important gradients of global change (e.g., temperature, H2O, and soil nitrogen [N]). The results will provide managers fundamental insights into how plants, as mediated by the diversity of the soil community, respond to abiotic stress and new tools to mitigate environmental change by identifying genotypes with high plant productivity, accelerated phenology, consistent soil conditioning, and positive feedbacks in different environments. Identification of soil microorganisms that influence plant traits, such as signaling the timing of bud break and initiation of the growing season, will be applicable to a wide range of global change issues.

Congratulations, Michael!

USFWS Grant for EEB & FWF

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Emma Willcox (PI, Forestry, Wildlife and Fisheries), Gary McCracken (co-PI, EEB), and Riley Bernard (co-PI, Forestry, Wildlife and Fisheries) have recently been awarded almost $250,000 by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to try to identify the differences in susceptibility of different species of bats to the fungus that causes White Nose Syndrome. This work will be conducted in east and middle Tennessee and will be a joint effort with the National Park Service, the TN Wildlife Resources Agency, The Nature Conservancy, and the TN Department of Environment and Conservation.  The grant is called, “The effect of winter emergence and foraging on the susceptibility of Southeastern bats to Psuedogymnoascus destructans: Implications for conservation and management.”

The same trio of PIs also received a $10,000 grant from the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture Center for Wildlife Health for the same project.

 

NSF Grant for Schussler

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Beth Schussler has been awarded an NSF grant worth almost $500,000:

RCN-UBE: Biology Teaching Assistant Project (BioTAP 2.0): Advancing Research, Synthesizing Evidence

This is a national research coordination network designed to support GTA professional development for teaching by enhancing assessment and evaluation of training programs, and supporting faculty and staff in their delivery and assessment of these programs.

Congratulations!