Human introverts aren’t the only ones who get stressed in shared social environments. Lizards like patchy and spread out shaded spaces where they can avoid interactions with other lizards.
Loner Lizards Stress in Shared Shade
The fate of milkweed in a changing prairie system
There is a surprising connection between the loss of prairie habitat in the Great Plains and the fate of Monarch butterflies. They may not be iconic in the American West, but Monarchs are important pollinators and prey for other species – and their populations in the United States are in steep decline. This is due… Read more »
LTER at AGU 2018: Exploring the depths beneath our feet
LTER Network presentations and posters at American Geophysical Union (AGU) Meeting 2018
Urbanization can accelerate gene flow
Western black widow spider populations in urban locations are more diverse than those in rural locations
LTER Road Trip: Coweeta Listening Project
I flip open my copy of The Franklin Press while sipping coffee at a field station, and there, in a bi-monthly column, is an article by Coweeta Hydrologic Lab staff, answering the scientific questions of local citizens. The column is just one part of the Coweeta Listening Project (CLP), an initiative of the Coweeta LTER.
LTER Road Trip: Real Time Evolution
Salamanders are very sensitive to changes in both precipitation and temperature, and scientists at the Coweeta Hydrologic Lab have discovered that they represent a hotbed of evolutionary activity. That’s right – evolution is happening before our eyes, in real time.
LTER Road Trip: Hemlock Hospice
The hemlock is a native tree species that was once common from northern Alabama to Nova Scotia. Stretching tall with thick needles, the hemlock creates an entire ecosystem beneath its large branches. In the Smoky Mountains, its shade used to cool streams just enough to allow the eastern brook trout to thrive. Unfortunately, these hemlocks are in dramatic decline.
The Grasshopper Sparrow – Breeding Nomad of the Grassland Prairie
At first glance, the grasshopper sparrow may not look like much. Native to the tallgrass prairies of the American Great Plains, it’s a small brown and black-speckled bird with a wingspan of 8 inches. But this little bird is gaining recognition for its unusual behavior: it has an amazing ability to cover long distances over… Read more »
Grow with the flow: evaluating the interactive effects of seawater conditions on coral growth
Although coral reefs have been the subject of ecological studies for nearly a century, the role that environmental conditions play in coral development is still a partial mystery. LTER researchers at Mo’orea Coral Reef have been exploring coral-environmental interactions in an effort to better understand coral growth. The team recently investigated how two key abiotic… Read more »
LTER Road Trip: How Tiny Algae Could Predict Changes in the Everglades
Viviana Mazzei studies organisms that cannot be seen with the naked eye. When I toured the Florida Coastal Everglades LTER research sites in Everglades National Park, my eyes were drawn to the mangrove trees, the dolphins, the birds. But when Mazzei, a Ph.D. student at Florida International University, wades through these ecosystems, she is on the look-out for something much smaller: diatoms, a type of single-cell algae, that thrive in this aquatic environment.
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