Ecological Art: Art with a Purpose

Ecological art is purposeful and often prescriptive: the actions and directions intended by the artists for activists to undertake often are clearly represented. Yet, ecological art has been no more successful than, for example, targeted scientific research, deposits on returnable bottles, or land-protection campaigns at slowing global warming, reducing the amount of waste we generate every day, or halting the ongoing sixth mass extinction in the history of the Earth. Here, we consider the idea that prescriptive ecological art provides insufficient mental space for creative reflection about future scenarios of, and responses to, environmental change. We ask whether, by presenting a limited range of possibilities in ecological art, we limit the range of options that viewers consider in deciding on possible actions that they could take to slow or halt environmental decline. We conclude by asking how we artists and scientists can best engage diverse audiences in critically thinking about, and taking action to mitigate, environmental change. These questions and issues are addressed through a discussion of two of our recent ecological art installations: Hemlock Hospice and Warming Warning

Repeatability and Transparency in Ecological Research

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The Ants of Nantucket: Unexpectedly High Biodiversity in an Anthropogenic Landscape

This first comprehensive assessment of the ant fauna of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts revealed that 43% of New England ant species and 70% of New England ant genera occur on an island occupying only 0.07% of New England’s land area. Ants collected by four different research groups between 2000 and 2009 included 32,158 individual ants (2,911 incidences) from 384 spatially and temporally distinct samples representing 14 different vegetation community types. The majority of the ant species were collected from anthropogenically-derived and maintained sandplain grasslands, sandplain heathlands, and scrub oak shrublands. These three communities are state-ranked S1 community types; the lower state-ranked communities of beaches and sand dunes, bogs, salt marshes, and forest fragments had distinct ant assemblages with much lower species richness. The large number of samples described here, from a wide range of vegetation community types, expands the known list of Nantucket ant species more than three-fold and provides a baseline for future assessment of the effects of ongoing, long-term ecosystem management on Nantucket.Organismic and Evolutionary Biolog

Preserving the Picturesque: Perceptions of Landscape, Landscape Art, and Land Protection in the United States and China

The predominant environmental consciousness in both the United States and China reflects an underlying sense of separation of people from nature. Likewise, traditional landscape paintings in the United States and China share a common underlying aesthetic—i.e., the “picturesque”. Together, these similarities appear to have led to the preservation of similar types of landscapes in both countries. Because decisions regarding landscape preservation and subsequent management of preserved areas in both countries reflect aesthetic preferences more than they reflect economic values placed on ecosystem services, contemporary artists have an opportunity to help shape future societal decisions regarding what natural areas to conserve and protect.Organismic and Evolutionary Biolog

Paths to Statistical Fluency for Ecologists

Twenty-first century ecology requires statistical fluency. Observational and experimental studies routinely gather non-Normal, multivariate data at many spatiotemporal scales. Experimental studies routinely include multiple blocked and nested factors. Ecological theories routinely incorporate both deterministic and stochastic processes. Ecological debates frequently revolve around choices of statistical analyses. Our journals are replete with likelihood and state-space models, Bayesian and frequentist inference, complex multivariate analyses, and papers on statistical theory and methods. We test hypotheses, model data, and forecast future environmental conditions. And many appropriate statistical methods are not automated in software packages. It is time for ecologists to understand statistical modeling well enough to construct nonstandard statistical models and apply various types of inference – estimation, hypothesis testing, model selection, and prediction – to our models and scientific questions. In short, ecologists need to move beyond basic statistical literacy and attain statistical fluency.Organismic and Evolutionary Biolog

Indicators of regime shifts in ecological systems: what do we need to know and when do we need to know it?

Because novel ecological conditions can cause severe and long-lasting environmental damage with large economic costs, ecologists must identify possible environmental regime shifts and pro-actively guide ecosystem management. As an illustrative example, we apply six potential indicators of impending regime shifts to Carpenter and Brock’s (2006) model of lake eutrophication and analyze whether or not they afford adequate advance warning to enable preventative interventions. Our initial analyses suggest that an indicator based on the high-frequency signal in the spectral density of the time-series provides the best advance warning of a regime shift, even when only incomplete information about underlying system drivers and processes is available. In light of this result, we explore two key factors associated with using indicators to prevent regime shifts. The first key factor is the amount of inertia in the system – how fast the system will react to a change in management, given that a manager can actually control relevant system drivers. If rapid, intensive management is possible, our analyses suggest that an indicator must provide at least 20 years advance warning to reduce the probability of a regime shift to < 5%. As time to, or intensity of, intervention is increased, the necessary amount of advance warning required to avoid a regime shift increases exponentially. The second key factor concerns the amount and type of variability intrinsic to the system, and the impact of this variability on the power of an indicator. Indicators are considered powerful if they detect an impending regime shift with adequate lead time for effective management intervention but not so far in advance that interventions are too costly or unnecessary. Intrinsic “noise” in the system obscures the “signal” provided by all indicators and therefore power of the indicators declines rapidly with increasing within- and between-year variability in measurable variables or parameters. Our results highlight the key role of human decisions in managing ecosystems and the importance of pro-active application of the precautionary principle to avoid regime shifts.Organismic and Evolutionary BiologyOther Research Uni

Energetics and the evolution of carnivorous plants - Darwin's "most wonderful plants in the world"

Carnivory has evolved independently at least six times in five angiosperm orders. In spite of these independent origins, there is a remarkable morphological convergence of carnivorous plant traps and physiological convergence of mechanisms for digesting and assimilating prey. These convergent traits have made carnivorous plants model systems for addressing questions in plant molecular genetics, physiology, and evolutionary ecology. New data show that carnivorous plant genera with morphologically complex traps have higher relative rates of gene substitutions than do those with simple sticky traps. This observation suggests two alternative mechanisms for the evolution and diversification of carnivorous plant lineages. The “energetics hypothesis” posits rapid morphological evolution resulting from a few changes in regulatory genes responsible for meeting the high energetic demands of active traps. The “predictable prey capture hypothesis” further posits that complex traps yield more predictable and frequent prey captures. To evaluate these hypotheses, available data on the tempo and mode of carnivorous plant evolution were reviewed; patterns of prey capture by carnivorous plants were analyzed; and the energetic costs and benefits of botanical carnivory were reevaluated. Collectively, the data are more supportive of the energetics hypothesis than the predictable prey capture hypothesis. The energetics hypothesis is consistent with a phenomenological cost-benefit model for the evolution of botanical carnivory and also accounts for data suggesting that carnivorous plants have leaf construction costs and scaling relationships among leaf traits that are substantially different from non-carnivorous plants.Organismic and Evolutionary BiologyOther Research Uni

Ecophysiological Traits of Terrestrial and Aquatic Carnivorous Plants: Are the Costs and Benefits the Same?

Identification of trade-offs among physiological and morphological traits and their use in cost-benefit models and ecological or evolutionary optimization arguments have been hallmarks of ecological analysis for at least 50 years. Carnivorous plants are model systems for studying a wide range of ecophysiological and ecological processes and the application of a cost-benefit model for the evolution of carnivory by plants has provided many novel insights into trait-based cost-benefit models. Central to the cost-benefit model for the evolution of botanical carnivory is the relationship between nutrients and photosynthesis; of primary interest is how carnivorous plants efficiently obtain scarce nutrients that are supplied primarily in organic form as prey, digest and mineralize them so that they can be readily used, and allocate them to immediate versus future needs. Most carnivorous plants are terrestrial – they are rooted in sandy or peaty wetland soils – and most studies of cost-benefit trade-offs in carnivorous plants are based on terrestrial carnivorous plants. However approximately 10% of carnivorous plants are unrooted aquatic plants. In this Forum paper, we ask whether the cost-benefit model applies equally well to aquatic carnivorous plants and what general insights into trade-off models are gained by this comparison. Nutrient limitation is more pronounced in terrestrial carnivorous plants, which also have much lower growth rates and much higher ratio of dark respiration to photosynthetic rates than aquatic carnivorous plants. Phylogenetic constraints on ecophysiological trade-offs among carnivorous plants remain unexplored. Despite differences in detail, the general cost-benefit framework continues to be of great utility in understanding the evolutionary ecology of carnivorous plants. We provide a research agenda that if implemented would further our understanding of ecophysiological trade-offs in carnivorous plants and also would provide broader insights into similarities and differences between aquatic and terrestrial plants of all types.Organismic and Evolutionary BiologyOther Research Uni