Parachute Science in Hawaiʻi: Assessing Local Connectivity of Hawaiʻi Based Marine and Coastal Research

As a site with some of the highest levels of tropical marine endemism on the planet, the Hawaiian Islands have attracted marine and coastal researchers for decades. Much of this research has been conducted by scientists from outside states or countries, typically with high financial and scientific resources, who travel to Hawaiʻi to collect data and produce results that ultimately fail to circulate back to the communities from which the data was collected. This model of reearch is commonly known as “parachute science” or “colonial science.” Studies of parachute science in other places around the globe show that Indigenous communities typically carry the burden of these extractive research models, while simultaneously stewarding a majority of the worldʻs biodiversity with innovative biocultural techniques. To begin to unravel the historical extent of parachute research in Hawaiʻi, we analyzed the percentage of Hawaiʻi-based versus externally-located authors on coastal and marine research publications using data from Hawaiʻi. While Hawaiʻi-based authorship does not solelly determine whether a project is contributing to extractive science, this pilot effort attempts to determine how research data in Hawaiʻi is utilized, and by whom. We find that while the total amount of research done in the Hawaiian islands has increased over the past 30 years, a majority of this increase derives from an increase in the number of externally-based publications. Hawaiʻi-based authorship has remained relatively constant—and low—over this time period. We will present on the implications of this finding for Hawaiʻi researchers, as well as future directions that explore the potential drivers of these research disparities

Common Era records of Santa Barbara Basin benthic foraminifera reveal nineteenth and twentieth century shifts in reproductive life history, body size, and community structure

Past ecological information is critical for contextualizing the rapid, decadal to centennial-scale climate changes characteristic of novel human regimes—such as colonialism, industrialization, and urbanization. Yet these changes occur over 1-100 year “invisible timescales,” making them difficult to resolve with traditional biological and paleontological methods. In this dissertation, I use a highly temporally-resolved fossil record from an extraordinary system, benthic foraminifer fossils preserved in the marine varves of the Santa Barbara Basin (SBB), to examine the short-term impacts of environmental shifts on individuals and communities over the Common Era, an interval that includes both environmental stasis and rapid change.Here I use the largest dataset of benthic foraminifera images and morphometric measurements generated to date to assess trends in life history reproduction, intra- and interspecific body size, and community-level diversity and abundance. In Chapter 1, I introduce benthic foraminifera from the SBB as an extraordinary system for high-resolution paleoecology. In Chapter 2, I detail the high-throughput imaging method I employ to produce a dataset of over 20,000 foraminifer images and measurements. In Chapter 3, I use these data to document the reproductive life history of biserial Bolivina foraminifera from ~50 CE to 2008 CE to examine the range of natural variation in reproductive mode and how reproduction is correlated with environmental variables. In Chapter 4, I apply a ~760-year-long dataset of individual measurements to characterize connections between intraspecific and community body size and whether size is modulated by life history and environmental variation. In Chapter 5, I undertake a multivariate analysis of diversity, biomass, and environmental data to assess how benthic foraminifer communities are structured from ~1834-2008 CE. Finally, I synthesize my findings in Chapter 6 and outline a vision for how paleoecology and the historical sciences more broadly can be in conversation with other disciplines to better understand the impacts of social and ecological change on the ocean.I find that all aspects of ecology examined—life history, body size, abundance, and community structure—undergo state changes in the 19th and 20th centuries. The timing of change corresponds to major shifts in human-environment interactions that accompanied the colonization and industrialization of California. Taken together, these findings suggest that not only do SBB benthic foraminifera communities change towards the present day, but that modern communities are more changeable than those of the past, demonstrating heightened variability in individual characteristics that have species- and community-scale ecological consequences

Kūlana Noiʻi: Indigenous Data Stewardship in Hawaiʻi

Each year, scientists conduct hundreds of research projects in Hawaiʻi that focus on the natural resources of the islands’ upland, coastal, and marine ecosystems, systems which are integral to the livelihoods, cultural practices, and religious traditions of Kanaka ʻŌiwi. Yet without guidance, this research too often leaves Kānaka out of research processes, including the decision-making and outcomes vital to determining the scope of a project and its long-term impact. The Kūlana Noiʻi (ethical research standards) were developed to meet the need for establishing reciprocal research partnerships in Hawaiʻi communities, reflecting researcher and community approaches and drawing from extensive partnershps between university scientists, kiaʻi, federal and state resource managers, and local nonprofits. To date, this process-oriented guidance has been used to train over 600 researchers, community member, and resource stewards. In recent updates to the guidance, feedback on the application of the Kūlana to community research scenarios has driven us towards developing a focus on data stewardship, and in particular, Indigenous Data Sovereignty. We will review the ways in which the Kūlana Noiʻi are applicable to developing collaborative relationships regarding the collection, use, and application of data relevant to Hawaiʻi. This processes includes guidance for ensuring that projects working with research data in Hawaiʻi meet Indigenous Data Soveiengity standards and meet their kuleana to ensure that communities have access to and ability to utilize data as well as decision-making power in determining how their information and data are shared

Twelve thousand recent patellogastropods from a northeastern Pacific latitudinal gradient

Body size distributions can vary widely among communities, with important implications for ecological dynamics, energetics, and evolutionary history. Here we present a dataset of body size and shape for 12,035 extant Patellogastropoda (true limpet) specimens from the collections of the University of California Museum of Paleontology, compiled using a novel high-throughput morphometric imaging method. These specimens were collected over the past 150 years at 355 localities along a latitudinal gradient ranging from Alaska to Baja California, Mexico and are presented here with individual images, 2D outline coordinates, and 2D measurements of body size and shape. This dataset provides a resource for assemblage-scale macroecological questions and documents the size and diversity of recent patellogastropods in the northeastern Pacific

Systemic racial disparities in funding rates at the National Science Foundation

Concerns about systemic racism at academic and research institutions have increased over the past decade. Here, we investigate data from the National Science Foundation (NSF), a major funder of research in the United States, and find evidence for pervasive racial disparities. In particular, white principal investigators (PIs) are consistently funded at higher rates than most non-white PIs. Funding rates for white PIs have also been increasing relative to annual overall rates with time. Moreover, disparities occur across all disciplinary directorates within the NSF and are greater for research proposals. The distributions of average external review scores also exhibit systematic offsets based on PI race. Similar patterns have been described in other research funding bodies, suggesting that racial disparities are widespread. The prevalence and persistence of these racial disparities in funding have cascading impacts that perpetuate a cumulative advantage to white PIs across all of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics

4-sq example for Automorph

4-sq is an example image and dataset created to be used as part of the Automorph tutorials. Automorph software and tutorials can be accessed here: https://github.com/HullLab These files include unprocessed images from an automatic scanning microscope and various output from the Automorph modules including segmented images, and 2D and 3D data extractions