Examining phenolic induction in Fraxinus americana in response to herbivory.

General EcologyMany plants contain chemical defenses known as secondary compounds; one of the most prevalent classes is known as phenolics. Certain plants have been known to induce phenolics in response to damage, while others maintain constant levels of phenolics even after damage. In order to determine if phenolic induction occurs in white ash trees (Fraxinus americana) in response to herbivory, leaflets were sampled to test for local induction (at the site of herbivory) and systemic induction (induction throughout the plant). Induction as a response to mechanical damage (e.g. slicing) was measured in order to remove a potential noisy variable from the results. Leaflets for the local/systemic test were eaten by forest tent caterpillars (Malacosoma disstria) and samples of induced leaflets were collected 24 hours after herbivory. The Folin-Denis analysis was used to determine the magnitude of change in phenolics between the constitutive and induced levels. Local induction was not found, but systemic induction was found to occur evenly between leaflets, despite predictions that there would be a spatial differences. One potential explanation for this was volatile gaseous compounds sending airborne cues to the undamaged leaflets, causing induction. Slicing was not found to cause significant levels of induction.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78384/1/Boos_Kerch_Poisson_Reid_2010.pd

Quantifying the contribution of citizen science to broad-scale ecological databases (github repository)

This is a snapshot of the github repository (https://github.com/cont-limno/CitizenMonitoringLAGOSNE) associated with the publication Poisson et al. (2019). Quantifying the contribution of citizen science to broad-scale ecological databases. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. The repository contains an R script that pulls data, performs analyses and generates figures

LAGOS-NE : A multi-scaled geospatial and temporal database of lake ecological context and water quality for thousands of U.S. lakes

Understanding the factors that affect water quality and the ecological services provided by freshwater ecosystems is an urgent global environmental issue. Predicting how water quality will respond to global changes not only requires water quality data, but also information about the ecological context of individual water bodies across broad spatial extents. Because lake water quality is usually sampled in limited geographic regions, often for limited time periods, assessing the environmental controls of water quality requires compilation of many data sets across broad regions and across time into an integrated database. LAGOS-NE accomplishes this goal for lakes in the northeastern-most 17 US states. LAGOS-NE contains data for 51101 lakes and reservoirs larger than 4 ha in 17 lake-rich US states. The database includes 3 datamodules for: lake location and physical characteristics for all lakes; ecological context (i.e., the land use, geologic, climatic, and hydrologic setting of lakes) for all lakes; and in situmeasurements of lake water quality for a subset of the lakes fromthe past 3 decades for approximately 2600â\u80\u9312 000 lakes depending on the variable. The database contains approximately 150000 measures of total phosphorus, 200 000 measures of chlorophyll, and 900 000 measures of Secchi depth. The water quality data were compiled from87 lake water quality data sets fromfederal, state, tribal, and non-profit agencies, university researchers, and citizen scientists. This database is one of the largest andmost comprehensive databases of its type because it includes both in situmeasurements and ecological context data. Because ecological context can be used to study a variety of other questions about lakes, streams, and wetlands, this database can also be used as the foundation for other studies of freshwaters at broad spatial and ecological scale