Photo courtesy of Carolyn Sanguinetti.

A vigilant herd of impala early in the morning in Kafue National Park, Zambia. This herd was photographed by one of the Zambian Carnivore Programme’s long time field ecologists, Carolyn Sanguinetti, while conducting ground-based distance sampling surveys used to estimate species’ density and distribution throughout the park. This photo highlights an open miombo woodland with a tall grass understory in the early dry season.

Photo credit: Carolyn Sanguinetti.

A lone puku ram on the southern fringe of the Busanga flood plain in Kafue National Park. Puku are still relatively abundant in parts of the Busanga flood plain, though their current range is limited and continent-wide population declines are cause for concern.

Journal article: Milan A Vinks. “Testing the effects of anthropogenic pressures on a diverse African herbivore community.” Ecosphere, DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.3067

A Great Kiskadee with its enclosed nest. Photo credit: Alejandro Schaaf and Martin de la Peña.

If you are a bird that builds enclosed nests, the direction of the entrance to your home could determine your comfort level, especially when raising babies.

If you want to make the temperature a little warmer inside your nest, you can orient the opening towards the sun – north in the southern hemisphere or south in the northern hemisphere. Alternatively, perhaps if you live in the tropics, you may want to build the opening away from the sun to keep the inside of the nest cool. Looking for a great middle-ground in a region with extreme daytime temperatures? You might consider orienting that door east or west.

By orienting nest openings in certain directions, birds achieve ideal thermal conditions for themselves, their eggs, and their offspring. With changing climate, this may also be a way of adapting to rising air temperatures.

In a newly published study in ESA’s journal Ecology, Alejandro A. Schaaf explores how two bird species that build enclosed nests in a temperate zone of Argentina (warm springs and summers with variable rainfall) might respond to rising air temperatures due to climate change.

The two bird species, Rufous Hornero (Furnarius rufus) and Great Kiskadee (Pitangus sulfuratus), build globe-like nests of mud or vegetable fibers, with wide openings in the side.

Rufous Hornero birds make their enclosed nests out of mud. Photo credit: Alejandro Schaaf and Martin de la Peña.

A Rufous Hornero stands atop its nest with a snack. Photo credit: Alejandro Schaaf and Martin de la Peña.

Schaaf obtained orientation data on 577 nests total built in trees between 1989 and 2018. For those three decades, he obtained temperature data from a local meteorological station, from which the authors calculated average local temperatures during the birds’ breeding seasons (September – December). They were then able to correlate north-south orientation of nest openings to the averaged temperature of each year’s breeding season.

The nest of a Great Kiskadee is made from vegetable fibers. Photo credit: Alejandro Schaaf and Martin de la Peña.

A Great Kiskadee huddles next to its nest. Photo credit: Alejandro Schaaf and Martin de la Peña.

As the authors expected, nest orientation for these bird species becomes more south-facing (away from the sun) with increasing average temperature during breeding season. “Rufous Hoernero and Great Kiskadee may be avoiding the overheating of the nests during the years with higher temperatures,” Schaaf states in the newly published paper, “by orienting the entrances towards the south.”

Schaaf believes that this work is a first approximation of studying nest building and orientation as a behavioral adaption in birds to climate change. “We encourage the development of similar studies in other areas around the world,” he says, “for example, in tropical or cold-temperature sites.”

Left: Great Kiskadee. Right: Rufous Hornero. Photo credit: Alejandro Schaaf and Martin de la Peña

Journal article: Bird nest orientation and local temperature: an analysis over three decades

Last month, participants from across the southeastern US practiced their messaging and engagement skills in a day-long Communicating Science Workshop at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The workshop on February 3rd was co-hosted by ESA’s Public Affairs Office, the ESA Southeastern Member Chapter, and the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS). Around 30 people including ESA members and students attended.

After icebreakers and introductions, participants spent the morning learning the basics of science communication and how to craft a meaningful, memorable message for varying audiences. Each person established a goal for themselves regarding what they want to accomplish by sharing their research, and used that goal to craft talking points during the rest of the session. After a lunch break on a beautiful, abnormally warm winter day, the workshop continued by touching on how to communicate with the media before diving into policy and government engagement. Attendees learned a bit about congressional culture and what to expect when meeting with a Member of Congress and their staff. The workshop was wrapped up with small group work and practice on meeting policy makers and tailoring messages.

Workshop participants engaged in small group discussions to practice crafting messages to policy makers.

This workshop was funded by an award provided by Wiley Publications and distributed by the ESA Governing Board. The workshop follows science communications workshops with the Mid-Atlantic Section in 2017 and with the Southwestern Chapter in 2019. ESA plans to hold additional workshops in the future at locations throughout the country.

In Brazil there is a plant so strange that researchers predicted – and 27 years later, proved – that opossums are key to its pollination. The findings are published in the Ecological Society of America’s journal Ecology.

This big-eared opossum is a very important pollinator for a tricky, bract-covered flower. Photo courtesy of Felipe Amorim.

The plant Scybalium fungiforme, a little-known fungus-like species of the family Balanophoraceae, has bunches of tiny pale flowers that are surrounded and housed by a hard surface of bracts – like on an artichoke. Because of their scale-like shape, the bracts must be opened or peeled back to expose the flowers and nectar to pollinators such as bees.

While most species in the Balanophoraceae plant family are primarily pollinated by bees and wasps, researchers at São Paulo State University in Botucatu, Brazil hypothesized something different. They thought that opossums, with their opposable thumbs, would be a key pollinator for S. fungiforme due to the challenging bracts covering the flowers.

Left to right: 1) A closed inflorescence and a partially opened inflorescence containing the flowers and nectar of the plant. 2) A fully opened inflorescence, exposing the tiny flowers and nectar. 3) A close up of the tiny flowers under a stereo microscope. Photos courtesy of Felipe Amorim.

In the early 1990s Patrícia Morellato, a professor at the university, first made the prediction. She and her colleagues studied the plant and they captured an opossum with pollen on its nose. Their observations went unpublished because they did not record or obtain direct evidence of the opossums pollinating the flowers.

Felipe Amorim, assistant professor at the university and lead author on this study, did not encounter the plant until 2017, but hypothesized that a non-flying mammal is needed for pollination based on the flower morphology. In April 2019 his students independently hypothesized that perhaps rodents could act as the main pollinators of this species. “At that time, neither of us knew anything about the unpublished observations made by Patrícia in the ‘90s,’” he explains.

Amorim and students involved in the study go into the field to collect footage. Photos courtesy of Felipe Amorim.

In May 2019 Amorim and a team of researchers went to Serra do Japi Biological Reserve, located about 50 km from the area studied by Morellato, and set up night-vision cameras to record the activity of nocturnal flower visitors. The cameras captured opossums removing bracts from the fungus-like plant and pushing their faces into the flowers to eat the nectar. It was the first direct evidence of opossums pollinating the plant.

Amorim sent his colleague Morellato the footage. “When she watched the videos,” he says, “she sent me a voice message as excited as we were when we first saw the opossum visiting the flowers, because it was the first time she saw something she predicted two and a half-decades ago!”

The researchers had made the opossum prediction based on “pollination syndrome” – the concept that floral attributes such as color, morphology, scent, and size reflect the adaptation of a plant species to pollination by a certain group of animals. Opossums, having “hands” with opposable thumbs, are capable of peeling back the scale-like leafs covering the flowers of S. fungiforme. The plant does have other floral visitors that act as secondary pollinators once the bracts are removed – bees and wasps dominate the crowd, and also small mammals like mice, but a surprising additional visitor was several hummingbirds.

A violet-capped Woodnymph hummingbird visits the inflorescence. Photo courtesy of Felipe Amorim.

“Based on the flower morphology,” Amorim says, “Morellato, my students, and I could safely predict that this plant should be pollinated by non-flying mammals, but the occurrence of hummingbirds coming to the ground to visit these flowers was something completely unexpected to me.” Morellato had not seen any hummingbirds visiting this species at her study site during the ‘90s, but researchers have more recently obtained indirect evidence that hummingbirds visit the plant in both study locations.

The authors hope to continue studying the pollinators of S. fungiforme to assess the efficiency of each group of flower visitor (mammals, hummingbirds, and bees and wasps) in order to quantify their contribution to the fruit production of this plant. They also want to analyze the chemical compounds of nectar and floral scent, which can reveal much about the adaptation of a plant for a given group of pollinator.

Overall, the story is an interesting one to tell, the culmination of nearly three decades of prediction and observation based on the hard shell surrounding a bunch of tiny flowers. Amorim contemplates that “at the time that non-flying mammals were first predicted as the pollinators of this fungus-like plant, I was about 11 years old, and most of the authors of this study haven’t even had born!”

Journal article:

Amorim, F.W., et al. 2020. “Good heavens what animal can pollinate it? A fungus‐like holoparasitic plant potentially pollinated by opossums.” Ecology. DOI: 10.1002/ecy.3001.

As the likelihood and intensity of fires is increasing amid drought and climate warming, multiple approaches for understanding and mitigation are needed worldwide. Complex interactions of vegetation, land-use, topography, moisture regimes, fuel loads, ignition, human habitation, and post-fire succession require study and historical data analysis, as well as monitoring how affected species respond.

The Rim Fire blazes in tree crowns of the Stanislaus National Forest, California, in late August, 2013.  Photo courtesy of Mike McMillan/ U.S. Forest Service.

ESA Wildfire Experts

The following ESA members have expertise related to wildfire issues and are available for comment. For help with other ESA fire experts, contact Alison Mize at alison@esa.org.

Scott L. Collins, Distinguished Professor
scollins@unm.edu
University of New Mexico
505-239-5987
http://collins.lternet.edu/
Collins is a community/ecosystem ecologist who studies the impact of natural disturbances and global environmental change on mesic and arid grassland ecosystems. He is particularly interested in the interactive effects of fire, grazing, and drought in mesic grasslands in North America and South Africa, and how rainfall variability, temperature change, and shrub encroachment affect aridland ecosystems in the southwestern US.

Lisa M. Ellsworth, Assistant Professor
lisa.ellsworth@oregonstate.edu
Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Oregon State University
541-760-2001
https://fw.oregonstate.edu/users/lisa-ellsworth
Ellsworth is an Assistant Professor and habitat ecologist in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Oregon State University. She has more than 20 years’ experience working with wildfire, first as a firefighter and then as a researcher. Her current work spans issues of fire behavior and ecosystem response to fire in forests and rangelands.

Matthew Hurteau, Associate Professor
mhurteau@unm.edu
University of New Mexico
505-277-0863
www.hurteaulab.org
Hurteau is a forest and fire ecologist with a research focus on climate change mitigation and adaptation in forest systems. He uses field studies and simulation modeling to better understand how changing climate, wildfire, and forest management influence tree species distributions, productivity, and carbon dynamics.

Monica G. Turner, Eugene P. Odum Professor of Ecology and Vilas Research Professor
turnermg@wisc.edu
University of Wisconsin
608-262-2592
http://landscape.zoology.wisc.edu
Turner is an ecosystem and landscape ecologist who has studied fire and vegetation dynamics in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in the western United States. She has studied the consequences of the 1988 Yellowstone Fires for over 30 years, as well as more recent fires. Her work emphasizes effects of changing climate and fire activity on forest resilience.

Giorgio Vacchiano, Assistant Professor
giorgio.vacchiano@unimi.it
University of Milan, Italy
+39 329 6497188
www.giorgiovacchiano.com
Vacchanio is a researcher in forest management and planning at University of Milan, Italy. His research deals with climate mitigation by forests, climate change effects on forest ecosystems – including after disturbances such as forest fire, or wind damage – and adaptive forest management to increase climate mitigation and reduce forest vulnerability. He is a science communicator and was included among 11 top emerging scientists globally by Nature in 2018.

Fires burn in Yellowstone National Park. Photo courtesy of Mike Lewelling/NPS.

ESA Virtual Fire Issue

ESA’s virtual issue features relevant papers from across our peer-reviewed journals. The collection can be found here, or you can find individual titles below.

ECOSPHERE

Spatiotemporal variability of human–fire interactions on the Navajo Nation
Guiterman, C. H., Margolis, E. Q., Baisan, C. H., Falk, D. A., Allen, C. D., and Swetnam, T. W.. 2019.

The missing fire: quantifying human exclusion of wildfire in Pacific Northwest forests, USA 
Haugo, R. D., Kellogg, B. S., Cansler, C. A., Kolden, C. A., Kemp, K. B., Robertson, J. C., Metlen, K. L., Vaillant, N. M., and Restaino, C. M.. 2019.

Repeated fires reduce plant diversity in low‐elevation Wyoming big sagebrush ecosystems (1984–2014)
Mahood, A. L., and Balch, J. K.. 2019.

Living on the edge: trailing edge forests at risk of fire‐facilitated conversion to non‐forest 
Parks, S. A., Dobrowski, S. Z., Shaw, J. D., and Miller, C.. 2019.

Tree recruitment dynamics in fire‐prone eucalypt savanna
Russell‐Smith, J., Evans, J., Macdermott, H., Brocklehurst, P., Schatz, J., Lynch, D., Yates, C., and Edwards, A.. 2019.

Recoupling fire and grazing reduces wildland fuel loads on rangelands
Starns, H. D., Fuhlendorf, S. D., Elmore, R. D., Twidwell, D., Thacker, E. T., Hovick, T. J., and Luttbeg, B.. 2019.

Could restoration of a landscape to a pre‐European historical vegetation condition reduce burn probability? 
Stockdale, C. A., McLoughlin, N., Flannigan, M., and Macdonald, S. E.. 2019.

Spotted Owls and forest fire: a systematic review and meta‐analysis of the evidence
Lee, D. E.. 2018

Climate changes and wildfire alter vegetation of Yellowstone National Park, but forest cover persists
Clark, J. A., Loehman, R. A., and Keane, R. E.. 2017.

Wildfire‐mediated vegetation change in boreal forests of Alberta, Canada
Stralberg, D., Wang, X., Parisien, M., Robinne, F., Sólymos, P., Mahon, C. L., Nielsen, S. E., and Bayne, E. M.. 2018.

ECOLOGY

Browsing and fire decreases dominance of a resprouting shrub in woody encroached grassland
O’Connor, R. C., Taylor, J. H., and Nippert, J. B.. 2019.

Better lucky than good: How savanna trees escape the fire trap in a variable world
Hoffmann, W. A., Sanders, R. W., Just, M. G., Wall, W. A., and Hohmann, M. G.. 2020.

Post‐fire forest regeneration shows limited climate tracking and potential for drought‐induced type conversion.
Young, D. J. N., Werner, C. M., Welch, K. R., Young, T. P., Safford, H. D., and Latimer, A. M.. 2019.

PLANT FUNCTIONAL TRAITS IN RELATION TO FIRE IN CROWN‐FIRE ECOSYSTEMS
Pausas, J. G., Bradstock, R. A., Keith, D. A., and Keeley, J. E.. 2004.

Caught in a fire trap: Recurring fire creates stable size equilibria in woody resprouters
Grady, J. M., and Hoffmann, W. A.. 2012.

Multi‐trophic resilience of boreal lake ecosystems to forest fires
Lewis, L., Lindberg, M. S., Schmutz, J. A., and Bertram, M. R.. 2014.

ECOLOGICAL MONOGRAPHS

Origins of abrupt change? Postfire subalpine conifer regeneration declines nonlinearly with warming and drying
Hansen, W. D., and Turner, M. G.. 2019.

Deterministic and stochastic processes lead to divergence in plant communities 25 years after the 1988 Yellowstone fires
Romme, W. H., Whitby, T. G., Timker, D. B., Turner, and M. G.. 2016.

Fire history in a western Fennoscandian boreal forest as influenced by human land use and climate
Rolstad, J., Blanck, Y., and Storaunet, K. O.. 2017.

ECOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS

Future changes in fire weather, spring droughts, and false springs across U.S. National Forests and Grasslands
Martinuzzi, S., Allstadt, A. J., Pidgeon, A. M., Flather, C. H., Jolly, W. M., and Radeloff, V. C.. 2019.

Large‐scale forest restoration stabilizes carbon under climate change in Southwest United States 
McCauley, L. A., Robles, M. D., Woolley, T., Marshall, R. M., Kretchun, A., and Gori, D. F. 2019.

Limitations to recovery following wildfire in dry forests of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, USA
Rodman, K C., Veblen, T. T., Chapman, T. B., Rother, M. T., Wion, A. P., and Redmond, M. D.. 2020.

Deconstructing the King megafire
Coen, J. L., Stravos, E. N., and Fites‐Kaufman, J. A.. 2018.

Factors related to building loss due to wildfires in the conterminous United States
Alexandre, P. M., Stewart, S. I., Keuler, N. S., Clayton, M. K., Mockrin, M. H., Bar-Massada, A., Syphard, A. D., and Radeloff, V. C.. 2016.

FRONTIERS

Wildfires as an ecosystem service
Pausas, J.G., and Keeley, J.E. 2019.

Twenty‐five years of the Northwest Forest Plan: what have we learned?
Spies, T. A., Long, J. W., Charnley, S., Hessburg, P. F., Marcot, B. G., Reeves, G. H., Lesmeister, D. B., Reilly, M. J., Cerveny, L. K., Stine, P. A., and Raphael, M. G.. 2019.

Megafires: an emerging threat to old‐forest species
Jones, G. M., Gutiérrez, R. J., Tempel, D. J., Whitmore, S. A., Berigan, W. J., and Peery, M. Z.. 2016.

Large‐scale restoration increases carbon stability under projected climate and wildfire regimes
Liang, S., Hurteau, M. D., and Westerling, A. L.. 2018.

Smokey comes of age: unmanned aerial systems for fire management
Twidwell, D., Allen, C. R., Detweiler, C., Higgins, J., Laney, C., and Elbaum, S.. 2016.

Humans might hold a little stigma toward those who walk around with food on their nose, but for these ornate day geckos (Phelsuma ornata), the only “stigma” they’re concerned with is the pollen-receptor kind in plants.

In many island systems, lizards serve as important and understudied pollinators. Hopping from plant to plant, they enthusiastically feed on nectar, transporting pollen in the process as it rubs off on their nose and gets carried to the next destination. It’s not unusual to see the ornate, multicolored skin of this lizard sprinkled with delicate yellow pollen grains.

Read more in Frontiers EcoPics.

Photo credit: Patrick D Moldowan

Silversword plants of Hawai’i are unique to the Maui’s Haleakalā volcano summit area and to the Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa volcanoes on the Big Island. Each volcanic mountain has its own unique type of silversword. The Haleakalā species – known by its Hawai’ian name ‘āhinahina which translates to very grey – is highly threatened and is considered by many to be the most beautiful. But they are growing rarer due to drought, especially at lower elevations on the volcano slopes.

Silverswords flowering at Haleakalā National Park, Maui, Hawaii. Photo courtesy of Forest and Kim Starr / CC BY 2.0.

In a new study in the Ecological Society of America’s journal Ecological Monographs, researchers seek to understand recent population declines of Haleakalā silverswords and identify conservation strategies for the future.

Photo courtesy of Jean Beaufort.

Because silverswords grow at high elevations between 5,000 and 10,000 feet, they have thoroughly adapted to the harsh environment there. These plants, with very dense rosettes of spiky leaves that radiate out from the base, produce towering blooms that can reach up to six feet high. The plants live from 15 to more than 50 years, but they bloom only once and die. Climate change imposes a new threat to these charismatic plants: hotter and drier conditions threaten even hardy silverswords.

Researchers with the University of Hawai’i are actively working with Haleakalā National Park staff to evaluate the effects of drought conditions on silverswords and to preserve these unique plants for generations to come.

Paul Krushelnycky, a researcher with the University of Hawai’i, and colleagues tracked growth of silversword plants for over three and a half years in greenhouse and out-planting experiments at the bottom, middle, and top of the plant’s elevation range on Haleakalā. They studied the adaptability of silverswords to environmental or climatic changes and they also studied the plants’ genes to see if some plants have genes that help them withstand drought better than others.

In the experiments, researchers found a counter-intuitive result, but one that is in line with what has been seen in the wild. “Plants have been dying at greater rates in wetter portions of the range, in response to drying conditions, rather than in drier areas,” says Krushelnycky. “It’s contrary to the prediction that one would normally make – namely, that the population should shift towards wetter areas as conditions get drier.”

A silversword in Haleakalā in peak bloom. Photo courtesy of Forest and Kim Starr / CC BY 2.0.

It appears that lower elevation plants are less drought-resistant than higher elevation plants, which are already living in a drier environment and are thus more adaptable to extra-stressful dry seasons. The plants at lower elevation are thus dying off more than their higher counterparts during recent dry seasons. This pattern may be enhanced by strong changes in typical climate conditions at lower elevations.

One such change, and an extremely important factor for Hawai’i volcano climate overall, is the frequency and elevation of the trade wind inversion (TWI). “It’s the trade wind inversion, not the trade winds per se, that is important in creating the relevant ecotone high on the mountain,” explains Krushelnycky. “Above the TWI, it’s much drier and clearer most of the time, and this appears to be important in determining not just the lower boundary of silverswords, but also the boundaries of several plant communities on the mountain.”

An inversion is a layer in the atmosphere in which temperature increases, not decreases, with height, creating a kind of ‘cap’ of warm air. In Hawai’i this commonly occurs at about 6,000 to 8,000 feet. The presence of the TWI influences many aspects of Hawai’ian climate, including limiting cloud height, limiting the amount of rainfall on the islands, and producing dry air and clear skies at the highest elevations on volcanoes. Because the TWI limits how far air can rise, it plays a big part in how strong convective clouds and showers can become – a lower TWI elevation leads to lighter rainshowers or clouds with no showers at all.

The top of inversion-layer clouds are seen from above here at Haleakalā National Park. Conditions above the layer are clearer and drier more consistently than below. Photo courtesy of Forest and Kim Starr / CC BY 2.0.

The occurrence of the TWI has increased in recent decades, which leads to more persistent clear and dry – and thus stressful – conditions high on Haleakalā. Kryschelnycky says some climate projections predict TWIs will be even more frequent in the future, and possibly at lower elevation. Both of these changes would lead to more of the silversword range being exposed to stressful conditions. All in all, the changing climate would jeopardize the plants’ survival even more.

The delicate silverswords, once ripped up and taken home by visitors as souvenirs before the creation of Haleakalā National Park, now depend on management efforts for survival. Park staff fence out predators, destroy non-native plants that would crowd out silverswords, and educate park visitors to stay on trails to avoid stepping on fragile silversword seedlings and root systems. As for future management, Krushelnycky believes efforts should focus on using suitable places for silverswords to live in the face of climate changes, rather than trying to find or breed the silverswords with particularly drought-resistant genes.

“The study highlights how plant population responses to changing climate can be quite complex,” says Krushelnycky, “both in terms of the underlying mechanisms and the outcomes.” With continued study of silverswords and similarly-affected plants, the researchers think case studies like this will reveal more factors essential for consideration in broader conservation efforts.

Photo courtesy of wikicommons.

Journal article: Krushelnycky, Paul, et al. 2019. “Clinal variation in drought resistance shapes past population declines and future management of a threatened plant.” Ecological Monographs. DOI: 10.1002/ecm.1398

What does it mean to become a Future Park Leaders intern? To get a better idea of the internships, we reached out to some past alumni to share their personal experiences, memories, and lasting benefits of the program. The Future Park Leaders of Emerging Change internship program pays upper level undergraduate and graduate students over the summer to work in a unit of the National Park System. Each internship is valuable and unique because it directly relates to the needs of the individual park. Projects encompass natural and cultural resource conservation, park infrastructure, policy development, interpretation and education, and addressing management challenges arising from global drivers of environmental change.

Minh Phan at Fire Island National Seashore. Photo courtesy of NPS.

Minh Phan, 2017 graduate intern, shares his experience living and working at Fire Island National Seashore

Honestly one of the best experiences of my life. I got to live at the beach in a national park for a couple of months– what’s better than that? I also got to work on a great project alongside three other national parks (Assateague NS, Cape Cod NS, and Gateway NRA) to establish open dialogue about the various actions each park was taking to address issues centered on climate change. Part of the process included virtual monthly meetings to share our action plans and strategies and bounce ideas off each other. I even made trips to visit the some of the parks in person such as Cape Cod and Gateway!

Malcolm Wells working with the South Florida and Caribbean Inventory and Monitoring Network at Everglades National Park. Photo courtesy of NPS.

Malcolm Wells, 2018 undergraduate intern, got to be behind the scenes

I worked on investigating trends in soil elevation related to hurricanes and how these events are impacting mangrove communities.The whole thing was so unique —  I got to be behind the scenes with everything related to the park from being on boats, to using GPS devices, to talking to people way above my pay grade and sitting in on meetings. My advice would be to try to engage in as many resume-building activities — such as workshops or certifications like CPR, vehicle, or fire training — that you possibly can. And understand that you get out what you put in! The more questions you ask and the more upfront you are with your mentor, the more you will receive.

Shanasia Sylman at Salem Maritime National Historic Site. Photo courtesy of NPS.

Shanasia Sylman, 2017 graduate intern, talks about her success using direct hire authority (DHA)

Throughout the internship, they had webinars that indicated the importance of the DHA to which I paid close attention, and it really does help you out. I got my current job as a planner for the National Park Service because of my DHA status. The DHA process is still very new, so if you can find someone who is willing to take that journey with you, go for it!

NETWORK! During this internship, it’s crucial for you to exercise your informational interview skills and sit in on meetings when you can, so you know what is going on. You never know what will lead you to your next job, and it’s important to pay attention.

The Future Park Leaders of Emerging Change (FPL) is a program of the National Park Service (NPS) and co-managed by the Ecological Society of America.

Interested in learning more about the Future Park Leaders? Come check us out at futureparkleaders.org

For the little brown bat – a small mouse-eared bat with glossy brown fur – a warm, dry place to roost is essential to the species’ survival. Reproductive females huddle their small furry bodies together to save thermal energy during maternity season (summer), forming “maternity colonies.” In the face of severe population losses across North America, summer access to an attic or other permanent sheltered structure, as opposed to just trees or rock crevices, is a huge benefit to these bats.

In a new study on little brown bats roosting in attics, the researchers sometimes captured the critters by hand. Photo courtesy of NPS.

In a new study published in the Ecological Society of America’s journal Ecosphere, researchers with Ohio University, University of Kentucky, and the US National Park Service investigate and describe the conservation importance of buildings relative to natural, alternative roosts for little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) in Yellowstone National Park.

Yellowstone’s iconic high-elevation landscape provides abundant natural roosting places but not many buildings. The study involved four visitor areas with several buildings that are known to host bold little brown bats, which are among the few bat species that will make their homes in structures that are actively used by people, allowing humans to get up close and personal. Sometimes, the investigation even involved researchers capturing them by hand.

“We occasionally entered attics to look to see if they were occupied by bats,” says lead study author Joseph Johnson, an assistant professor of vertebrate biology at Ohio University. “On these occasions we sometimes took the opportunity presented by inactive bats… We would gently pluck them from the walls and glue a transmitter on them in order to study their thermoregulation, but also to let them lead us to additional roosts.”

Little brown bats are among the few bat species that will make their homes in structures that are actively used by people, allowing humans to get up close and personal. The researchers could even capture them by hand for study. Photo courtesy of NPS.

Over the summers of 2012-2015, researchers tracked individual bats in the park. Using temperature-sensitive radio-transmitters, the researchers measured roost preferences and body temperature regulation in adult male and female bats roosting in buildings, trees, and rocks.

Their results show that reproductive females roost in attics in the study area on 84% of all days for which they collected data, while males roost exclusively in rock crevices or trees. It appears then that outside of maternity colonies, adult males and non-reproductive females will roost by themselves or in small aggregations.

The idea and study of bats using buildings is not new; people have probably seen bats in buildings ever since humans first started building them. What is new is comparing the benefits buildings provide bats with the benefits of alternative natural roosts. “That was what we did in our research,” Johnson says, “using the challenging environment of Yellowstone National Park as a lens through which to view these benefits. As populations of bats continue to decline in North America, we believe that highlighting the importance of buildings to bats is important for conservation.”

Outside Yellowstone and national parks, people frequently evict bats from their buildings. The removal of bats, especially maternity colonies that allow females to conserve warmth and energy, is a conservation concern as white-nose syndrome (WNS) continues to devastate populations in cave-hibernating bat populations across the continent.

WNS is named for a distinct white fungal growth around the muzzle and on wings of hibernating bats – it is the first known pathogen that kills a mammal host during hibernation. The fungus erodes skin and membranes and causes infected bats to burn through energy and fat reserves twice as fast as healthy individuals, and it essentially results in starvation. WNS fungus only thrives in the cold, damp environments typically associated with underground hibernation sites such as caves and mines, and it only grows on bats when they hibernate during winter. Bats that do survive WNS are particularly weak come spring and summer.

“To date, there have been no signs of WNS in these buildings or in Yellowstone, although the fungus has now been documented both east and west of the Park,” says Johnson. If WNS is present in the study area, the researchers expect to see a sharp reduction in the number of bats present during the summer. “Thankfully,” he says, “we have not seen any such decline as of yet.”

Another complication for little brown bats is a state of body temperature regulation called “torpor.” It can be thought of as a form of hibernation, but on a daily scale. In spring through fall, the little brown bat enters a state of decreased physiological activity. Torpor saves energy for the bat when the ambient temperature gets too cool (yes, even in summer). Instead of expending energy and fat reserves to maintain a constant body temperature, torpor allows the body to cool close to their roost temperature and physiological activity to slow. While in torpor, a bat’s heart rate drops from up to 210 beats per minute to as few as 8 beats per minute.

Pregnant little brown bats huddle together in “maternity colonies” to conserve warmth, as they are unable to regulate their body temperature. Photo courtesy of NPS.

For a pregnant bat, however, their ability to regulate body temperature decreases. Torpor also slows gestation and delays the birth of offspring, potentially forcing juvenile bats to mature quickly before winter arrives, and therefore decreasing survival rates of new generations.

The study confirms that male bats roosting in rocks and trees largely allow their body temperature to dip close to the ambient temperature. Female bats in buildings, on the other hand, sustain higher body temperatures than males throughout the day, thanks to buildings being more insulated from low ambient temperatures during the middle of the maternity season.

Ultimately, the importance of buildings to bats may be especially great at high elevations and latitudes. The researchers believe that buildings allow for larger populations of little brown bats than would be possible without buildings in these landscapes, and that conservation managers need to evaluate the conservation value of buildings for bat populations as WNS continues to grow and spread.

“This warmth is important for bats during the summer months to help with their reproductive efforts,” emphasizes Johnson. “Bats surviving WNS and trying to recover might benefit from a warm roost tremendously.”

This journal article was published in Ecosphere on November 15, 2019. Find it here.

“With the newest members elected to the ESA governing board, the Society will continue the tradition of strong leadership and dedication to the science of ecology,” says ESA President Osvaldo Sala. “I look forward to the new perspectives and experiences they will bring when their terms begin in August 2020, and I offer congratulations to each person joining the board.”

Dennis Ojima, elected as President-Elect for 2020

President-Elect for 2020 Dennis Ojima is a professor emeritus at Colorado State University in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability and a senior research scientist at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory. An ESA member since 1984, his research applies social-ecological approaches to climate and land use changes in dryland and grassland systems worldwide, including Mongolia, China, Central Asia, parts of Africa, and in the U.S. Ojima is instrumental in the development of many international science programs; he is named Champion of the Environment by the Mongolian government and is recognized for his contributions to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the International Panel on Climate Change. He is also active in training young scholars and professionals in social-ecological system approaches to dealing with climate change impacts and responses in the United States and Asia.

“I am honored to be selected as President-Elect of the Ecology Society of America,” says Ojima. “Serving ESA over the coming years, and representing the members in their quest to pursue sound ecological research and to provide a platform to engage and communicate with civil society will be a role I will execute with integrity and with members’ guidance.”

Laura Petes, elected VP for Public Affairs for 2020-2023

Vice President for Public Affairs for the term of 2020-2023, Laura Petes is the manager of the Coastal Communities Program in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office for Coastal Management. Petes has conducted research on coral disease and on the physiological ecology of rocky intertidal mussels, and she previously served as assistant director for climate adaptation and ecosystems at the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP). There, she led the OSTP resilience portfolio under President Obama’s Climate Action Plan and launched a Climate Education and Literacy Initiative, which engaged federal agencies, companies, non-governmental organizations, and hundreds of students and educators. Petes is currently serving a second term on the ESA Public Affairs Committee.

Jeannine Cavender-Bares, elected as vice president for finance for the term of 2020-2023

Jeannine Cavender-Bares, a professor at the University of Minnesota, will serve as vice president for finance for the term of 2020-2023. She is interested in plant function, integrating ecology and evolution, and exploring ways to detect biodiversity and ecological processes. Over the last two decades, Cavender-Bares has led major research grants from multiple federal and state institutions and managed budgets for these projects, and she currently serves on NSF’s Biological Sciences Advisory Committee and its NEON subcommittee. As vice president for finance, she will aim to work with the Society to invest in activities that benefit ESA members while maintaining the Society’s solid financial path.

Zoe Cardon, elected member-at-large for the term 2020-2022

An elected member-at-large for the term 2020-2022, Zoe Cardon is a senior scientist at the Ecosystems Center, Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), located in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. She is an ecosystems ecologist with roots in mechanistic plant physiology, and she considers ESA her “home” Society. Her diverse career path includes prior positions with UC Berkeley, Bowdoin College, and the University of Connecticut. Cardon works to build interdisciplinary communities supporting training and collaboration essential for understanding and sustaining Earth’s life support systems.

Sasha Reed, elected member-at-large for the term 2020-2022

Sasha Reed, also elected a member-at-large for the term 2020-2022, works as an ecosystems ecologist and biogeochemist focusing on understanding how terrestrial ecosystems work and respond to change. She believes in linking relevant and accessible science with those who can use it; enjoys addressing complex problems with diverse groups; and thinks highly of the power of strong mentorship. Reed serves on a number of boards and committees, including ESA’s Publications Committee and on the Advisory Board for ESA’s Issues in Ecology.

“I continue to be impressed with the dedication of ESA’s volunteers that step up for board service,” says ESA Executive Director Catherine O’Riordan. “I want to extend a big thank you to the membership; this election process is important for providing the vision and voices needed to guide the Society’s efforts to positively affect and advance the community and science of ecology.”

The current ESA Governing Board Members are President Osvaldo Sala, professor, Arizona State University through August 2020; Immediate President-Elect Kathleen Weathers, senior scientist, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies; Immediate Past-President Laura Huenneke, emeritus professor, Northern Arizona University; Vice President for Science Diane Pataki, professor, University of Utah; Vice President for Finance Evan DeLucia, professor, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Vice President for Public Affairs Frank Davis, professor, University of California, Santa Barbara; Vice President for Education and Human Resources, Pamela Templer, professor, Boston University; Secretary, Jessica Gurevitch, professor, Stony Brook University; Member-at-Large Manuel Morales, professor, Williams College; Member-at-Large Kathleen Treseder, professor, University of California, Irvine; and Member-at-Large Jacquelyn Gill, associate professor, University of Maine.