Weeds, Seeds, and Dispersal! That was our theme for the December 5th KBS K-12 Partnership workshop. Our plenary speaker for the day was Dr. Joe Dauer, MSU research associate in Plant Biology. We learned that when he is not wearing his ‘weed ecologist’ hat, Dr. Dauer makes ‘the best pancakes’! We did not get any pancakes but we did get to hear his talk: ‘Going the Distance: Investigating dispersal across scales’.

Dr. Dauer began with a discussion on investigative ecology. How and what do you investigate about weeds? One question would be – why do we see a patchy distribution of weeds and not an even distribution? Another could be – what is the role of humans in facilitating the movement of weeds or controlling it? During the talk we considered two methods of dispersal: wind and soil. When considering wind dispersal, the important questions according to Dr. Dauer are: How do the seeds move and how far do they move? For a plant relying on wind to disperse its seeds, it would be a smart move to get those seeds as high as it can. This is because the wind speeds are higher and the flow much more laminar at greater heights. Using some cool model airplanes for seed collection in one experiment, Dr. Dauer found that Horseweed seed dispersersed long-distances, travelling at least 6 meters above ground surface.

In the case of plants which disperse via the soil we learned that different plants have different ‘growing points’ i.e. the lowest point at which a plant must be cut in order to kill it. Dr. Dauer spoke of the ‘curious case of the Japanese Knotweed’. This is a plant that was introduced to the USA as a horticultural plant. The curious aspect is that since it does not produce viable seeds here what we see is basically the same plant all over eastern USA. Piece of friendly advice: do not try to grow, mow or use it for your garden deco. It is against the law in Michigan. The growing point of this weed is below the ground so mowing it does not kill it, all it does is spread it some more.

After the talk, session leaders got their 15 seconds of fame in which they had to do the best to sell their talk! Some of them did such a great job that I think they may have an alternative career in advertising!

Teachers had multiple concurrent sessions to choose from throughout the day. Robby Cramer, of the Van Andel Education Institute, conducted a couple of sessions for elementary school teachers. Her session was marketed under the title ‘Pill Bugs, Millipedes, and Hissing Cockroaches OH MY!! Science is indeed a Verb!’ In this session, which was conducted in a room full of creepy crawlies, the teachers gained insights into making science fun by making their students think and act like scientists. They were given ‘QPOE2’ (Question, Prediction, Observation, Explanation, Evaluation), Investigative Organizer Step Books, and Sticker Books to help them conduct investigations in their classrooms.

Jenny Dauer (the one who gets to eat Dr. Joe Dauer’s best pancakes) and Andy Anderson conducted an MSP Carbon Session for MS/HS teachers. Their strategy to attract teachers to ‘Ecosystems: Carbon Cycles and Energy Flows!’ was having ‘cool PowerPoint tricks’. They delivered on their promise and the teachers had a great time exploring carbon-transforming processes at an ecosystem scale. In good GK-12 tradition, they also had an online interactive activity called Sunny Meadows in which students have to adopt the best strategy that leads to the maximum number of foxes (representing the top trophic level) at the end of 10 (virtual) years.

To explore the Weeds, Seeds, and Dispersal topic, the GK-12 fellows come up with innovative, interactive and interesting concurrent session ideas. When it comes to designing games, we have a reigning king at KBS. Michael can sell any of his sessions by just hinting at an exciting game. And that is exactly what happened. Michael Kuczynski, Anne Royer and Sara Garnett teamed together to conduct ‘Seeds on the Run: A Model of Seed Dispersal’. They designed a game to explore the Janzen–Connell hypothesis. This widely accepted hypothesis explains the distribution of tree species in tropical rainforests. The game used tiddlywinks (they claimed it was deceptively simple) to walk students through predicting, collecting data and graphing it to understand the hypothesis.

Despite having planted a known mixture of seed in the BEST plots, teachers and students have found that there are tons of other ‘volunteers’ growing there. Fellows Cara Krieg, Tyler Bassett and Dustin Kincaid pitched their session towards offering an answer to this question. In the session titled ‘Weeds: Tricks of the trade’ they explored how plant traits and land-use history influence the assembly of plant communities. As said in their sales pitch, they focussed on the volunteer species commonly found in the BEST plots. They also conducted an activity to predict which traits make certain weeds more successful than others.

Fellows Tomomi Suwa, Liz Schultheis and Jakob Nalley promoted their session called ‘The double life of a squirrel – seed disperser and predator’ by referring to an intriguing ‘Chocolate Chip Cookie Study’. Teachers learnt that the 1985 study researched the fine dining habits of squirrels. This study was replicated in the session using trays of sunflower seeds. While conducting the activity, there was an exciting discovery: an actual cache of seeds in a tree hollow! The teachers also explored the different strategies employed by plants to spread their seeds.

For the final session ‘Ecology and Evolution in the Human Microbiome’ Jennifer Doherty posed some interesting questions, one of which was ‘What is a faecal transplant and why would someone do that?’. Her strategy seemed to work and the session was standing room only! She applied the concepts of community ecology and evolution to investigate Human Microbiome scenarios. A couple of these scenarios for the curious: Bacterial cells in your body outnumber your body cells 10:1 and the back of your heel and the area between your toes have different bacterial communities!

After the concurrent sessions, teachers Lisa W. and Marty B. gave us an update on their Alaskan Trip. They had gone to the Alaskan LTER in July 2012. From what we heard they had tons of fun, learned a few things, got stranded in a no-horse town and yet managed to get a few cast-off antlers shipped back home!

Thanks to all of you for another wonderful workshop!

Written by K-12 Partnership member Joelyn de Lima.

by Michael Kuczynski, October 2012

This fall, Mrs. High’s highschool students at Delton Kellogg had the opportunity to get outside and do a little research on the bioenergy plots.  Different classes focused on collecting different sets of data, all building towards an answer to the question “Can we grow grass or flowers for our fuel and save the butterflies too?”  In the morning students were clipping samples of biomass from the plots to investigate how we can maximize biofuel production while using the least amount of land.  Everything went very smoothly and the most challenging part for the students seemed to be keeping warm while working.

In the afternoon we set up pitfall traps and sticky traps to catch invertebrates in the plots.  We quickly realized that the rocks in the soil was making it a bit difficult to dig the holes for the pitfall traps and Mrs. High had to bring out some more heavy-duty shovels to get the job done.  Despite this hiccup the students had a fun time and seemed to really appreciate the opportunity to get outside.

A week later we collected our traps to see what invertebrates we had captured.   It was a little bit challenging at first trying to identify some of the insects that had been squashed on the sticky trap and there was certainly some squeamishness towards the bugs that had been sitting in soapy water in the pitfall traps for an entire week, but with a little patience we managed to muddle through and we had a lot of fun.  After all, science isn’t always nice and neat chemicals sitting on a lab bench…sometimes you have to get a little dirty!

October 2012, by Anne Royer

October 2012, by Jake Nalley

The eighth graders in Mr. Stolberg’s Earth Science class at OlivetMiddle School wereabletospend some well-deserved time outside as they were introducedto the BEST plots. To gain a better understanding of how the surrounding lands can influence the plots the students ran the small-scale landscape protocol. Students wereseparated into two groups, Team Landscape and Team Elevation. Team Landscape identified how the land was being used for the fifty meters surrounding each side of the plots. Team Elevation got to learn how touse a water level, and also determine the slope of theland surrounding the plots. Through the hard work of all the 8^th graders, we were able to determine that the land surrounding the plot is primarily unmanaged, naturally occurring field, except for the parkinglot that is twenty meters to the south of the plots. Also, both plots are situated on relatively level land. As the students pointed out, the benefit of level land is it will help minimize the influence from the surrounding land, such as the parking lot, on the plots.

Hi, my name is Sarah Bodbyl Roels. You may remember me from the 2012 Summer Institute, when I gave an invited plenary talk about my doctoral research at the University of Kansas. I have been hired by KBS as the new GK-12 program coordinator and I am currently working alongside Robin Tinghitella as she transitions to her new faculty position at the University of Denver in Colorado. Please congratulate Robin on her new job and thank her for many years of hard work developing the KBS GK-12 program.

About me: I am a native Michigander, growing up in Cutlerville, just south of Grand Rapids. I majored in biology at Calvin College and then moved to Kansas to pursue a doctorate in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. I am a self-professed biology nerd and I love science! I am broadly interested in the evolutionary significance of the diverse reproductive strategies found among all plant and animal taxa. My doctoral research focused primarily on mating system evolution (or changes in the reproductive strategies of populations over time) in Mimulus, a genus of common North American wildflowers. I plan to continue research in the field of evolutionary biology in partnership with KBS and MSU. Stay tuned for updates and hopefully some new data nuggets.

Thoughts on GK-12: I had the distinct pleasure of being a GK-12 fellow at the University of Kansas from 2011-2012. I partnered with a 7^th grade physics class in an inner city middle school. The GK-12 experience launched me into the world of science education and science communication, where I developed a deep conviction to improve science literacy and improved my ability to communicate clearly as a scientist.

I am excited by this new opportunity to continue growing relationships between the graduate students, faculty, and staff of KBS and the teachers, administrators, and students of the GK-12 partner districts. I look forward to meeting you all this year. Please feel free to contact me at bodbyl@msu.edu

~ Sarah

By Guest Blogger and K-12 Partnership Volunteer Extraordinaire Joelyn DeLima

A magical week of making movies. That is the first thing that comes to mind when I describe the days from June 25^th to 29^th at KBS. The KBS K-12 Partnership Summer Science Institute was more than just sitting around learning science in input-driven sessions and discussions. This year the teachers, led by the returning fellows (Michael, Tomomi and Tyler), worked on preparing movies based on the three different sets of protocols that are conducted on our BEST Plots Research Network. The aim of this exercise was to prepare 60-75 second videos introducing the protocols in a manner that would spark a student’s interest. They could also be used as an overview for anyone interested in performing these protocols.

The entire endeavor, which took place on Monday afternoon and all day Tuesday, was loads of fun, but a bit challenging too. It kicked off with a short session in which the teachers were introduced to different techniques and methods of storyboarding. After a little practice, they were off to bring some glamour to the landscape, soil and biodiversity protocols. We saw some definite Oscar potential in direction and performances. The biggest difficulty was trying to fit everything into one minute!

Since this was a ‘Science Institute’ we did have some fun Science sessions too. The first plenary speaker was Dr. Sarah Roels from the University of Kansas. She spoke about her doctoral research on mating system evolution in a plant Mimulus guttatus. Over the course of her study, she measured traits of flowers from about 43,000 plants! She also did some cool experiments, including studying bee fidelity to flowers of different color intensity. She also measured the distance between anther and stigma in these flowers and concluded that as this distance decreased, the ability of these flowers to self pollinate increased up to 10 times. Dr. Roels was a good fit for our movie week too, as she worked with UV cameras in part of her research. She used these cameras to take UV photographs of the Mimulus flowers and observe the different patterns of pigmentation that we can’t see, but the pollinators can.

On Tuesday, Tom gave us an update on the “State of the BEST Plots”. Most of the plots were looking a bit brown due to the lack of rainfall this summer. Some had to be reseeded. Tom reminded us that the proposal for our BEST plots was rated to be ‘Outstanding in all respects’ by the NSF. Pretty soon we’ll start another year of data collection – let’s make the NSF proud!

On Wednesday, we heard from the GLBRC educator Leith Nye. He spoke for a short time but made quite an impact with a biodiesel-driven toy automobile. This was followed by the second plenary talk of the week, by our very own Dr. Jenny Dauer (Michigan State University). She spoke about her doctoral research as well, which dealt with calcium nutrition in forests of Oregon. In her talk she referred to calcium as the ‘the king of nutrients’ and ‘the soul of the soil’. Dr. Dauer spoke of nutrient cycling on multiple scales – from the molecular to the ecosystem scale.

After lunch on Wednesday were the MSP lead sessions. Jennifer and GK-12 Fellow Michael lead a session called Snakes on a Glade: Helping students understand the role of disturbance in shaping ecosystems. Using the case study of the giant Burmese Python, which is invasive in the Florida Everglades, they explored how students think about ecosystem disturbances. The great big attraction to this session was the great big python that they brought along!

At the same time, Jenny and Andy explored the question ‘How are inquiry investigations connected to student learning?’. In their session Fizz, burn and grow: Inquiry about Carbon, they conducted experiments that dealt with what happened to the carbon when soda water fizzes, ethanol burns and plants grow.

The elementary teachers meanwhile went on a tour. They first visited the historic Fort Schemske (site of the epic battle between Elaphines and Homo sapiens). While there they interacted with a number of researchers (including our own Liz Schultheis), who spoke about their work on various subjects including genetics, population ecology, invasive species and competition. The next stop on the tour was the LTER forest where the teachers learned about research being conducted on forest ecology.

MSP sessions continued on Thursday. In the morning, in Data analysis in the Biodiversity Leaf Pack Unit, Jennifer and first year Fellow Sara had teachers try new activities designed to tackle working with data in the MSP biodiversity unit. Teachers brought their laptops to the session and explored new Excel templates that will help make data analysis in the classroom easier.

The teachers also got to go to the beach and play with toy buckets and trowels. Marcia Angle (Teacher In Residence at KBS), Becky Drayton and Sara Syswerda conducted a session on Investigating Student Thinking About Watersheds. Aside from the play, they constructed a huge watershed model in the sand volleyball court to help students translate a 2-D depiction of a watershed into a 3-D representation.

It was field trip time again for the elementary teachers! The first stop on this tour was the Farming Systems Center. Bioenergy educator Dennis Penington met the teachers and spoke about Bioenergy in the US. Teachers had some great hands-on experience with the subject – they actually made biodiesel out of canola oil! The next stop was the Bird Sanctuary. Here the teachers explored the possibilities of using the newly opened Lake Loop Trail with their students.

One of the concurrent sessions on Thursday afternoon was Atoms are forever, Energy lasts forever: Carbon Students Accounts. Jenny and Andy built on their previous session. They used models, posters and an activity to think about what students really need in order to advance their understanding of carbon-transforming processes.

The Summer Institute also became a bit of a petting zoo. After the pythons on Wednesday, Thursday was bring-your-dog-to-the-institute-day! In Who Let the Dogs Out? Cheryl Hach, Debi Kilmartin and Liz Ratashak (with the help of Cheryl’s adorable dog) examined the relatedness of various dog breeds. They also explored current research involving the Dog Genome Project and health issues for dogs and their companions.

The afternoon field trips for the elementary teachers saw a few hardy souls brave 100-degree temperatures to go and visit the LTER research site. The group lead by Becky Drayton and LTER Education and Outreach Specialist Julie Doll went on a newly developed walking tour. After a lot of trial-and-error, they also helped Robin complete a part of the landscape protocols for the KBS BEST plots.

And thus we came to the last day of the eventful week. To begin the day we had our last plenary talk of the week. Julie Doll (KBS) spoke about Climate Change Communication. She started by relating her ‘Ah-ha!’ moment, when she saw firsthand the effects of climate change. Even though Climate Change is now widely accepted, the natural variability and the inability of scientists to make perfectly accurate predictions, creates a lot of contention in the minds of the public. This can be resolved by effective communication which should be tailored to the audience. She interspersed her talk with various questions for the audience and group discussions. Julie also followed the theme of the week and used a few videos (!) which could be used as conversation starters.

After the plenary, it was finally time for the new fellows to lead their first sessions, which they designed with the help of their partner teachers based on their own thesis research.  Jake – whose interests include algal biofuel production was paired up with Russ Stolberg from Olivet. In their session A gas tank full of green! What’s lurking in Gull Lake and how it can power our vehicles, teachers took samples from Gull Lake. They observed the different types of phytoplankton present in those samples. The session also involved some input on deriving fuel from algae and a fun game in which the teachers lived a day in phytoplankton’s shoes.

New Fellow Cara is very interested in the aggression exhibited by house wrens. She and her partner teacher Meredith Hawkins led the session Angry Birds – Exploring behavioral trade-offs. They played a game in which they had to exhibit different levels of aggression in order to get the best ‘nesting sites’. The way they balanced the two factors affected how many offspring they were able to raise successfully. The session was made even more fun by having it at Lux Arbor and allowing the teachers to actually hold the baby wrens.

Cannibalism: Is it ever a good idea? was a session that was lead by 1^st year Fellow Sara and her partner teacher Sandy Breitenbach. Sara is interested in the way tadpoles maximize their inclusive fitness by balancing cooperation and competition. Teachers collected data in a game that simulated different environmental conditions. They explored various strategies for survival, including cannibalism!

The flux and transformations of nutrients and organic matter in freshwater ecosystems, mainly streams and wetlands is what 1^st year Fellow Dustin is interested in. He led the session – Groundwater: When water meets the surface – along with his partner teacher Marty Green. They discussed what happens to surface water once it enters the subsurface. Part of their session was conducted at Augusta Creek where they taught teachers to locate sites of groundwater discharge. They also analyzed samples of well water brought in by the teachers from their own homes.

The highlight of the day, though, was the last session. After hours of laborious editing, the BEST Research Network movies were finally ready to view. We munched on popcorn and enjoyed the movies and many, many laughs! Thanks for another great Summer Science Institute.