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The northwestern grizzly bear emerges from hibernation in the spring to eat an abundance of buds and flowers, insects and salmon in the summer, and then feasts upon fruit and nuts in the fall. The adult greater sage grouse subsists on sagebrush leaves, but the young eat almost exclusively insects. Meanwhile, flower-feeding bumble bees navigate a complex and changing floral resource landscape as the needs of the colony extend across the entirety of the growing season. The composition and diversity of animal diets are essential parts of their ecology and evolution: from apex predators to insect pollinators, an animal's diet is shaped by the changing seasons, growth and development, and shifting nutritional needs. Thus, characterizing diet diversity requires a life-cycle perspective.
Many have asked: "What is the question?" And for this project, the answer is: "What can mountain ball cactus teach us about being ecologists?"
Pediocactus simpsonii is a spherical ball shaped cactus. An adult is about the size of a grapefruit. It can withstand harsh, freezing winters in the mountains, and it persists up to about 10,000ft. From a demography perspective, Pediocactus simpsonii is a lovely companion: easy to demarcate individuals and easy to measure their size...
...size is measured in the field as cactus diameter (d). Given a spherical plant, volume (v) = (π/6) × d³
The official gear of the Mountain Ball Cactus Demography Society. And! All of our demography data from the first season of field work are open access on the back of the sweatshirt!
Patricia Wolf created this album in response to her artist residency at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado, as part of the Art-Science Exchange Project in the summer of 2024. She worked closely with ecologists Dr Paul CaraDonna, Dr Amy Iler, Dr Jane Ogilvie, Dr Nickolas Waser, Dr Mary Price, and Dr Will Petry, spending weeks engaged in long-term research on plants, pollinators, and their interactions.
Each track on Yarrow looks at a different part of a plant's life. The songs touch on the conditions that plants need to grow, the quiet life of roots, how flowers attract pollinators, and the strength of seeds. The entire b-side features Patricia's field recordings from around Gothic, Colorado, and a guided meditation by Dr Paul CaraDonna, whose research inspired the project, inviting listeners to tune into the sounds and activities of the ecosystem.
"With this music, I hope to inspire others to slow down, appreciate plants and admire their remarkable fortitude and resilience. With such appreciation, I hope this further inspires us to protect and conserve these photosynthesizing wonders and their ecosystems for as long as the earth will hold them." — Patricia Wolf
This work was supported by the Art-Science Exchange Project at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (National Science Foundation Grant DEB-2337426).
The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses: with this method the dangers of parental affection for a favorite theory can be circumvented.
— T.C. Chamberlin (1890, SCIENCE)
After a stimulating lab meeting discussion on T.C. Chamberlin's classic paper about the method of multiple working hypotheses, what emerged was: "KEEP HONKING! I HAVE MULTIPLE WORKING HYPOTHESES IN MY HEAD". And now others can share their enthusiasm for the method of multiple working hypotheses with a 10 × 3 inch orange bumper sticker.
"Death is certain; the timing of death is uncertain" (Buddhist proverb).
A fundamental component of biology is how long organisms live. This is because an organism's longevity is related to virtually all aspects of its ecology and evolution, from the ability to withstand environmental perturbations, to patterns of age-specific growth, survival and reproduction. Despite the importance of longevity—and for all its apparent simplicity—for many species it is unknown, imprecise, or misunderstood.
We are focusing on plants to ask a series of basic questions about ecological longevity: How long do perennial plants live? How best do we quantify plant lifespan? And what ecological and evolutionary factors contribute to variation in plant lifespan? To address these questions, we are using a plant demography database which includes several thousand matrix population models to calculate lifespan for 498 plant species that vary considerably in life history from across the globe. A central feature of this research is developing analytical tools to summarize key aspects of plant life history to effectively and succinctly relate different life history strategies to longevity.