Summer 2024 Research Agenda

A student asked what research I was doing this summer and I thought I would pen to paper and see how ambitious my plan was. Here's what I would like to work on this summer:

Urban Ecology

As human settlement spreads across the planet, interesting ecological questions arise. For example, with increasing urbanization, any remnant woodlots become increasingly isolated - both in terms of distance from other woodlots and intensity of separation. It is one thing for a woodlot to be isolated by a pasture and another to be separated by a city. Or does it?  

I think of isolated woodlots as islands and the diversity within islands as driven by colonization (by birds and mammals mostly) and extinction (by deer and other herbivores). This follows Robert MacArthur and E.O. Wilson's Island Biogeographic Theory - a theory that has been central to my thinking since graduating from Rutgers in 1991. I plan on making this a research theme for at least two years or longer if other avenues are less productive. 

We examined the diversity of trees in a number of woodlots across Wilkes-Barre that varied by their connectedness to other woodlots. Other factors we examined were the presence of deer, which are though to drive the establishment of seedlings. Eventually I would love to sample birds and see what seeds they are moving. That's later. 

This summer I plan to

• Survey tree diversity in a few more sites
• 10 m radius circles, all woody plants > 2 cm dbh 
• 2 samples per 10 ha
• Plant a few oak seedlings and chestnut seedlings in a woodlot with deer and one without
• I have 10 oak and 40 chestnut seedlings 
• Put down a 50 m transect and plant seedlings at random points. 
• Visit every two weeks until September 
• May need to put down a mesh to protect the nut from squirrels
• Measure shrub and understory plant diversity 
• More camera trapping

I think I can pull this off with about 1/3 of the summer available. I'd like to work on this project Mondays and Fridays. 

Lehigh Gap Nature Center (LGNC) Food Web: Updated

Ned Fetcher and I and a few other authors published a food web from the LGNC based on sampling about 15 years ago. Since then (1) the site has become shrubbier and the soils (I assume) have become more developed and (2) I have learned a ton about food webs and what to measure. Ned and I plan on returning and sampling and seeing how the food web has changed. 

To that end, we plan on

• Doing sweep samples (which collects dozens of arthropods per sample x a dozen samples)
• Running pitfalls (collects a dozen or so arthropods/sample x dozens of pitfalls) 
• Running a few Berlese funnel samples (new for the project and samples arthropods less mobile than pitfall samples
• Sampling birds and getting blood samples 
• Small mammal trapping to get mouse hair samples 
• Hair snares to get other hair samples (either barbed wire or hair brushes) 

Because this project involves travel and planning - I will likely do this Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. 

Catch up: Bug sorting and DNA barcoding

We have thoooooouuuuuusands of invertebrate samples that still need to be processed (sorted into species, photographed, entered into a database. Oi! 

• I'd like to barcode wasps (so much diversity!!!)
• Send off the omnivores to get isotoped
  
  

Rainy day unless a student just wants to tackle this! 

Catch up: papers 

No particular order ;) 

1. Caterpillar paper (oldish, needs reanalysis per reviewers)
2. West GA diversity stuff (really old)
3. West GA bluebirds (really old) 
4. Fire and food webs (new)