Summary: This post links to videos of Lecythidaceae tree species identifications from the Brazilian Amazon. The videos should be useful for students of Amazon botany. They also serve as metadata for botanical and DNA collections from mapped and tagged trees at the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project.
Summary Leishmaniasis is an emergent protozoan disease that afflicts over 12 million people worldwide. After years of working in proximity to the Leishmania parasite, I contracted Leishmaniasis for the first time this year. In this post I share my experience. First, based on my own parasite’s species ID, the geographic ranges of Leishmania appear poorly known. This
Summary: The Brazil nut family – Lecythidaceae – is one of the most important families of trees in the Amazon basin. Yet compared to tree families of temperate forests, the group is extremely understudied. In collaboration with Brazilian colleagues, our lab has selected neotropical Lecythidaceae as a model clade for integrated studies of systematics, ecology and evolution in Amazon
Summary: Levis et al. (SCIENCE03 MAR 2017 : 925-931) challenge the idea that Amazon forests were largely untouched by humans prior to 1492. Specifically, they show that forest plots near archeological sites are enriched with useful tree species relative to plots located farther away from these sites. This is an intriguing finding, but the idea that prehistoric gardening has broadly
Summary: Staten Island is confronting urban deer overabundance with a plan to sterilize all of its male deer. Animal rights groups praise the plan as forward looking and humane, but it is neither. It will be difficult to implement, wildly expensive, and it will alter the reproductive behavior of male and female deer, leading to an increase in vehicular
Summary: Following a controversial deer cull, the city of Ann Arbor is considering non-lethal methods to deal with its burgeoning deer population. The Humane Society of America (HSUS) has aggressively promoted these methods in Ann Arbor and elsewhere but their scientific rationale is misleading at best. This post discusses biological misinformation at the heart of the HSUS deer
Summary: The tick Ixodes scapularis transmits Lyme Disease and is expanding its range across the eastern U.S. As we discovered recently, basic tick ID skills relevant to disease treatment appear to be lacking in the medical community. Engorged tick (Ixodes sp) acquired by U-M Botanist near Chelsea, MI in late March Last week Herbarium associate Mike P. sent a staff email to warn us of deer
Summary: Oak-dominated forests in the E.S. George Reserve and elsewhere in the eastern U.S. are being replaced by maples and other fire-sensitive trees. Oak forests may be a legacy of Native American fire practices that predate European settlement. Oak trees in the Big Woods Plot of the E. S. George Reserve Two years ago a U-M team* established a
July 23, 2014 – As a post-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Institute (STRI), I worked in forest inventory plots in Panama, French Guiana, and Ecuador. Large scale forest plots are invaluable for sampling woody plant populations and associated biota. The 50 ha plot on Barro Colorado Island (BCI) Panama, for example, is not only
