The Ecological Society of America - esapubs.org 85-1.pdf · logical data and principles to the solution of environmental problems. ... 5 Multivariate Analysis of Ecological Data Using

January 2004 i

The Ecological Society of AmericaGOVERNING BOARD FOR 2003–2004

President: William H. Schlesinger, School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708 President-Elect: Jerry M. Melillo, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA 02543Past-President: Ann M. Bartuska, The Nature Conservancy, International Headquarters, Suite 100, 4245 North Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1606Vice President for Science: James S. Clark, Department of Biology, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708Vice President for Finance: Norman L. Christensen, School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708Vice President for Public Affairs: Alison G. Power, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-2701Vice President for Education and Human Resources: Carol A. Brewer, Division of Biological Sciences, University of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812-0001Secretary: Jill S. Baron, U.S. Geological Survey, Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1499Member-at-Large: Edward A. Johnson, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4 CanadaMember-at-Large: Osvaldo E. Sala, Catedra de Ecologia, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires 1417 ArgentinaMember-at-Large: Margaret A. Palmer, Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-0001

AIMS The ECOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA was founded in 1915 for the purpose of unifying the sciences of ecology, stimulating research in all aspects of the discipline, encouraging communication among ecologists, and promoting the responsible application of eco-logical data and principles to the solution of environmental problems. Ecology is the scientific discipline that is concerned with the relationships between organisms and their past, present, and future environments. These relationships include physiological responses of individuals, structure and dynamics of populations, interactions among species, organization of biological communities, and processing of energy and matter in ecosystems.

MEMBERSHIP Membership is open to persons who are interested in the advancement of ecology or its applications, and to those who are engaged in any aspect of the study of organisms in relation to environment. The classes of membership and their annual dues for 2002 are as follows:

Regular member: Student member: $25.00 Income level Dues Life member: Contact Member and Subscriber Services (see below) <$40,000 $50.00 Emeritus member: Free $40,000–60,000 $75.00 >$60,000 $95.00 Subscriptions to the journals are not included in the dues. Special membership rates are available for individuals in developing countries. Contact Member and Subscriber services (address below) for details.

PUBLICATIONS The Society publishes a bulletin, three print journals, and an electronic data archive. The BULLETIN OF THE ECOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA, issued quarterly, contains announcements of meetings of the Society and related organizations, programs, awards, articles, and items of current interest to members. The journal ECOLOGY, issued monthly, publishes essays and articles that report and interpret the results of original scientific research in basic and applied ecology. ECOLOGICAL MONOGRAPHS is a quarterly journal for longer ecological research articles. ECOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS, published six times per year, contains ecological research and discussion papers that have specific relevance to environmental management and policy. ECOLOGICAL ARCHIVES is published on the Internet at ‹http://esa.sdsc.edu/Archive› and contains supplemental material to ESA journal articles and data papers. No responsibility for the views expressed by the authors in ESA publications is assumed by the editors or the publisher, the Ecological Society of America. Subscriptions for 2002 are available to ESA members as follows: Regular Student ECOLOGY $65.00 $50.00 BULLETIN OF THE ECOLOGICAL Free to members ECOLOGICAL MONOGRAPHS $30.00 $25.00 SOCIETY OF AMERICA ECOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS $50.00 $40.00 ECOLOGICAL ARCHIVES Free

Application blanks for membership may be obtained from the Ecological Society of America, Member and Subscriber Services, 1707 H Street, NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20006, to which all correspondence concerning membership should be ad-dressed. Checks accompanying membership applications should be made payable to the Ecological Society of America. For additional information on the Society and its publications, visit ESA’s home page on the World Wide Web ‹http://esa.org›.

http://esa.sdsc.edu/Archive

http://esa.org

January 2004 1

Cover Photo: Of several exciting field trips being planned for the Portland ESA meeting in August, 2004, is one to Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, Washington. Mount St. Helens is shown here looking south from the Coldwater Visitor’s Center. Over 23 years after the eruption of May, 1980, vegetation is still very sparse within a 5-mile radius of the blast, as illustrated here. Elsewhere, new soils are forming beneath shrubs and herbaceous perennials, and subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa) that have reached reproductive maturity can be found growing on volcanic ash from the eruption of 1980. Photo by Allen M. Solomon, September 2003.

ANNOUNCEMENTS3 Notices3 Request for Student Awards Judges 4 Student Awards for Excellence in Ecology5 Other Notices5 Multivariate Analysis of Ecological Data Using CANOCO: Course in the Czech Republic5 A New Governance Structure for the Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study7 Highlands Biological Station Course Offerings

SOCIETY ACTIONS10 Reports of the ESA Executive Director and Staff, November 2003

DEPARTMENTS19 Section and Chapter News19 Paleoecology Section: Edward S. Deevey Award 19 Southeatern Chapter Newsletter21 Statistical Ecology Section: E. C. Pielou Award

The BULLETIN OF THE ECOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA (ISSN 0012-9623) is published quarterly

by the Ecological Society of America, 1707 H Street, NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20006. It is available online

only, free of charge, at ‹http://www.esapubs.org/bulletin/current/current.htm›. Issues published prior to January

2004 are available through ‹http://www.esapubs.org/esapubs/journals/bulletin_main.htm›.

VOLUME 85, NO.1, JANUARY 2004

Table of Contents continues on next page

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2 Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America January 2004 3

MEETINGS22 Meeting Calendar22 Species Exchanges between Eastern Asia and North America: Beijing, China22 American Society of Mammalogists: Arcata, California22 Wild Trout VIII Symposium: Yellowstone, Wyoming22 Carnivore Conservation Conference: Santa Fe, New Mexico23 Meeting Reviews23 Advances in Coastal Habitat Restoration in the Northern Gulf States. W. Nuttle and P. Chapman

CONTRIBUTIONS25 Commentary25 Two Bodies Cannot Occupy the Same Place at the Same Time: the Importance of Space in the Ecological Niche. A .A. Cunha and M. V. Vieira27 A History of Ecological Sciences, Part I2. F. E. Egerton32 Poem: A Mussel's Midday Migration: Reflections on the Intertidal Zone. M. M. Weir33 Instructions for Contributors

Section Editor, Technological Tools D. W. InouyeDepartment of Zoology, University of Maryland,College Park, MD 20742 E-mail: [email protected]

Section Editor, Ecology 101 H. OrnesCollege of Sciences, SB310A, Southern Utah UniversityCedar City, UT 84720 E-mail: [email protected]

Section Editor, Public Affairs Perspective N. LymnDirector for Public Affairs, ESA Headquarters, 1707 H Street, NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20036 E-mail: [email protected]

Associate Editor David A. GoodingESA Publications Office,127 W. State Street, Suite 301,Ithaca, NY 14850-5427 E-mail: [email protected]

Production Editor Regina PrzygockiESA Publications Office, 127 W. State Street, Suite 301,Ithaca, NY 14850-5427 E-mail: [email protected]

Bulletin Editor-in-Chief Allen M. Solomon

Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, 1707 H Street, NW, Washington DC 20006(541) 754-4772, Fax: (541) 754-4799, E-mail: [email protected]


Notices

A N N O U N C E M E N T S

REQUEST FOR STUDENT AWARD JUDGES

Murray F. Buell AwardE. Lucy Braun Award

Judges are needed to evaluate candidates for the Murray F. Buell Award for the outstanding oral presentation by a student and the E. Lucy Braun Award for the outstanding poster presentation by a student at the Annual ESA Meeting at Portland, Oregon in 2004. We need to provide each candidate with at least four judges competent in the specific subject of the presen-tation. Each judge is asked to evaluate 3–5 papers and/or posters. Current graduate students are not eligible to judge. This is a great way to become involved in an important ESA activity. We desperately need your help!

Please complete and send this form by mail, fax, or e-mail to the Chair of the Student Awards Subcommittee: Christo-pher F. Sacchi, Department of Biology, Kutztown University, Kutztown, PA 19530 USA. Call (610) 683-4314; FAX: (610) 683-4854 or e-mail: [email protected]

If you have judged in the past several years, this information is on file. If you do not have to update your information, simply send me an e-mail message, “Yes, I can judge this year.”

Name

Current mailing address

June/July mailing address

Current telephone Summer telephone

E-mail Fax

Year M.S. received Year Ph.D received

Areas of expertise (check all that apply):

Discipline Research approach (please rank) Organisms Botany Population ecology Vertebrates Zoology Community ecology Types: Microbiology Ecosystem ecology Invertebrates Applied ecology Types:

Habitat Physiological ecology Plants Soil Behavioral ecology Types: Terrestrial Paleoecology Fungi Freshwater Theoretical ecology Microbes Marine Evolutionary ecology Types:

Provide a few key words or phrases that describe your interests and expertise:

mailto:[email protected] 2


STUDENT AWARDS FOR EXCELLENCE IN ECOLOGY

Murray F. Buell Award and E. Lucy Braun Award

Murray F. Buell had a long and distinguished record of service and accomplishment in the Ecological Society of America. Among other things, he ascribed great importance to the participation of students in meetings and to excellence in the presentation of papers. To honor his selfless dedication to the younger generation of ecologists, the Murray F. Buell Award for Excellence in Ecology is given to a student for the outstanding oral paper presented at the ESA Annual Meeting.

E. Lucy Braun, an eminent plant ecologist and one of the charter members of the Society, studied and mapped the deciduous forest regions of eastern North America and described them in her classic book, The Deciduous Forests of Eastern North America. To honor her, the E. Lucy Braun Award for Excellence in Ecology is given to a student for the outstanding poster presentation at the ESA Annual Meeting.

A candidate for these awards must be an undergraduate, a graduate student, or a recent doctorate not more than 9 months past gradu-ation at the time of the meeting. The paper or poster must be presented as part of the program sponsored by the Ecological Society of America, but the student need not be an ESA member. To be eligible for these awards the student must be the sole or senior author of the oral paper (Note: symposium talks are ineligible) or poster. Papers and posters will be judged on the significance of ideas, creativity, quality of methodology, validity of conclusions drawn from results, and clarity of presentation. While all students are encouraged to par-ticipate, winning papers and posters typically describe fully completed projects. The students selected for these awards will be announced in the ESA Bulletin following the Annual Meeting. A certificate and a check for $500 will be presented to each recipient at the next ESA Annual Meeting.

If you wish to be considered for either of these awards at the 2004 Annual Meeting, you must send the following to the Chair of the Student Awards Subcommittee: (1) the application form below, (2) a copy of your abstract, and (3) a 250-word or less description of why/how the research presented will advance the field of ecology. Because of the large number of applications for the Buell and Braun awards in recent years, applicants may be pre-screened prior to the meeting, based on the quality of the abstract and this description of the significance of their research. The application form, abstract, and research justification must be sent by mail, fax, or e-mail (e-mail is pre-ferred; send e-mail to [email protected]) to the Chair of the Student Awards Subcommittee: Dr. Christopher F. Sacchi, Department of Biology, Kutztown University of PA, Kutztown, PA 19530 USA. If you have questions, write, call (610) 683-4314, fax (610) 683-4854, or e-mail: [email protected]. You will be provided with suggestions for enhancing a paper or poster. The deadline for submission of form and abstract is 1 March 2004; applications sent after 1 March 2004 will not be considered. This submission is in addition to the regular abstract submission. Buell/Braun participants who fail to notify the B/B Chair by 1 May of withdrawal from the meeting will be ineligible, barring exceptional circumstances, for consideration in the future. Electronic versions of the Application Form are available on the ESA web site, or you can send an e-mail to [email protected] and request that an electronic version be sent to you as an attach-ment.

Application Form for Buell or Braun Award

Name ________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Current Mailing Address _________________________________________________________________________________________

Current Telephone ______________________________________________________________________________________________

E-mail ________________________________________________________________________________________________________

College/University Affiliation _____________________________________________________________________________________

Title of Presentation _____________________________________________________________________________________________

Presentation: Paper (Buell Award) ______ Poster (Braun Award) _______

At the time of presentation I will be (check one):______an undergraduate student ______a graduate student______a recent doctorate not more than 9 months past graduation

I will be the sole ____ /senior ____ author (check one) of the paper/poster.

Signed (electronic signatures are OK)

Please attach a copy of your abstract and 250-word or less description of why/how the research presented will advance the field of ecology.

mailto:[email protected]


Other NoticesMultivariate Analysis of Ecological Data using CANOCO

This course will be held 21–30 July 2004 in Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic. The course introduces modern approaches to multivariate data analysis, with much time allocated to practical applications, where participants work with their own data.

In-depth lectures and practices are provided for the fol-lowing topics:

• Classical ordination methods (PCA, CA, DCA, PCO, NMDS)

• Constrained ordination methods (RA, CCA) includ-ing partial analyses and permutation tests of multivariate hypotheses

• Thorough explanation of how to interpret the contents of ordination diagrams

In addition, we provide overview for classification meth-ods (cluster analysis, TWINSPAN), experimental design, and modern regression methods (GLM, GAM, CART).

The course contents are based on the book written by course lecturers and published by Cambridge University Press; Jan Leps and Petr Smilauer (2003): Multivariate Analysis Of Ecological Data Using CANOCO. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. ISBN 0-521-89108-6.

Additional details about the course can be found at the course web page ‹http://regent.bf.jcu.cz› or by contacting the course manager, Petr @Smilauer ‹[email protected]›

A New Governance Structure for the Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study

As the research programs in the U.S. National Science Foundation’s long-term ecological research (LTER) network (as well as other long-term research sites) age and mature, a series of governance issues arise: Who will maintain the integrity of the long-term experiments and data at the site? How will new scientists be brought into the program? How will new leaders be developed? How will a flow of new ideas and visions be maintained? As we enter the third decade of the LTER network, these questions are becoming increasingly important.

As one of the longest running ecosystem research projects in the world, the Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study (HBES) has necessarily begun to address these questions. The mission of the HBES is to carry out multidisciplinary studies of the structure, function, and change of northern hardwood forest ecosystems and associated aquatic ecosystems, as represented within the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest (HBEF), in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Our goals are (1) to advance scientific understanding of forest and aquatic ecosystems in

northeastern North America and provide a scientific baseline for management and policy decisions; (2) to offer educational opportunities to students; and (3) to promote greater public awareness of ecosystem science. Ecosystem research at HBEF was initiated in 1963, and the site became a component of the LTER network in 1988. The only formal governance structure for the HBES was a Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) that advised the USFS Project Leader, approved proposed projects, and provided some long-term vision for the project. In 1993 the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation (HBRF), a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charitable organization, was founded to help assure the long-term integrity and health of the HBES. One of the primary concerns of the HBRF was the development of a stable governance structure for the HBES. This concern became acute as the HBRF approached donors to develop an endowment to support the long-term monitoring program. One of the first questions donors asked was about the governance and leadership and what structures were in place to maintain a vibrant research program over the long term. In response to these questions and concerns, a group of senior HBES investigators (led by Herb Bormann, Gene Likens, and Dick Holmes) developed a proposal for a new governance structure, which has been adopted after much discussion among the group of scientists working at Hubbard Brook (Fig. 1).

At the center of the new governance structure is the “Committee of Scientists” (COS), which consists of the group of active principal investigators conducting re-search in the Hubbard Brook valley. The initial list for the COS was assembled by group consensus, and additions are made by request. The membership list of the COS will be reviewed at 3-year intervals. There are currently 37 members of the HBES COS.

The Scientific Coordinating Committee (SCC) provides leadership for the COS, overseeing a series of committees, providing vision and scientific leadership to the research program, fostering integration and synthesis across diverse projects, and promoting interactions and communication among HBES scientists. The “visioning” function of the SCC is considered to be particularly critical, as governance activities for large projects often tend to get bogged down in practical detail. The SCC has 10 members, 4 of which are elected by the COS. Other members include one of the two Hubbard Brook LTER principal investigators (chosen among themselves), a senior scientist (chosen from among a group of the five investigators with the longest experience in the HBES), a scientist not associated with the HBES (chosen and invited by the other SCC members), a representative from the HBRF Board of Directors (a nonscientist), the USFS Project Leader for the HBEF (ex-officio), and the Executive Director of the HBRF (ex-officio).

The Research Approval Committee (RAC) is advisory to the USFS Project Leader, who bears ultimate responsibility for research activities at the

http://regent.bf.jcu.cz


HBEF. This committee evaluates and approves proposed projects, facilitates coordination, and prevents conflicts among different research projects at the site. Anyone wishing to conduct research at HBEF must submit a brief proposal to the RAC (proposals are accepted three times per year). The Information Oversight Committee (IOC) is responsible for the content of the HBES WWW site ‹www.hubbardbrook.org›, data management, and maintenance of the HBES data, sample, and document archives. The Program and Meetings Committee (PMC) organizes a series of COS meetings (four per year) as well as the annual HBES cooperator’s meeting. The Education and Outreach Committee (EOC) facilitates links between HBES research and learning groups ranging from K–12, to local residents, to management and policy communities.

It is our hope that the new governance structure will maintain the vitality of the HBES for decades to come. We hope that the structure will maintain the integrity of the long-term data and experiments, attract new people to the project, help us to develop new ideas and experiments, and increase participation in project leadership. Perhaps the greatest hope is that the new structure will allow us to focus more on “the vision thing.” The SCC and PMC will establish an agenda to foster regular discussion of issues such as “new experiments,” “synthesis,” “gaps in coverage,” and “strategies for education and outreach.” We hope that our experience with this new structure will be useful to other long-term research sites both within and outside the LTER network.

Timothy J. Fahey, Cornell University, Department of Natural Resources, Ithaca, NY 14853; E-mail: [email protected]

Richard T. Holmes, Dartmouth College, Department of Biological Sciences, Hanover, NH 03755; E-mail: [email protected]

Gene E. Likens, Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Box AB, Millbrook, NY 12545

Linda Pardo, USDA Forest Service, Northeastern Research Station, PO Box 640, Durham, NH 03824

Peter M. Groffman, Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Box AB, Millbrook, NY 12545; E-mail: [email protected]

Charles T. Driscoll, Syracuse University, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Syracuse, NY 13244; E-mail: [email protected]

Christopher Eagar, USDA Forest Service, Northeastern Research Station, PO Box 640, Durham, NH 03824; E-mail: [email protected] Melany C. Fisk, Appalachian State University, Department of Biology, Boone, NC 28608; E-mail: [email protected]

Fig. 1. Governance structure of the Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study.


Highlands Biological Station Course Offerings in 2004

The Station offers several courses each summer at the advanced undergraduate/graduate level dealing with the special biological features of the Southern Appalachians and with areas of study that are appropriate for investigation at a mountain field station. Credit for all courses is available through either The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill or Western Carolina University.

Biology of Plethodontid Salamanders, 17–29 May

Four semester hours. Steven G. Tilley (Smith College).The Southern Appalachians are renowned for the diver-

sity of their salamander fauna. This course acquaints stu-dents with Plethodontid salamanders and shows how studies of these animals have enhanced our understanding of such major evolutionary and ecological topics as the reconstruc-tion of evolutionary histories, species concepts, life history evolution, and community structure. Each topic will include lectures, field and laboratory exercises, and discussions of original research papers. Field trips to significant salaman-der locations in different Southern Appalachian mountain ranges highlight the course.

Prerequisites: general biology, ecology, or permission of instructor.

Mammals of the Southern Appalachian Mountains, 31 May–12 June

Four semester hours. Wm. David Webster (University of North Carolina at Wilmington).

The Southern Appalachian Mountains support the rich-est mammalian fauna in eastern North America, from tiny shrews and bats to large carnivores and ungulates. This advanced zoology course focuses on the biology of mam-mals in the Southern Appalachians, including their habitat requirements, reproductive and foraging behaviors, evolu-tionary relationships, and roles in regional ecosystems. The course combines lectures with field and laboratory exercises designed to expose advanced students to the remarkable diversity and importance of mammals in the Southern Ap-palachians.


Quantitative Methods for Field Ecology, 14–26 June

Four semester hours. Ron Pulliam (University of Geor-gia).

Quantitative methods will be an intensive 2-week course designed for graduate students and advanced un-dergraduates. The course will cover quantitative methods for estimating density, diversity, distribution, dispersal, and demography of populations. The course will include lectures, field studies, and computer modeling sessions and will cover design of field studies, parameter estimation, and model building. Specialized topics will include geosta-tistics, kriging, and Bayesian hierarchical modeling.

Prerequisites: one semester of calculus, general statis-tics, and ecology, or permission of instructor.

Insect Behavioral Ecology, 28 June–10 July

Four semester hours. James T. Costa (Western Carolina University).

The Southern Appala-chians are rich in insect taxa and therefore present excel-lent opportunities to explore diverse forms of insect behav-ior. In this course we will seek out examples of insect mating systems, defense, social be-havior, foraging strategy, and more. Field excursions will be complemented by lectures on principles and concepts, with laboratory experiments illustrating empirical and ana-lytical approaches to the study of behavior.


Spiders of the Southern Appalachians, 12–24 July

Four semester hours. Kefyn G. Catley (Vanderbilt Uni-versity).

This seminar will present a comprehensive introduction to spider systematics, morphology, behavior, physiology, and ecology in daily morning and/or evening lectures and discussions. Afternoons are devoted to fieldwork, with the objective of assembling a significant collection of the ex-traordinarily rich local spider fauna while studying spider ecology and behavior. Most evenings will be available for students to work on identification.



Fleshy Fungi of the Highlands Plateau, 26 July–7 August

Four semester hours. Andrew S. Methven (Eastern Il-linois University).

The Southern Appalachian Mountains are world re-nowned for their incredibly rich diversity of fleshy fungi. This course introduces students to the fleshy ascomycetes and basidiomycetes that occur on the Highlands Plateau during peak mushroom season. Emphasis will be placed on the analysis of macro- and micro-morphological fea-tures to aid in the identification of taxa. The daily routine will consist of a morning lecture on systematics, ecology,

and phylogeny of fleshy fungi fol-lowed by a field trip until early or midafternoon. Collections will be examined and identified after returning from the field, provid-ing an opportunity to assemble an impressive collection of fleshy fungi for classroom instruction or research.

Prerequisites: general biology, ecology, or permission of instruc-tor.

Tentative Courses for Summer 2005

Conservation Biology of Amphibians Raymond D. Semlitsch (University of Missouri).16–28 May

Taxonomy and Natural History of Southern Appala-chian Mayflies, Stoneflies, and Caddisflies

John C. Morse (Clemson University).30 May–11 June

Conservation Biology—Principles for Conservation Illustrated by the Diverse and Dynamic Landscape of the Southern Appalachians

Peter S. White (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill).

13–25 June

Forest Ecosystems of the Southern Appalachian Mountains

Thomas R. Wentworth (North Carolina State Univer-sity), J. Dan Pittillo (Western Carolina University), and Peter S. White (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill).

27 June–9 July

Bryology—an Introduction to Mosses, Liverworts, and Hornworts of the Southern Appalachians

Paul G. Davison (University of North Alabama).11–23 July

Vascular Plants of the Southern AppalachiansPaul S. Manos (Duke University).25 July–6 August

Course Costs

Comprehensive course fee: $400 per course, charged to all students.

Registration fees: $80 per course, charged only to stu-dents who wish to register for credit through either UNC-Chapel Hill or Western Carolina University. Courses may be taken without credit, but preference is given to degree-seeking students who wish to enroll for credit.

Housing: $40–60 per week.

The Highlands Biological Foundation, Inc., offers limited financial aid, typically a subsidy of up to one-half of the comprehensive course fee, available to no more than one or two qualified students per course. Further information on specific courses, financial aid, and ap-plication forms can be obtained by writing to Dr. Robert Wyatt, Director, Highlands Biological Station, P.O. Box 580, Highlands, North Carolina 28741. Forms can also be downloaded from our web site at ‹www.wcu.edu/hbs›

Financial Support

Grants-in-Aid. A number of grants-in-aid are avail-able to predoctoral graduate students and postdoctoral investigators for the support of research on the habitats and organisms of the Southern Appalachians. Grant re-cipients are expected to spend time in residence at HBS, as both they and other researchers and students benefit from such interaction. Support may be awarded for 1–12 weeks. Applications for grants are reviewed by the Board of Scientific Advisors in March of the year for which sup-port is requested. Application cover sheets and instructions for preparing proposals can be downloaded from our web site. The text of the grant proposal must be submitted in pdf format as an attachment to e-mail. Cover sheets and


text must be submitted before 5:00 pm EST on 1 March. Applicants are notified in early April, following final ap-proval by the Board of Directors.

Awards are based on the period of residence at HBS according to the following schedule: Predoctoral, $250 per week; Postdoctoral, $400 per week. Recipients of grants-in-aid are provided research space without charge.

Scholarships. A number of named scholarships have been endowed at the Station and are described below. These represent honors awarded to particularly meritori-ous projects. They do not provide funding in addition to the basic stipend, which is calculated simply on the basis of number of weeks in residence.

Thelma Howell Memorial Scholarship“Doc” Howell served with distinction as Executive

Director of the Station from 1946 to 1972. Upon her death in 1979, the Highlands Biological Foundation, Inc., established a scholarship fund in her memory, to support investigators at HBS.

William Chambers Coker Fellowship in Botanical Research

Dr. W. C. Coker, Professor of Botany at the University of North Carolina, served as the second Director of the Highlands Biological Station from 1936 to 1944. His wife, Louise V. Coker, through a bequest in 1983, established the William Chambers Coker Fellowship in Botanical Re-search to be awarded annually to an investigator studying plants or fungi.

Ralph M. Sargent Memorial ScholarshipDr. Ralph Sargent, Professor of English at Haverford

College, was a naturalist, botanist, and conservationist who had a long association with the Station. Upon his

death in 1985, a scholarship was established by Dr. Sargent’s family and friends to support students conducting research at the Station.

Lindsay S. Olive Memorial ScholarshipDr. Lindsay Olive of the University of North Carolina at

Chapel Hill was a distinguished botanist and mycologist. A scholarship was established in his memory in 1993 by Ruth Gershon and Sanford Cohn of Atlanta and has been support-ed through generous gifts from Ms. Gershon, Mr. Cohn, and Anna Jean Olive. The scholarship is awarded annually to a student whose research reflects the interests of Dr. Olive.

Charles W. Ash Memorial ScholarshipDr. Charles Ash was a statistician who had a strong in-

terest in the natural world. Following his death in 1993, a scholarship was established in his memory through the ef-forts of his family and friends. The scholarship is awarded annually to a promising student whose research reflects Dr. Ash’s interests in statistics and experimental design.

Bruce Family Scholarship in HerpetologyDr. Richard C. Bruce served as Executive Director of the

Station from 1972 to 1999, assisted by his wife Elizabeth. In 1997 they established a scholarship to support the research of graduate students, as well as postdoctoral investigators in the early stages of their careers, in the discipline of Southern Appalachian herpetology.

All applicants for grants-in-aid are eligible for the Coker, Howell, Sargent, Olive, Ash, and Bruce awards, subject to any constraints described above. They will be awarded by the Highlands Biological Foundation, Inc., upon recom-mendation of the Board of Scientific Advisors and approval by the Board of Directors of the Station. Announcements of the awards are made in early spring of each year, concurrent with notifications of grants-in-aid.

ESA Publications News

On January 1, 2004 we will be switching to a newWeb-Based Manuscript Submission

and Peer Review System.

No more paper copies or diskettes will be required!Submit and review manuscripts to Ecology, Ecological Applications and Ecological Monographs

journals online.For details: ‹esapubs.org/esapubs/›

http://www.esapubs.org/esapubs/


SOCIETY ACTIONS

Fall 2003 Report to the Governing Board

Executive Director Meeting of the Americas follow-up

ESA hosted a gathering of the Presidents of the Ecological Societies of the Americas in August 2003, just prior to the ESA Annual Meeting in Savannah, Georgia. The meeting was attended by representatives from Argentina, Canada, Chile, Mexico, the United States, and Venezuela. The meeting resulted in a list of actions that the societies are vigorously pursuing. Some of the steps ESA has taken are as follows.

A Listserv for the participants of the Meeting of the Americas has been established and a request for additional individuals to add to the list has been issued.

A site for the Federation of the Americas was created on ESA’s web site.

A statement of purpose for the Federation of the Americas was drafted and circulated to the listserv with a request that organizations agree to be listed as part of the Federation.

Osvaldo Sala and McCarter have initiated a fundraising effort to support Federation activities.

Translations

Funds remaining from the Meet-ing of the Americas are available for printing and distributing the Issues in Ecology that have been translated into Spanish. The meeting was supported in part by Millenium Funds, ESA op-erating funds, and a contribution from The Nature Conservancy. Osvaldo Sala is coordinating the production

and distribution locally.

Latin American Award

A letter of agreement with the individuals organizing an award in honor of Dr. Angel Capurro to young Latin American researchers was finalized. The group will have 3 years to raise $10,000 for the award and have already begun this effort. Once $10,000 is raised, the first award will be given by the ESA.

Biogeosciences Web Site

ESA has provided a letter of support to the Geological Society of America for a proposal to host a web site in support of the entire biogeoscience community. The site is intended to be a community resource that will rely on content and support from a group of key scientific societies.

Canada Chapter

Dr. Sina M. Adl approached ESA about establishing a Canada Chapter. Both Member-at-Large Ed Johnson and McCarter were in touch with Dr. Adl and encouraged his effort. McCarter provided guidance on the procedures outlined in the ESA bylaws, and a proposal was prepared in time for the November Governing Board meeting. The ESA Council will be asked to vote on the Chapter in August 2004.

Millennium Fund

The end-of-year solicitation for the Millennium Fund has been sent. As suggested by the Board, information about the fund and a form to make

a donation is on the ESA web site at ‹http://www.esa.org/millennium›. In addition, significant donors who had not contributed by late October were sent an e-mail reminder that included a link to the web site.

Calgary site visit

Meetings Co-Chair Steve Chaplin, Meetings Manager Ellen Cardwell, and McCarter visited Calgary, Canada to assess if the location might be suitable for an ESA annual meeting. While there we met with Ed Johnson and faculty and students from the University of Calgary to obtain their views about the city as an annual meeting site and their suggestions for field trips.

Congressional Fellow

ESA’s Congressional Fellow Evan Notman was in D.C. for the AAAS orientation. He has secured a placement on Capitol Hill and has spent time with staff at HQ. See Public Affairs Office Report below for details.

Executive Director meetings

EPSCoR presentation: McCarter participated in a panel at the NSF Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) national meeting. EPSCoR was cre-ated to promote the development of a state's scientific and technical re-sources through partnerships involv-ing the state's university, industry, and governmental resources and federal research enterprises. The panel ad-dressed the role of national organiza-tions in training and ensuring diversity in the next generation of scientists.

http://www.esa.org/millennium


ASAE Five Star Weekend: Mc-Carter was invited to be a guest at an American Society of Association Executives Five Star Weekend. The event is designed to strengthen rela-tionships among nonprofit organiza-tions, trade associations, and others in the association community. The weekend provided the opportunity to network with a variety of CEO’s from other scientific and trade organiza-tions.

CESSE Board Meeting: As a new-ly elected board member, McCarter attended an Executive Board meeting of the Council of Engineering and Scientific Society Executives.

Other: McCarter met with the Society for Range Management and a variety of other scientific organiza-tions to discuss mutual concerns and collaborations.

ALLP: Discussions with ALLP staff about the future home of the program have continued. McCarter at-tended the Steering Committee Meet-ing in November.

Frontiers

Frontiers has almost reached the end of its first volume, so the Fron-tiers team has been taking stock, thinking of ways to consolidate the journal’s initial success, and consider-ing possible new developments. The feedback from the 6-month readers survey has been very helpful in this regard, and although the responses were overwhelmingly positive, all criticisms and suggestions are being carefully evaluated.

Now that the journal is established, particular efforts are being made to get it recognized by the main index-ing and abstracting organizations (ISI, BIOSIS, etc). Negotiations are under-way to improve the eco-friendliness of the paper stocks on which the jour-nal is printed (a point that appeared a number of times in the reader survey). New commissioning initiatives are being undertaken, and criteria have been developed for a new article type, namely, a series of slightly shorter essay-style articles, outlining innova-

tive theories, new ideas, old ideas that deserve to be revisited, or interesting commentaries on some current (or former) hot topic in ecology, envi-ronmental science, environmental/ecology education, or related special-ties. These will run under the heading “Concepts and Questions.”

Journal staff continue to attend conferences to promote the new pub-lication, including Silver’s visit to the BES Annual Meeting (Manchester, UK) and Emery’s attendance at the World Forestry Congress, both in Sep-tember. The journal was on display at two conferences in November: Inva-sive Weeds (Fort Lauderdale, Florida) and the 24th Annual Meeting of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (Austin, Texas).

In conjunction with the ESA Ex-ecutive Director and Finance Director, plans and timelines are being devel-oped to build up advertising and insti-tutional subscriptions for Frontiers.

Finances

Finance and membership report

Accountants from the firm of Gel-man, Rosenberg, and Freedman com-pleted our annual audit the week of 6 October. A draft of the audit report will be reviewed by Vice-President for Finance Norm Christensen, Ex-ecutive Director McCarter, and Chief Financial Officer Elizabeth Biggs, and accepted by the Governing Board in November.

ESA had its first increase in membership in several years. As had been the trend in recent years, member journal subscriptions declined, and we also experienced a decrease in institutional subscriptions. The chart below shows the past 5 years for comparison.

Membership and subscriptions

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

Members 7683 7807 7833 7834 8116 Institutions 2613 2593 2226* 2219 2122 Subscriptions to Ecology 6302 6079 6134 6072 5880 Members 4197 4060 4108 3926 3837 % of members subscribing 55 % 51% 52% 50% 47% Institutions 2083 2012 2013 2140 2043 Subscriptions to Ecological Applications 3919 3635 3697 3573 3419 Members 2458 2357 2394 2263 2157 % of members subscribing 32% 30% 31% 28% 27% Institutions 1445 1274 1295 1305 1262 Subscriptions to Ecological Monographs 3278 2963 3045 2938 2822 Members 1817 1841 1689 1563 1497 % of members subscribing 24% 21% 22% 20% 18%

Institutions 1453 1317 1349 1371 1325 * The decrease in the number of institutional subscribers in 2001 was not a real decrease, but rather a change in how we record subscriptions from the Swets subscription agency. To simplify the data-entry process we now enter a single record for all journals shipping to the main office of Swets Black-well. In prior years we had a separate record for each order


On-line subscriptions

2003 was our third year offering on-line subscriptions to institutions, and the number of subscriptions continues to increase:

Institutional category

EC 2001

EC 2002

EC2003

EA 2001

EA2002

EA 2003

EM 2001

EM 2002

EM2003

Small 45 94 125 34 67 82 25 54 72Medium 11 14 20 7 14 21 8 8 13Large 8 16 28 8 13 26 8 15 24

Chapter and Section memberships

Members joining chapters and sections continue to decline with a few exceptions:

2001 2002 Up(down) 2003 Up(down)ChaptersRocky Mountain 245 269 24 261 (8)Southeastern 467 446 (21) 483 37Mid Atlantic 180 167 (13) 304 137Western 449 422 (27) 394 (28)Total chapters 1341 1304 (37) 1442 138

SectionsAsian Ecology 104 99 (5) 89 (10)Applied Ecology 815 660 (155) 592 (68)Aquatic Ecology 884 782 (102) 839 57International Affairs 140 97 (43) 98 1Paleoecology 161 139 (22) 143 4Physiological Ecology 523 514 (9) 501 (13)Vegetation 647 494 (153) 449 (45)Education 411 340 (71) 328 (12)Long Term Studies 384 309 (75) 228 (81)Statistical Ecology 356 285 (71) 267 (18)Soil Ecology 307 288 (19) 282 (6)Theoretical Ecology 297 264 (33) 240 (24)Plant Population Ecology 422 346 (76) 302 (44)Agroecology 188 175 (13)Rangeland Ecology 94 178 84Student 259 297 38 Total sections 5451 5258 (193) 5008 (250)


Demographics

Several other breakdowns that we found of interest:

ESA members by ethnicity:

• White 6055• Asian 315• Hispanic 261• Black 51• Native American 10• Unreported/other 1424

ESA members by gender:

• Male 4685• Female 2137• Unreported 1294

Science Program Office

Ecological Visions Committee

Committee Chair Margaret Palmer updated the Board in detail on the activities of the Ecological Visions Committee. The Science Office continues to provide staff support to the Committee. Rhonda Kranz and Cliff Duke attended the third meeting of the Committee in Annapolis, Maryland on 25–28 August 2003, and will attend the fourth (and final planned) meeting of the Committee at the Sevilleta LTER site in New Mexico on 31 October–3 November 2003. ESA members provided substantive and useful feedback on the action areas proposed by the Committee, both through a questionnaire available on the project web site: ‹http://www.esa.org/ecovisions›, and at the ESA meeting in Savannah. The Committee will provide a report to the Board in January 2004, and is working on submission for publication in Science and Frontiers in 2004. In addition, Cliff Duke will present a paper describing the Committee’s efforts at the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas, in November; Rhonda Kranz will make

a similar presentation to the Society for Risk Analysis in December.

ESA Panel on Vegetation Classification

Lori Hidinger continues to provide support to the ESA Panel on Vegetation Classification, which is charged with facilitating and supporting the development, implementation, and use of a standardized vegetation classification for the U.S.; guiding professional ecologists in defining and adopting standards for vegetation sampling and analysis; collaborating with partner organizations to maintain scientific credibility of the classification through a peer review system; and promoting and facilitating international collaboration. The Panel is moving forward with the development of its “Guidelines for Describing Associations and Alliances of the U.S. National Vegetation Classification” to provide expert opinion on standards for classifying vegetation at the floristic levels. In recent months, the Panel has been revising the document to reflect comments received from the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) Vegetation Subcommittee, the Bureau of Land Management, and Panel members. Version 3 of the “Guidelines” will be available for review by the Panel in early November, and for dissemination on the Panel’s web site in early 2004. The Panel will submit a report detailing the resolution of these comments to the reviewers. The Panel is also exploring options for publishing a hard copy version of the “Guidelines.” The Panel conducted a workshop at the 2003 ESA Annual Meeting on analytical techniques for defining vegetation types under the National Vegetation Classification. A subcommittee of the Panel continues to develop and refine the VegBank database for vegetation plot data, and will present a workshop at the MidAtlantic Heritage Network meeting in early November. The Panel is also working on a peer review system for plot data and vegetation types. Finally, the Panel is working

with the FGDC and various federal agencies to revise a Memorandum of Understanding signed by ESA, FGDC, TNC, and USGS in 1999 to work together on the development of the National Vegetation Classification. The revisions will reflect the creation of NatureServe and include additional Federal agencies.

Invasive Plants in Natural and Managed Systems: Linking Science and Management

Hidinger supported ESA’s partici-pation in the Invasive Plants in Natu-ral and Managed Systems: Linking Science and Management conference, 3–7 November 2003, in Fort Lauder-dale, Florida. The conference was a cooperative effort with the Weed Science Society of America and many other scientific societies, federal and state agencies, and nongovernmental organizations.

The Conference successfully met and exceeded its goals of (1) pro-moting interdisciplinary exchange of scientific information among all researchers working with harmful in-vasive plants; (2) enhancing dialogue between scientists and resource man-agers to identify research gaps and accelerate implementation of new sci-ence for the management of invasive plants; and (3) fostering broad cooper-ation on the science and management of invasive plants.

Over 750 ecologists, weed scien-tists, agricultural scientists, botanists, land managers, weed management specialists, extension personnel, ag-riculture and natural resource educa-tors, nursery professionals, biological control investigators and practitioners, and others interested in invasive plant issues from around the world par-ticipated in this landmark conference. Participants left the conference with new enthusiasm, new knowledge, new contacts, and new confidence that we can and will solve many invasive plant problems.

The Conference included 14 in-vited plenary speakers, 150 invited symposia and workshop presenters,


72 contributed oral presentations, and over 250 poster presentations. These presentations were complemented by seven roundtable discussions, 22 exhibits, and 10 field trips. The design of each session allowed stimulating discussion and interaction on various topics related to invasive plant science and management. The Conference was financially supported by a wide array of government agencies, indus-try groups, and nongovernmental or-ganizations, all cooperating to address the problems of invasive plants.

Harmful Algal Blooms Workshop and Plan

The Science Office continues its efforts supporting the National Ocean-ic and Atmospheric Administration in revising the National Plan for Marine Biotoxins and Harmful Algae, which was first issued in 1993. Under a co-operative agreement, Office staff are helping organize a workshop that will be held in Charleston, South Carolina in March 2004. This workshop will review progress made in the last de-cade toward achieving the goals of the 1993 plan and set the stage for issuing a revised plan later in the year. Rhonda Kranz is working with a steering com-mittee chaired by Don Anderson of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institu-tion and John Ramsdell of NOAA’s Charleston, South Carolina laboratory, to plan the workshop. The commit-tee is seeking input from the broad community of harmful algal bloom research and management through a questionnaire available on the project web site ‹http://www.esa.org/HABPlan›. On 10 December, Cliff Duke will attend a session of the Sec-ond Symposium on Harmful Marine Algae in the U.S., devoted to soliciting input to the workshop. White papers on the topics of toxins, bloom ecology and dynamics, food webs and fisher-ies, and infrastructure will be devel-oped to help guide the workshop. The steering committee has identified 45 experts in defined subject needs within these three themes to participate in the workshop and help write the revised plan. Invitations were sent out in early

October. The revised Plan is scheduled to be completed in summer 2004.

Issues in Ecology

The Science Office continues to provide staff support to the Issues in Ecology series, including assisting the new Editor-in-Chief with learning the process and appointing a new Edito-rial Board. Issues in Ecology reports under development include one on the impacts of atmospheric deposition of toxic materials on coastal ecosystems and another on principles of parasite ecology that relate to conservation biology. The Editorial Board is also exploring potential Pan American topics.

National Parks Ecological Research Fellowship Program

The National Parks Ecological Research (NPER) Fellowship Program is a partnership of ESA, the National Parks Foundation (NPF), and the National Park Service, and is funded through a grant from the Mellon Foundation. The program encourages and supports outstanding postdoctoral research in ecological sciences related to the flora of U.S. National Parks, Monuments, Seashores, and other sites administered by the National Park System. The Science Office supports the advertising, application, and review process, while NPF supports the financial management of the fellowships. Proposals for the 2003 NPER Fellowships were submitted by 1 October 2003. Thirty-four proposals were received and are being reviewed by a Review Committee chaired by Kay Gross. The Review Committee will meet at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, 19–22 November 2003, to select three new fellows and hear presentations from most of the nine current fellows regarding their research. The meeting will conclude with a field trip to Channel Islands National Park to visit the research sites of Fellow Kristina Hufford.

Embassy Science Fellows

The Science Office continues to work with the USDA Foreign Agricul-ture Service (FAS) to manage the U.S. Department of State’s Embassy Sci-ence Fellows Program, which places U.S. government scientists at embas-sies overseas to provide expertise, advice, and assistance on science- and technology-related issues. Six fellows participated in 2002, and ESA is con-tinuing to support the project for the 2003 and 2004 cycles. Cliff Duke and Rhonda Kranz recently met with FAS staff to get an update on program activities and explore options for new activities, for example, possibly inviting Embassy Science Fellows to present some of their work at ESA meetings.

Sustainable Resources Roundtables

Science staff represent ESA on the Sustainable Rangelands Roundtable ‹http://www.sustainablerangelands.cnr.colostate.edu/› and the Sustainable Water Resources Roundtable ‹http://www.water.usgs.gov/wicp/acwi/swrr/›. Lori Hidinger chairs the Outreach Working Group and serves on the Steering Committee of the Sustainable Rangelands Roundtable.

The inaugural meeting of the Water Resources Roundtable was held 10–11 December 2002, followed by a second meeting in June 2003. Additional meetings are planned for 13–14 November in Washington, D.C., and 19-20 March in Palo Alto, California. Agency, business, NGO, and academic representatives have attended the meetings and have committed to being part of the ongoing roundtable and its development. Rhonda Kranz serves on the steering committee and chairs a working group on developing a conceptual framework and criteria for development of sustainable water resource indicators. The committee has submitted a paper on their conceptual framework for publication in Water Resources Update, a


publication of the Universities Council On Water Resources. ESA has been discussing the possibility of collaborating with the Roundtable on a future workshop.

Plant Conservation Alliance

ESA continues as a Cooperator with the Plant Conservation Alliance, a cooperative program of a number of Federal agencies, which seeks to address problems related to native plant conservation and restoration. The Science Program Office represents ESA at Alliance meetings, which are held every two months in the Washington area.

Developing activities

Science Office staff members are currently involved in several proposed activities on behalf of ESA. Margaret Palmer has prepared a proposal to NSF, Envisioning the Earth’s Future: an Experiment in Problem-solving, Collaboration and Education, which ESA would support as a subcontrac-tor. This proposal would create a program in which multiple teams are chosen in a competition and are given 1.5 years to develop a vision for how the landscape of environmental sci-ence will differ from what we experi-ence today. Each team would design a collaborative process to answer these questions. Groups would be selected based on the composition of their in-terdisciplinary teams, the ideas they propose, and the creativity of their collaborative design. All submitted full proposals would be evaluated on their interdisciplinary nature, ap-proach to collaboration, and proposed outcome. Each team would present their project ideas and collaborative design at the ESA meetings in 2004, and final results in 2005. Final results from the teams and from the evalua-tion of the collaboration will be pub-lished either in a special journal issue or a book. ESA would implement an outreach program to use this project to capture interest in the relevant science and issues.

Science Office staff are also devel-oping a proposal to NSF for ESA to lead a 3-day “summit” meeting of the leadership of the major professional societies involved in environmental biology, with the goal of developing a policy statement on data sharing and archiving, and a roadmap for implementation by the societies. The roadmap would contain a specific set of target steps and dates leading to-ward requirements for the complete deposit of all data that support papers published in the societies’ journals in computer archives accessible to all. The proposed meeting would take place in late spring 2004.

Other activities in the scientific community

Science staff members also par-ticipate in the scientific community in ways that help communicate ESA capabilities to the community, and in turn inform the efforts of staff in the projects and activities summarized above. For example, Hidinger serves on the Society for Range Manage-ment’s Nominating Committee and is a member of the core group of the Invasive Weed Awareness Coalition. Kranz chairs the Board of Directors of the Biodiversity Project, and serves on the Board of the D.C. Environmen-tors Project. Duke serves as President of the Chesapeake–Potomac Chap-ter of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, and is an active member of a number of other professional societies.

SBI Committee

The SBI Steering Committee continues to provide guidance and support for the efforts of the Science Office. The Committee is currently chaired by Cathy Pringle (Univer-sity of Georgia) and co-chaired by Jim Clark (Duke University). The other committee members are Tracy Ben-ning (University of San Francisco), Elizabeth Chornesky (Consultant), Laurie Drinkwater (Cornell Univer-

sity), Laura Huenneke (New Mexico State University), Garth Redfield (South Florida Water Management District), Ricardo Rozzi (Parque Etnobotanico Omora, Chile), and Carolyn Sieg (U.S. Forest Service). The Committee met most recently in Savannah at the ESA Annual Meeting, where they were updated on current Science Office activities and dis-cussed a retrospective paper on SBI that the Committee is planning.

Public Affairs Office

Policy

ESA’s Congressional Fellow, Dr. Evan Notman, received his placement on Capitol Hill. We are very happy to report that Evan will be joining the minority staff of the Senate Agriculture Committee. He began his placement with work on forest fire legislation currently before the Senate.

Appropriations

ESA took an active role in pushing for NSF funding in the FY04 budget, including NEON. Maggie Smith, in conjunction with AIBS, prepared a letter from ESA President William Schlesinger advocating adoption of the NSF funding levels put forth by the House of Representatives ($9.3 million more than the Senate pro-posal). Furthermore, the House mark includes funding for NEON in the Major Research Equipment and Facil-ities Construction Account, while the Senate mark does not include NEON. ESA requested that House spending levels both for NSF BIO and NEON be adopted.

ESA joined with other scientific societies in signing the CNSF Coali-tion letter supporting the House mark for NSF. Also, the newly formed Coalition for USGS, of which ESA is a member, wrote to House and Senate appropriators thanking them for restoring the USGS budget from


cuts proposed by the Administration, and urging them to support science funding.

Fire policy

ESA joined a broad community of organizations interested in forest fire policy to ask the Congress to pass a supplemental spending bill to fully fund fire-fighting costs and restore funding to accounts that were emptied to pay for fire fighting.

ESA has joined a new coalition seeking to address the chronic prob-lem of fire fighting funding. The co-alition represents a large cross-section of interested parties. ESA expects to be very active in pushing for reform on this front.

ESA submitted comments on leg-islation establishing three fire research institutes in the Southwest at the behest of the House Science Commit-tee. The House Resources Committee found the comments very helpful and requested that ESA staffer Smith meet with committee staff to further ex-plain ESA’s position and give input on the legislation. Smith conveyed ESA’s support of research funding, but emphasized that a competitive grant process, rather than earmarks, would improve the credibility and possibly the results of the research. ESA also advocated specific, more scientifically based language changes in the text of the bill.

Endangered species

ESA was contacted by Resources Committee staff, requesting com-ments on Endangered Species Act Amendments. The Committee is in the early stage of discussing amend-ments and attempting to reauthorize the Act. ESA was asked to comment on the scientific merits of the pro-posals. In addition, Smith contacted numerous ecologists with Endangered Species expertise asking for comment letters to give the committee guidance in their work. Anyone who would like additional information on ESA’s com-

ments or would like the opportunity to supply the committee with their own comments should contact Smith at ‹[email protected]›.

ESA also supplied comments to the Fish and Wildlife Service re-garding their proposed regulation changes to the Endangered Species Act. The Service proposes to remove the regulations that make trade in foreign endangered species illegal. To view ESA’s comments please visit: ‹http://www.esa.org/pao/statements_resolutions/statements/endangered_species.htm›

JSTOR

The first round of invitations to journals to join an expanded ecology JSTOR collection went out on 31 Oc-tober. Thirty journals will be invited in this round. Also, ESA JSTOR Se-lection Committee Chair Rob Colwell approached the committee asking for their input in prioritizing the list of JSTOR alternate titles. We expect that a second round of invitations will be necessary.

Media

Annie Drinkard, ESA’s Public Affairs Officer in charge of media relations, coordinated coverage of this year’s ESA Annual Meeting, gener-ating great interest both locally and nationally. Reporters produced over 50 stories during the past 3 months. Several freelance science writers, press from Science, Science News, Biomednet, as well as the local CBS affiliate and the Savannah Morning News, covered the meeting. Drinkard assisted in screening the AAAS Sci-ence Journalism awards, working with other committee members to evaluate the scientific accuracy of the entries. The awards recognize outstanding reporting for a general au-dience and honor individuals for their coverage of the sciences, engineering, and mathematics. Sue Silver worked with the University of Utah News and Public Relations office in promoting a recent article published in Frontiers,

which gained excellent coverage in the media.

Reporter-initiated calls continued strongly this fall, showing the media’s awareness of ESA as a resource for ecological information. The New York Times, NPR, United Press Interna-tional, Rolling Stone Magazine, and ABC news.com all recently contacted the Society.

Press releases

Down on the Farm (4 August 2003)Pandora’s Box of Pathogens (4 Au-gust 2003)Invasive Aliens (5 August 2003)Fat Chance for Hosts (8 September 2003)Conference on Invasive and Alien Plants (6 October 2003)

Press coverage

Press coverage over the past three months included:

Associated Press, BBC, Ca-nadian Broadcast Corporation, Environmental News Network, En-vironment News Service, Galileu (Brazilian Science News Magazine), GreenBiz.com, Innovations Report, Los Angeles Daily News, National Geographic News, NPR, Salt Lake Tribune, Science, Science Daily, Scientific American, United Press In-ternational, VPRO (Dutch public tele-vision), Wissenschaft Online GmbH (German News Service).

Education

SEEDS

The SEEDS advisory board met in Savannah, Georgia, and dis-cussed the direction of the program. SEEDS regional coordinator Melissa Jurgensen-Armstrong attended the SACNAS meeting in early October and Jurgensen-Armstrong and Kath-erine Hoffman attended the American Indian Science and Engineering Soci-ety Meeting in November. A SEEDS

http://www.esa.org/pao/statements_resolutions/statements/endangered_species.htm




field trip focused on Urban Ecology took place 6–9 November 2003 in the Washington/Baltimore area. A selection committee of ESA members recommended 40 of the 60 applicants, which is the best pool of students ESA has had to date. SEEDS staff also visited 4 HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) and 3 Tribal Colleges this fall.

Digital projects

The Bioscience Education Net-work (BEN) collaborative executive council met in October. The group is exploring alternative funding sources for the collaborative group. The database structure of ESA’s portal site, ‹ecoed.net›, is being upgraded to comply with the BEN portal. A survey on the utility of Teaching Is-sues and Experiments in Ecology web site was disseminated and the results are currently being analyzed. Jason Taylor, ESA Director of Education, attended a strategic planning meeting for TIEE held in Tempe, Arizona on 1–2 November; the future direction of the project was discussed. The “Pro-files of Ecologists” web site has been updated and can be accessed at ‹http://www.esa.org/education/career_funding/whatdoecologistsdo.php›. This site profiles the diverse career paths of many ESA ecologists.

Other

Taylor attended the NSF Under-graduate Mentoring in Environmen-tal Biology (UMEB) P.I. meeting in September, the North American As-sociation of Environmental Education (NAAEE) in October and the ESA Visions meeting in August. The ESA Education Office is in the process of completing fact sheets on Traditional Ecological Knowledge, and Environ-mental Justice.

Publications Office

Journal production and personnel

We are delighted to report that the production schedule is now back on track after the Annual Meeting’s inter-ruption. That effect was compounded by the fact that our Production Edi-tor, Jill Leichter, resigned to move to New Zealand. She will be greatly missed. Leichter played a major role in designing and choosing the photos for the first of our new color covers. She also brought a new level of excel-lence to the graphics in ESA’s jour-nals. We have seen a huge increase in the number of plates showing study organisms and sites since Leichter came on board, adding visual appeal to authors’ articles, and without any additional cost to ESA.

Our newest employee, Regina Przygocki, brings to us a new level of expertise in the realm of computer graphics and online publications. Re-gina most recently worked as Director of Publications for Voyagers Interna-tional Tours (an ecotourism company that organized trips for many universi-ty alumni and other non-profit organi-zations). Przygocki started work full-time on 3 November. She has already made her mark, and we are expecting her to be a huge asset as we continue our move toward a digital world in the Publications Office.

New covers

The July issue of Ecology was the first issue with the new full-color

cover design. We are very happy with the results, and we hope our readers were pleasantly surprised. We tried to make the new cover design look new yet familiar. Many stylistic elements of the old covers have been preserved, including the distinguishing colors of ESA’s three long-standing journals. We have also kept the Table of Contents on the back cover of the print journals for the convenience of our readers. Finally, the covers of Ecology, Ecological Monographs, Ecological Applications, and the now exclusively digital Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America now bear a familial resemblance to Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

New firewall

ESA purchased a new Check Point firewall appliance for the Publications Office, and installation was completed in September. The new firewall will provide greater security for the web server and will also allow VPN access for programmers at the Allen Press to make requested changes to the online submission and review system. The installation was complicated by the development of a leak in the roof of our (new) building, which seemed to target our equipment room. The building owner has now completely replaced the roof, but that project de-layed the firewall installation, which in turn slowed down our progress with the new tracking system. We are now back on track with implementation of the system.

Online submission and review system

We are moving ahead with imple-mentation of the online tracking sys-tem. We have completed the internal testing and role playing in our office, and we are now actually using the sys-tem for a subset of submitted manu-scripts. Feedback from editors and reviewers is being collected. We are on track to move to the new system for all submissions effective 1 January

http://www.ecoed.net

http://www.esa.org/education/career_funding/whatdoecologistsdo.php




2004. We are so confident of this date that we have placed announcements in the November and December 2003 is-sues of the journals.

Meetings

Annual Meeting 2003—Savannah, Georgia

Attendee summary: 1,895 ESA Members (1,155

Regular Members and 740 Student Members)

6 ISEM Members (5 Regular Members and 1 Student Member)

654 Non Members (319 Regular Nonmembers and 335 Student Non-members)

1 K–12/Precollege Educator6 Press123 Exhibitors12 VIP Guests21 Staff2,718 Total

A total of 312 responses to the Postmeeting Evaluation were re-ceived, a 14% response, with 15 additional responses to the separate exhibitor survey. Copies of the en-tire evaluation have been sent to the Program Chair and his assistant, the Local Host Chair, the Savannah CVB, and Savannah International Trade and Convention Center.

Annual Meeting 2004—Portland, Oregon

Paul Ringold and Allen Solomon, Local Host Co-Chairs, have assem-bled an 8-person working committee. They are lining up 22 scientific field trips and are interviewing local gradu-ate student volunteer coordinator candidates. The Co-Chairs and com-mittee are also developing the Pacific Northwest Authors and Poets evening, an opening ceremony by area First Nation tribes, and entertainment for the ESA Social in the Rose Garden.

The newly enlarged Oregon Con-vention Center will be able to handle

all scientific sessions, exhibits and posters, evening sessions, Board and Committee Meetings, Section and Chapter business meetings, and mix-ers under one roof. The ESA hotels are all linked by MAX, Portland’s free light rail system, which also runs to the airport and to within short walking distance of almost all hotels. The only lodgings requiring bus shuttling are the dormitories at Portland State Uni-versity and Lewis and Clark College.

ESA Staff Annual Meeting Plan-ning Team (Elizabeth Biggs, Ellen Cardwell, Tricia Crocker, and Frank McDonough) have begun their monthly planning meetings coordinat-ing all aspects of budget, logistics, ex-hibits, registration, and staff support for the 2004 Annual Meeting.

Invasive Plants Conference (IPINAMS-EMAPi7) 2003—Fort Lauderdale, Florida

This conference, co-organized by the Weed Science Society of America and ESA, took place at the Wyndham Bonaventure in Ft. Lauderdale, 3–8 November 2003, preceded by an All-TNC, All-Invasives Workshop on 2–3 November. Originally budgeted for 300 attendees, the conference opened with more than 750 registrants; 100 Nature Conservancy employees registered to attend the pre-Confer-ence workshop. Meetings Manager Cardwell coordinated the hotel and other meeting arrangements.

Annual Meeting 2005 with INTECOL—Montreal, Canada

Program Co-Chairs Paul Ringold and INTECOL’s Rebecca Sharitz, joined by INTECOL’s treasurer Gene Turner and ESA’s Meetings Manager Ellen Cardwell, held a productive trip to Montreal to undertake advance planning for this meeting. Tourism Montreal was very helpful in making arrangements and providing detailed information.

A timeline for proposal and ab-stract submission has been developed by the Program Co-Chairs. Advance

notice to INTECOL members will be sent in late 2003 and will be posted for all interested on the ESA Montreal meeting site.

The Palais de Congress, the newly expanded, spacious Montreal Con-vention Center, will be able to accom-modate all the anticipated scientific sessions, evening sessions, Posters and Exhibits, Board and Committee meetings, Section and Chapter busi-ness meetings, and mixers and social functions under one roof.

All lodging for this meeting is lo-cated between two and seven blocks walk from the Palais de Congress, which is also located near Montreal’s Old City and other city areas, with plentiful restaurants, amenities, and shopping. Favorable rates have been negotiated at full-service and econ-omy hotels. Dormitory lodging will be at University of Quebec, Montreal and McGill University.

Future meetings

A draft task outline and timeline for the proposed 2005–2006 themed meeting in Mexico was prepared for Governing Board review.

A Letter of Intent has been sent to the Greater Milwaukee Conven-tion and Visitors Bureau confirming the Governing Board’s approval of Milwaukee as the location of the 2008 Annual Meeting.

Meetings co-Chair Steve Chaplin, Executive Director Katherine Mc-Carter, and Meetings Manager Ellen Cardwell went to Calgary, Canada, to conduct a site visit for a prospective 2009 Annual Meeting in the Rocky Mountain region.

In coming months, Cardwell, Chaplin, and the Meetings Committee will be working on a new future meet-ings survey to follow up the earlier survey and pursue additional ques-tions. We have received a large num-ber of responses for both postmeeting evaluations and the future meetings surveys, which are extremely help-ful in responding to perceptions and needs from both meeting attendee and nonattendees alike.


D E P A R T M E N T S

Section and Chapter NewsPALEOECOLOGY SECTION NEWSLETTER ~~2003 Edward S. Deevey Award

Edward S. Deevey, a founder of modern paleoecology, was a dedicated student advisor who mentored many investigators active in the field today. To honor his memory and encourage high-quality research by graduate students, the Paleoecology Section presents an award to the student making the best oral or poster presentation in paleoecology at the ESA Annual Meeting. Don Falk, a graduate student in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona, won the 2003 Deevey award for his talk entitled, “The event–area relationship: scale dependence in the fire regime of a New Mexico ponderosa pine forest.” Mr. Falk’s dissertation re-search, which he conducts at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, explores spatial and temporal variation in the historic fire regime in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico using dendrochronology to reconstruct fire history in Ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) stands. In addition, he applies analytical tests based on analogy with spe-cies–area relationships to evaluate the form and underlying mecha-nisms of scale dependence in the fire regimes. The committee was particularly impressed with the quality and clarity of his presenta-tion and the implications of his research for fire history reconstruc-tion. He completed his B.A. at Oberlin College in 1972 and an M.A. in environmental policy at Tufts University in 1981. Falk was co-founder of the Center for Plant Conservation at the Missouri Bo-tanical Garden and Executive Director of the Society for Ecological Restoration before returning to Arizona for his doctorate. The Paleoecology Section thanks students who competed for this year’s Deevey Award and encourages others to participate in the 2004 competition, to be held at the ESA Annual Meeting in Portland, Oregon. The Section also appreciates the efforts of the 2003 Deevey Award Selection Committee: Jason Lynch (Chair), Dan Gavin, Andrea Lloyd, and Phil Townsend.

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Don Falk

SOUTHEASTERN CHAPTER NEWSLETTERIssue 2003– 4

Chapter Officers

Chair: Paul Schmalzer (2002–2004) ‹[email protected]› Vice-Chair: Joan Walker (2003–2005) ‹[email protected]› Secretary/Treasurer: Yetta Jager (2002–2004) ‹[email protected]›

Web-Master: Mark Mackenzie ‹[email protected]› Chapter home page: ‹http://www.auburn.edu/seesa/›

Spring 2004 Chapter Meeting in Memphis, Tennessee

The chapter will meet with the Association of Southeastern Biologists (ASB) in Memphis, Tennes-see 14–17 April 2004. Scott Franklin, an ESA-SE member from the University of Memphis, will be one of our hosts. Dan Simberloff will give the ASB key-

http://www.auburn.edu/seesa/


of America. Income from the fund shall be used each year to finance a suitable plaque and cash award to be given to the student (from those who have applied) judged to have presented the best poster on a clearly ecological topic at the annual meeting of the Association of Southeastern Bi-ologists. The amount of the cash award will be set initially at $300. The amount of the award may change as income from the Award fund increases, at the recommendation of the Awards Committee, and with approval of the Execu-tive Board.

The award recipient may be an undergraduate or graduate student, must be the sole or senior author of the poster, must be present at the meeting, and does not have to be a member of ESA. The poster must be presented in a regular contributed poster session. The poster must represent original work and should present a substantially completed project.

Each year the Chairperson shall appoint one person to the three-person judging panel. It is expected that each member of the panel will serve 3 years and in the 3rd year will serve as the Quarterman-Keever Award Coordinator for the panel. The Chairperson shall appoint additional persons to the judging panel if any serving panel mem-ber is unable to serve the entire 3-year term. The panel of judges shall evaluate the poster using the following criteria: significance of ideas, creativity, quality of meth-odology, validity of results, and clarity of presentation. The award shall be presented at the ASB banquet, and the recipient shall be announced in the summer newsletter.

Upcoming Meetings and Symposia

The First Annual Southeastern Ecology and Evolution Conference will be held in Atlanta, Georgia, 5–7 March 2004 (Abstract submission deadline, 31 January 2004).

Keeping in Touch

Check the Chapter home page: ‹http://www.auburn.edu/seesa/› for updates and additional in-formation. Join the Southeastern Chapter of ESA LIST-SERVER: To join the ListServer, send a message to ‹[email protected]› with “subscribe scesa” in the body of the message. Please send news or announce-ments to ‹[email protected]› for distribution to the listserv, or to ‹[email protected]› for inclusion in the next quarterly newsletter.

Yetta JagerNewsletter Editor

note address on the evening of Wednesday, 14 April, and a social will be held at the Gibson guitar factory on 15 April. For more information, visit the meeting web site: ‹http://www.people.memphis.edu/~biology/asb/›.

Symposium on Invasive Plant Awareness

The ESA Southeast Chapter will co-host with the Tennes-see Exotic Pest Plant Council a symposium, “Invasive Plant Awareness and Research: Priority Status.” The invasive plant symposium, coordinated by Pat Parr and Jack Ranney, will be held Thursday morning, 15 April. The symposium will also celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Tennessee Exotic Pest Plant Council.

Appeal for 2004 Odum Award

We are within $1,250 of our goal of $10,000, which is the amount needed to make the fund sustainable. To help us reach the goal this year, please consider sending a check, made out to ESA–SE Chapter, to the treasurer with an ex-planatory note.

2004 Elections

Elections for chair and secretary/treasurer will be held at the Spring 2004 meeting for the term beginning in August 2004. If you have a nomination, or if you are interested in finding out more about these positions, contact Joan Walker or Paul Schmalzer soon.

Membership Renewal

Please remember to renew your membership in the SE chapter when you renew your ESA membership. Your do-nations to the Eugene P. Odum Fund support the 2004 best student paper award.

A proposed bylaws amendment to establish a poster award for the best student poster will be posted on the Chap-ter web site and voted on at our April 2004 meeting. Please read the amendment below and submit any comments to Paul.

Proposed Bylaws Amendment

Sub-article 2d. QUARTERMAN-KEEVER AWARD. Annually, the Chapter shall present an award supported by the Elsie Quarterman-Catherine Keever Award fund. The purpose of the fund is to encourage excellence in research by young ecologists. The fund shall be administered and invested by the Business Manager of the Ecological Society






http://www.people.memphis.edu/~biology/asb/

http://www.people.memphis.edu/~biology/asb/


STATISTICAL ECOLOGY SECTION NEWSLETTER ~~E.C. Pielou Award

The E.C. Pielou Award is a competitive award made annually to a graduate student or recent Ph.D, and is based on over-all quality of the student’s scientific contribution to statistical ecology. The 2003 recipient of the E.C. Pielou Award is Katia Koelle for her talk at the 2003 ESA Annual Meeting in Savannah, “Disentangling the roles of extrinsic and intrinsic factors in nonlinear disease dynamics.” Koelle is a third-year graduate student at the University of Michigan and is advised by Mercedes Pascual. Her dissertation focuses on analyzing the spatiotemporal dynamics of diseases, particularly diseases that may experience significant climatic forcing. Her current research uses cholera case data from Bangladesh to reconstruct the duration of temporary immunity conferred by the disease and to examine the role of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation as an environmental driver of the disease. She received her undergraduate degree in Biology from Stanford University in 1997.

Statistical Section Officers: Sam Scheiner, Randy Balice, Kathy Cottingham

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Species Exchanges between Eastern Asia and North America: Threats to Environment and Economy

The Beijing International Symposium on biological in-vasions will be held 8–11 June 2004 in Beijing, China. The symposium will be co-organized by The Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), The Sino-Ecologists Club Overseas, Asian Ecology Section of ESA, and the U.S. Geological Survey. Please visit ‹http://bisobi.sino-eco.org› or e-mail ‹[email protected]› for details.

The Symposium banner (shown here) uses two typical invasive species, one from Eastern Asia and one from North America, to represent the challenges of biological inva-sions; the Great Wall symbolizes the efforts to prevent and mitigate the threats to environment and economy from such species exchanges.

Shown on the left of the photograph is kudzu (Pueraria montana var. lobata), first introduced to the United States in 1876 at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia by a Japa-nese government sponsored garden, and now covering more than 7 million acres in the southeastern United States. On the right is goldenrod (Solidago canadensis), native to the United States and Canada, but exotic in China. The dispro-portionate scale of kudzu and density of Solidago canaden-sis signifies the seriousness of their threats.

American Society of Mammalogists 84th Annual Meeting

The 84th Annual Meeting of the Ameican Society of Mammalogists will be held 11–16 June 2004 at Humboldt State University, Arcata, California. In addition to contrib-uted oral and poster presentations covering all aspects of mammalian biology, this year’s program will feature two

Calendar

M E E T I N G S

symposia. Dr. Penny S. Reynolds will convene “Problems of Sampling and Statistical Assessment in Mammalogy Research.” “Habitat Loss and Fragmentation: Impacts of Urban Sprawl on Mammals” will be convened by Dr. John A. Yunger. Special addresses will be offered by the recipients of the Joseph Grinnell (Dr. David Schmidley) and C. Hart Merriam (Dr. Terry Bowyer) awards, as well as by student honorees. Dr. James Estes, best known for his work on the behavioral ecology of marine mammals (especially sea otters) and on the community ecology of kelp forests, will present the capstone presentation. Also included are the usual ASM socials, ideal for professional interaction.

Nonmembers who are interested in attending the meet-ings and/or presenting papers should request materials from the Chairman of the Local Program Committee, Dr. Brian Arbogast, Department of Biological Sciences, Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA 95521; (707) 826-4180; Fax: 826-3201; E-mail: bsa2.humboldt.edu. For additional information, please visit the meeting web site at ‹http://www.humboldt.edu/~asm/› For more infor-mation about the ASM, please visit our web site at ‹http://www.mammalsociety.org›

Wild Trout VIII Symposium: Working Together to Ensure the Future of Wild Trout: Call for Papers and Posters

The meeting will be held 20–22 September 2004 at the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park. The goals of the Symposium are to bring together a broad and diverse audience representing governmental entities, nongovern-mental conservation organizations, media representatives, educators, anglers, guides, and business interests associ-ated with trout fisheries to share their viewpoints on wild trout management and related public policy, to exchange technical information, and to seek ways of cooperatively advancing the conservation of wild trout resources.

Authors are encouraged to conslt the Wild Trout VIII web page ‹www.wildtrout8.com› for guidelines for abstract, poster, and manuscript preparation. Abstracts must be submitted by 1 February 2004. For additional information, contact Program Chair Robert Carline at ‹[email protected]›.

http://bisobi.sino-eco.org


mailto:bsa2.humboldt.edu

http://www.humboldt.edu/~asm/

http://www.mammalsociety.org

http://www.mammalsociety.org

http://www.wildtrout8.com



Carnivore Conservation Conference

Defenders of Wildlife is pleased to announce Carnivores 2004: Expanding Partnerships in Carnivore Conservation. The conference will be held 14–17 November 2004 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This will be our fifth biennial carnivore conser-vation conference. Defenders is accepting oral (15-minute) and poster presentation submissions for Carnivores 2004. Abstract submissions must be received by 1 June 2004.

While the conference focus is on partnerships in conserva-tion, we will consider any papers covering topics such as biol-ogy, behavior, taxonomy, general ecology, recovery, manage-ment, and economic impacts of terrestrial, avian, and marine carnivore species (canids, bears, cats, mesocarnivores, raptors, whales, dolphins, sharks, etc). Please visit our official confer-ence website, ‹www.carnivoreconference.org› or leave a mes-sage at (202) 789-2844 x315 for complete Carnivores 2004 and abstract submission details.

Aimee DelachSenior Species Program Associate Defenders of WildlifeE-mail: [email protected]

Meeting ReviewsAdvances in Coastal Habitat Restoration in the Northern Gulf States

“Advances in Coastal Habitat Restoration in the Northern Gulf States,” a symposium cosponsored by the Coastal Restoration and Enhancement through Science and Technology (CREST) Program, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), was held in Thibodaux, Louisiana (USA) on 1-2 July 2003.

In order to integrate available scientific knowledge in sup-port of the restoration of coastal habitats in the northern Gulf of Mexico, the symposium extended the definition of coastal habitat to include adjacent freshwater wetlands, along with estuaries and nearshore marine areas. This symposium is the first major contribution from the new CREST program, which coordinates support from NOAA to university-based research into the restoration ecology of coastal ecosystems in the north-ern Gulf of Mexico.

Fifteen invited speakers created the atmosphere of a par-ticularly well-attended national meeting of coastal ecologists. These presentations drew on experience from at least nine re-gional wetland and coastal restoration programs accrued over the past decade. Contributed posters and panel discussions rounded out the program. The largely local audience was com-posed of state and federal resource managers and academic sci-entists—those who will shoulder the burden of implementing

restoration in the northern Gulf of Mexico. The meet-ing was timely for its immediate audience, but it also provided an impetus and opportunity to review progress achieved in coastal restoration elsewhere.

The CREST symposium captured a snapshot of coastal restoration in the United States and the eco-system science behind it. The low-lying, sedimentary coastlines found through much of the United States are defined by a constantly changing geomorphology; it would be quixotic to attempt to reconstruct and main-tain coastal ecosystems in a particular former state. Instead, coastal restoration means reestablishing natural patterns in the processes that shape and sustain these ecosystems. In particular, coastal restoration attempts to mitigate the negative impacts of human activities and thus recover natural resources and ecological services that have been lost.

Ecosystem science principally contributes to resto-ration in three areas: by building an understanding of the mechanics of coastal ecosystems, by identifying the effects of human activities, and by predicting how these ecosystems will respond to attempts to restore them. The symposium organized presentations on these top-ics around restoration goals related to fish and wildlife (fauna), water quality, and wetlands vegetation (habi-tat). In addition, several presentations addressed the challenges of integrating science with management of coastal ecosystems. Success here depends on negotiat-ing with managers and stakeholders a common under-standing of the goals for restoration and a correspond-ing set of ecosystem attributes in which changes can be predicted and measured.

The goal of maintaining fisheries and wildlife re-sources serves as one of the main motivations for public investment in coastal restoration. This presents manag-ers and scientists with the challenging task of establish-ing a clear link between characteristics of habitat and the supported populations of fish and wildlife. Restora-tion in northern San Francisco Bay depends on main-taining freshwater discharge in the Sacramento River, which means that this freshwater cannot be provided to dry areas outside the basin. Wim Kimmerer (San Fran-cisco State University) described the principal mecha-nisms linking higher freshwater discharge to increased fish production in the Sacramento River delta. Counter to the conventional wisdom, this link most likely con-sists of the direct response of fish to physical conditions related to the amount of freshwater in the estuary, rather than from any general enhanced productivity through-out the food web.

Thomas Minello (NOAA Fisheries) described simi-lar work aimed at documenting the effect of wetland restoration and creation on adult populations of crus-tacea in Galveston Bay, which rely on these habitats for nursery areas. Brown and white shrimp, as well as blue crabs, all show enhanced populations at the edges of wetland areas, and this has a direct implication for

http://www.carnivoreconference.org


the design of wetland restoration projects. Charles Peterson (University of North Carolina) argued persuasively that re-storing oyster reefs provides measurable benefits as habitat for other species beyond the economic value of a sustained oyster fishery. The habitat value of oyster reefs can be mea-sured by increased production of other estuarine fisheries. Restoring oyster reefs also contributes to maintaining water quality, especially clarity, but these benefits are as yet dif-ficult to evaluate.

Eutrophication and contaminants pose chronic threats in all coastal systems. Coastal restoration in the northern Gulf of Mexico involves redistributing flow out of the main chan-nel of the Mississippi River. What risks does this pose for the estuarine areas that will receive augmented flow and to the nearshore marine areas normally affected by the river’s plume? Based on results of monitoring studies presented by Charles Demas (USGS), water quality in the Mississippi River falls within existing quality standards for contami-nants. However, these standards generally do not control for the risk of chronic stress, e.g., from long-lived herbicides acting on wetland vegetation. Several other speakers ad-dressed the risk of eutrophication resulting from increased nutrient loading.

Increased nutrient loading can benefit restoration ef-forts if it stimulates vegetative growth without the adverse effects of eutrophication in the water column. In coastal Louisiana, increasing uptake of nitrogen in wetlands may decrease the intensity of hypoxic conditions in shelf waters fed by nutrients in the plume of the Mississippi River. Some scientists believe that stimulating increased production of organic matter is the key to converting increased sediment delivery from diversions into net emergent marsh area. John Day (Louisiana State University) reported on studies into the fate of nutrients introduced in Mississippi River water diverted into estuarine basins that previously received little or no input of riverine water and sediment. Dubravko Justic (Louisiana State University) described the role of climatic factors on magnitude and extent of the hypoxic zone of the Mississippi River, and the possible confounding effects of long-term climate change on restoration efforts.

The role of hydrologic variability emerged as a minor theme in discussions of threats to water quality and restora-tion strategies. Hans Paerl (University of North Carolina) delivered a nuanced discussion of the role of climate-driven variability in estuarine response to nutrient loading and man-agement control measures, based on experience in the Nuese River and Pamlico Sound. Runoff is the primary factor deter-mining the annual load of nutrients in this system, but runoff also influences residence time, which in turn modulates es-tuarine response to nutrient loading. Although the influences of climate-driven pulsing on coastal ecosystems are readily understood, it appears that such pulsing will make it difficult to predict future trends in estuarine water quality.

Some encouraging results have been achieved in res-toration efforts in the United States, and the symposium provided an opportunity to decipher strategic elements con-

tributing to these successes. Chief among these is knowing how to measure success. Chris Craft (Indiana University) provided information from salt marsh creation projects implemented in North Carolina over the past 10 years. Craft and others advocated tracking success by using a variety of indices descriptive of vegetation and soil prop-erties, with target values keyed to representative “refer-ence systems.” Beth Middleton (USGS) argued, based on life history requirements of freshwater wetland vegetation species, that recreation of wetland systems dominated by riverine influence requires attention to the natural variabil-ity in hydrologic forcing. Other speakers offered perspec-tives based on experience in large-scale restoration in the Chesapeake Bay, the Columbia River, and the Everglades of South Florida.

The underlying causes of wetland loss in the northern Gulf differ from those of other coastal systems in the United States, and consequently so will the mechanisms for reversing this loss. Missing from the symposium was any information on the dynamic geomorphologic pro-cesses active along this deltaic coast. Knowledge of these processes is keenly needed in planning for coastal restora-tion. Beginning in the late 1800s, major construction of various structures for flood control and navigation has interrupted the natural geomorphic processes, although construction of levees began with the settlement of New Orleans more than a century earlier. Similar stories can be told for other large river deltas. To a large degree, restora-tion of the ecosystems of a deltaic coast will depend on successfully recreating, through river engineering, these lost geomorphic processes. This will require gathering information about comparable coastal systems, i.e., large river deltas, worldwide. Perhaps this will be pursued in a future CREST symposium.

Overall, the CREST program’s inaugural symposium succeeded in assembling an integrated view of current ecological science relevant to coastal restoration, albeit limited to restoration efforts in the United States. A set of papers based on the invited presentations, to be published in a special issue of Ecological Engineering, should be of interest to anyone working on restoration of coastal eco-systems. More information on coastal restoration in the northern Gulf of Mexico can be found at the CREST web site, ‹http://www.gulfcrest.org/›

William Nuttle11 Craig StreetOttawa, ON, Canada K1S 4B6E-mail: [email protected]

Piers Chapman --Director, CREST Office1143 Energy, Coast and Environment BldgLouisiana State UniversityBaton Rouge, LA 70803E-mail: [email protected]

http://www.gulfcrest.org/


Commentary

C O N T R I B U T I O N S

Two Bodies Cannot Occupy the Same Place at the Same Time, or The Importance of Space in the Ecological Niche

Studies of resource partitioning and niche had their golden era in the 1970s to the 1980s, but fell in disgrace after being convicted of circular reasoning and not consid-ering alternative hypotheses. Nevertheless, niche theory persists and has a central role in contemporary ecological theory (Cheesson 1991, Leibold 1995).

The initial definitions of ecological niche stressed the idea of niche as an organism’s position or place in the com-munity, or in the biotic environment (Grinnell 1917 and Elton 1927, respectively). Hutchinson in 1957 described niche as a hypervolume in the n-dimensional ecological space, also distinguishing the fundamental and realized niche. After extensive literature surveys on community ecology, Schoener (1974, 1983) ranked the five most im-portant factors of resource partitioning as macrohabitat, microhabitat, food type, time of day, and seasonality of activity. Pianka (1999) summarized niche dimensions in a subset of the three most important—food type, space and time—once more suggesting the importance of space and time in the organism’s ecological niche.

The importance of the spatial dimension of niche is stressed in these definitions, but it was not followed by rec-ognition of its a priori importance over food type and time. Space is a limited resource by definition. Theoretically, two bodies cannot occupy the same point in space and time. In practice, species such as parasites and symbionts differing greatly in body size could be in almost the same place at the same time, where the body of one species is the imme-diate environment of another. However, for organisms of similar size the theory holds: they may overlap in habitat or microhabitat, but it is not likely that they would overlap at the same point of the space–time bi-dimensional axis. Through deduction, partitioning of space–time axes is expected to be intense. When in close proximity, one will eventually be expelled, be it an organism, a social group, or a colony. In close proximity, diet segregation will not avoid exclusion of one of the organisms from the site. Seg-regation in time could avoid this spatial exclusion, but it is

only possible if food resources are not limiting, or have high renewal rates. Therefore, complete overlap in microhabitat and time cannot be counteracted by segregation in food type. On the other hand, differentiation (not necessarily segrega-tion) in space use might counteract complete overlap in diet.

Since MacArthur (1958) and Connell (1961), the use of space is an important niche dimension for understanding species coexistence and competition. Space use seems to be the main factor explaining community structure and species richness at the local (examples below) and continental scales (e.g., Kelt et al. 1996), along elevational gradients (Patterson et al. 1998), and along the evolutionary process of vertebrate radiation (Streelman and Danley 2003). Differentiation in space use is a key factor in community structure (see Cunha and Vieira [2002] for small mammals; Peres [1997] for pri-mates; Arlettaz [1999] for bats; Howard and Hailey [1999] for reptiles, Brodman and Jaskula [2002] for amphibians; MacArthur [1958] for birds, Krijger and Sevenster [2003] for insects, Bouchon-Navaro [1986] for reef fishes, and Ko-hda and Yanagisawa [1992] for lake cichlids). In most cases, space use patterns clearly distinguish species with extensive overlap in diet (see references above and the respective cita-tions). Segregation in space use may be more important in three-dimensional or complex environments (sensu August 1983), such as tropical forests, coral reefs, and other aquatic communities.

With space as the most important niche dimension, analy-sis of space use patterns becomes a central requisite to study species coexistence, especially in complex environments. In addition, use and availability of space are frequently easier to measure than other dimensions of the niche, particularly use and availability of food resources. Other dimensions usually considered important, such as food resources and time use, should always be considered as complementary to space use.

Literature Cited

Arlettaz, R. 1999. Habitat selection as a major resource par-titioning mechanism between the two sympatric sibling bat species Myotis myotis and Myotis blythii. Journal of Animal Ecology 68:460–471.

August, P. V. 1983. Heterogeneity in structuring tropical


mammal communities. Ecology 64:1495–1507.Bouchon-Navaro, Y. 1986. Partitioning of food and space

resources by chaetodontid fishes on coral reefs. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 103:21–40.

Brodman, R., and J. Jaskula. 2002. Activity and microhabitat use during interactions among five species of pond-breeding salamander larvae. Herpetologica 58:346–354.

Chesson, P. 1991. A need for niches? Trends in Ecology and Evolution 6:26–28.

Cunha, A. C., and M. V. Vieira. 2002. Support diameter, incline, and vertical movements of four didelphid marsupials in the Atlantic forest of Brazil. Journal of Zoology 258:419–426.

Elton, C. 1927. Animal ecology. Sidgwick and Jackson, Lon-don, UK.

Howard, K. E., and A. Hailey. 1999. Microhabitat separation among diurnal saxicolous lizards in Zimbabwe. Journal of Tropical Ecology 15:367–378.

Hutchinson, G. E. 1957. Concluding remarks. Population Studies: Animal Ecology and Demography. Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology 22:415–427.

Grinnell, J. 1917. The niche-relationships of the California Thrasher. Auk 34:427–433.

Kelt, D. A., J. H. Brown, E. D. Heske, P. A. Marquet, S. R Morton, J. R. W. Reid, K. A Rogovin, and G. Shenbrot. 1996. Ecology 77:746–761.

Kohda, M., and Y. Yanagisawa. 1992. Vertical distribution of two herbivorous cichlid fishes of the genus Tropheus in Lake Tanganyika, Africa. Ecology of Freshwater Fishes 1:99–103.

Krijger, C. L., and J. G. Sevenster. 2001. Higher species di-versity explained by stronger spatial aggregation across six neotropical Drosophila communities. Ecology Letters 4:106–115.

Leibold, M. A. 1995. The niche concept revisited: mecha-nistic models and community context. Ecology 76:1371–1382.

MacArthur, R. H. 1958. Population ecology of some war-blers of Northeastern coniferous forests. Ecology 39:599–619.

Patterson, B. D., D. F. Stoz, S. Solari, J. W. Fitzpatrick, and V. Pacheco. 1998. Contrasting patterns of elevation zonation for birds and mammals in the Andes of south-eastern Peru. Journal of Biogeography 25:593–607.

Peres, C. A. 1997. Primate community structure at twenty western Amazonian flooded and unflooded forests. Journal of Tropical Ecology 13:381–405.

Pianka, E. R. 1999. Evolutionary ecology. Sixth edition. Addison-Wesley, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

Schoener, T. W. 1974. Resource partitioning in ecological communities. Science 185:27–39.

Schoener, T. W. 1983. Field experiments on interspecific competition. American Naturalist 122:240–285.

Streelman, J. T., and P. D. Danley. 2003. The stages of ver-tebrate evolutionary radiation. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 18:126–131.

André Almeida Cunha and Marcus Vinicius VieiraLaboratório de VertebradosDepartamento de EcologiaUniversidade Federal do Rio de JaneiroCP 68020Rio de Janeiro, RJCEP 21941-590 Brazil(55) 21-25626314/92362024Fax: (55) 21-25626313E-mail: [email protected]


A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 12: Invertebrate Zoology and Parasitology during the 1500s

The terms invertebrate zoology and parasitology were coined later, but since our concern here is the history of ecology, not classification, these terms are convenient indicators of subjects discussed. A number of physicians advanced the knowledge of these subjects; the most prom-inent are discussed here.

Girolamo Fracastoro (1478–1553) was from a patri-cian family of Verona, and he studied medicine at the University of Padua, which had one of the best medical schools in Europe. He was a true Renaissance humanist who had broad interests and many friends in high places (Thorndike 1941:488–493, Zanobio 1972). His most fa-mous work, a 1346-line poem in three books, Syphilis sive morbus Gallicus (1530), was more famous for its literary than its scientific merits; it is the most famous Renais-sance poem in Latin (Eatough 1984:1). Perhaps he chose a verse format because his own ideas were uncertain, and he wanted to convey them ambiguously. Our name for this disease comes from the title of his poem.

Fig. 1. Girolamo Fracastoro [Wright 1930]

He tells us that this disease came to Italy with the invasion of Charles VIII’s French army, hence the name

morbus Gallicus (Fracastoro 1984, I:5), but that earlier it had come to Europe with Columbus’ sailors (Fracastoro 1984, I:69–70). He thought it was contagious (Fracastoro 1984, I:130), but did not mention sexual transmission. What was its source? Perhaps the air, corrupted by the planets and modi-fied by climate (Fracastoro 1984, I:182–185). He was more explicit in describing its symptoms (Fracastoro 1984, I:320–367). Book I was devoted to such speculations, and Books II and III were devoted to its cure. He warned that south winds and the filth and sweat of unclean marshes are dangerous (Fracastoro 1984, II:81–86), and he thought that fish was a dangerous food (Fracastoro 1984, II:118–120). A concoction of thyme, hops, fennel, parsley, and other herbs could help (Fracastoro 1984, II:174–180), but if not effective, then try a mixture of styrax, mercuric sulphide, lead, antimony, and grains of incense (Fracastoro 1984, II:260–263). However, another cure comes from the land where the disease origi-nated: lignum-sanctum, or guaiacum (Fracastoro 1984, III). None of his advice seems original (Munger 1949, Eatough 1984:20). Neither remedy was effective, and of course mer-cury and lead are dangerous. Mercury might cause some sores to shrink, but at the expense of poisoning the body.

After 16 years of further medical practice, reading, and pubishing, Fracastoro’s ideas on contagious disease were more definite, and he published the prose treatise that is the basis of his place in the history of medicine and his relevance for the history of ecology. This book contained two distinct works: the first, on sympathy and antipathy, was quite traditional and vacuous in its speculations (Wright 1930:xxxiv–xxxv, Thorndike 1941:493–496); the second part, on contagion, contagious diseases, and cures, broke new theoretical ground. One historian of medicine calls it “a truly marvellous triumph of close observation and clear reason-ing,” and the most important statement of contagion theory before Pasteur (Winslow 1943:143). A later evaluation of Fracastoro’s concepts emphasizes their speculative nature (Howard-Jones 1977). Both evaluations seem valid; he stud-ied the problem for many years, but could only reason about it before development of the experimental method.

He identified three means of contagion: direct contact with a sick person, contact with objects contaminated by a sick person, and contagion at a distance (Fracastoro 1930: 7). Although reasoning by analogy often led astray early naturalists, including Fracastoro, his reasoning about con-tagion through contact was perceptive; he compared it to spoiled grapes or apples spoiling others adjacent to them. Like Lucretius in ancient Rome, he believed invisible germs could travel through air, though neither of them argued that such germs were alive. Fracastoro’s concept of germs was chemical (Winslow 1943:133).

Although unable to penetrate the fundamental mystery of contagious diseases, it was a valuable step to survey the different kinds. He realized that some diseases mainly attack children, and that some of them cause fevers and


pustules on the skin (Fracastoro 1930:73). He interpreted these “variolae” as diseases of blood, and the pustules as putrefactions escaping the body. Once that happens, the person seldom suffers the same disease again. Rabies was a disease primarily of dogs, and it was known since antiquity that they transmit it by their bites. Then it incubates for 20 or 30 days, but sometimes for 4–6 months (Fracastoro 1930:125). The symptoms he describes were well known, but his further speculations on hydrophobia beyond that were fruit-less. His ideas on syphilis were now more definite than when he wrote his poem on it. He again tells us it came to Naples from France with King Charles’ army in the 1490s, and that it had come from the New World with Spanish seamen. But now he also tells us that it is transmitted mainly by sexual intercourse, though infants could get it from an infected mother or wet nurse by suckling their milk (Fracastoro 1930:135–137). Syphilis can cause pustules, and he wanted to separate it from other maladies such as elephantiasis, lep-rosy, and scabies, but that was too difficult a challenge, since one might evolve into another: “Psora, which is nowadays called scabies, is a still milder affection than leprosy, but in a severer form it may pass into leprosy, just as leprosy in a severe form may pass into elephantia” (Fracastoro 1930:171). To go further would require the laboratory techniques of the 1800s.

Girolamo Gabuccini was an Italian physician who pub-lished the first separate treatise on parasitic worms (Gabuc-cini 1547), which attracted enough attention to appear in a second, possibly pirated edition at Venice in 1547, and a third edition at Lyon in 1549. Parts of his account of tape-worms (which were known since antiquity) are quoted in Latin by Hoppeli (1959:104, 152, note 9); Gabuccini be-lieved that the lesser heat in the intestine leads to tapeworm formation (Hoppeli 1959:134). He also described the liver fluke of sheep and goats (quoted in Latin by Reinhard 1957:209), first identified by a French sheep farmer, Jean de Brie, who, at the encouragement of Charles V, wrote a treatise on managing sheep in 1379. De Brie believed that sheep got flukes (Fasciola hepatica) by eating a herb, la dauve, in marshy places. He was close to the truth, since larval stages encyst on vegetation in marshy places to await sheep, but de Brie thought the herb’s leaves actually turned into flukes. Anthony (or his brother John) Fitzherbert went further in his Boke of Husbandrye (1523), describing two danger-ous plants in marshy places, but also describing the fluke itself (de Brie’s and Fitzherbert’s accounts are quoted by Kean, Mott, and Russell [1978:561–562], [Fitzherbert 1882:50–51]). Gabuccini came no closer to solving the mystery of the liver fluke’s life cycle than his two predecessors, and it would be three centuries before breakthrough discoveries were made (Reinhard 1957:216–220). His book is digested in a long chapter by Thomas Mouffet entitled “Of the Signs and Cure of Worms out of Gabucinus” (1967:1111–1122). It is so heavily documented with references to ancient and medieval authors that it is difficult to detect any innovations

beyond the synthesis itself.Not only did physicians in the 1500s write medical

books, but some also wrote extensively on plants and animals (Egerton 2003a, b). Edward Wotton (1492–1555) received his undergraduate education at Oxford and his medical doctorate at Padua, then returned to practice in London, where he served a term as president of the Royal College of Physicians (Wheeler 1976). His De differentiis animalium libri decem (Paris, 1552) was a survey of the animal kingdom, compiled largely from classical sources. His original contributions were inserted in Book 9 on in-sects, where he struggled to reconcile his observations of sexual reproduction with traditional belief in spontaneous generation. The weight of tradition was too strong for him, and he concluded that both methods of reproduction occur (Raven 1947:42).

During the second half of the 1500s there was a race to publish the first book entirely on insects, although the participants probably did not know of each other’s work. The Italian Ulisse Aldrovandi became known in Europe first for his three volumes on birds (1599–1603); the Eng-lishman Thomas Penny had devoted much of his research to plants. Aldrovandi and his assistants easily won the race with publication of De animalibus insectis Libri VII (Bo-logna, 1602; later editions in 1618, 1623, 1638), because Penny died before he had progressed beyond collecting his information.

Aldrovandi, as he explained in a letter to Cardinal Maf-feo Barberini (later Pope Urban VIII, who condemned Gal-ileo), collected his insects on little expeditions (translated in Ley 1968:158):

I was in the habit of going into the country for months during the summer and autumn, not for relax-ation, like others; for at these times I employed all my influence, as well as money, to induce the country-peo-ple to bring me such insects, whether winged or creep-ing, as they could procure, in the fields or under ground, and in the rivers and ponds. When any were brought to me, I made inquiries about its name, habit, locality, &c. I often, too, wandered over the marshes and mountains, accompanied by my draughtsman and amanuenses, he carrying his pencil, and they their notebooks. The for-mer took a drawing if expedient, the latter noted down to my dictation what occurred to me, and in this way we collected a vast variety of specimens.

Since Gessner had not published on insects, Aldrovandi was much more on his own for De Animalibus insectis than in other volumes that depended heavily on Gessner’s work. Some of the original pages of illustrations made by his draughtsman survive, and two of them are published, along with extensive translations of the Latin text into German,


and modern identifications by Bodenheimer (1928–1929, I:250–276, II:336–345), including the first dichotomic key ever written, to determine the higher groups. Aldrovandi’s three volumes on birds contained 1009 pages of text; he devoted 300 pages to insects. Section I, of 95 pages, de-scribes bees, wasps, and hornets; Section II, “De papilioni-bus,” includes 81 species of Lepidoptera and also dragon-flies; Section III describes two-winged insects, including flies and mosquitoes; Section IV, those with more than two wings: grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, praying mantis; Section V, insects without wings: true insects—bugs and ants—but also spiders, scorpions, centipedes, and milli-pedes; Section VI, “De vermibus,” includes earthworms and shell-less snails; Section VII is on water insects, but also includes marine worms and starfish (Ley 1968:158–159, Beier 1973:85–86). Fig. 2. Aldrovandi 1602. Reproduced from and iden-tifications by Bodenheimer 1928–1929, I:268.

Thomas Penny (c.1530–1588/1589) followed in the footsteps of William Turner, and was a friend of Turner’s son, Peter (Raven 1947:153). Like Turner, he stud-ied theology and medicine at Cambridge, and in 1565 he traveled to Zurich to study medicine with Conrad Gessner. That lasted only a few months before Gessner died suddenly of plague. Before going there, Penny had already begun study-ing both plants and insects, and after arriving he and Gessner shared their knowl-edge of these subjects with each other. Gessner had planned a volume on insects (Théodoridès 1966), but his only “insect” account ever published was on scorpions (Topsell 1967:750–757). After Gessner’s death, Penny assisted in preparing some of the manuscripts for publication, and he acquired some of the manuscripts on insects (Raven 1947:157). Penny then traveled and studied in Europe, 1566–1569, before returning with his M.D. degree to England, where he prac-ticed medicine in London. When he returned, his botanical interest was dominant, but he spent the last 15 years of his life preparing to write a book on insects, using Wooton’s,

Gessner’s, and his own materials. However, he never wrote the book, and gave his materials to his young friend and col-league, Thomas Mouffet (1553–1604).

Mouffet had also studied at Cambridge, and had then received his M.D. at Basel before practicing in London (Simpkins 1974). He reported that Penny’s materials were ill-arranged and ill-written (Raven 1947:172, Mouffet 1967, Preface). As he organized them he added his own comments, which were less useful than Penny’s (Raven 1947:180, 189). Mouffet was distracted by his busy medical practice and never published his Latin manuscript. His widow sold it to Theodore Mayerne, who finally did publish it at Lon-don in 1634. It has about 500 wood engravings of varying quality, some of which are quite good (Beier 1973:86). An English translation was published in 1658 as Volume 3 to Edward Topsell’s History of Four-Footed Beasts and Ser-

pents (Mouffet 1967). There was a strong emphasis on insect pests and ways to combat them (Ordish 1976:54–64). Although Raven, an Englishman, found much to criticize in Mouffet’s book, he nevertheless concluded that it was superior to Aldrovan-di’s (1947:191). It seems doubt-ful, however, that Italian schol-ars would agree; Aldrovandi was quite interested in naming the different kinds of insect, but Mouffet, when faced with a variety of different but similar kinds (such as butterflies), was content merely to number them, though he did provide illustra-tions and descriptions of each, which are often adequate for modern identifications (Boden-heimer 1928–1929, II:345–352). Although not denying the possi-bility of spontaneous generation, he expressed skepticism about it because no one claimed to have seen it happen (Mouffet 1967:984). On the other hand, he was not always skeptical of folk-lore, such as the report of India having locusts three feet long,

whose hind legs were used as saws (Mouffet 1967:985).In at least one instance Mouffet’s (or Penny’s?) medical

and entomological interests converged to produce original observations—on the itch mite, Sarcoptes scabiei (1967:1094–1096), which had been known since medieval times. We have a summary of his discoveries (Friedman 1934:627).


Fig. 3. Mouffet 1934. Reproduced from and identifications by Bodenheimer 1928–1929, I:280

(1) Moffet’s description of the acarus, as well as its itch-provoking and burrow-forming activities, was not only the first account of the itch-mite published by an English author but was also the best and most accurate that had anywhere been given up to his time. Moffet, of course, was also familiar with the method of removing the parasite by means of a needle. (2) He was the first to differentiate the acarus from the pediculi. (3) His observation that the acarus was to be found in the “mines” or “furrowes” hard by the vesicle of scabies and not in the vesicle, antedated Renucci’s epochal statement to the same effect by exactly two hundred years.

This last comment on anticipating Renucci points to the disadvantage of the vast encyclopedic works of the 1500s: pearls of wisdom were easily lost in compendiums

of ancient and medieval learning.The honey bee had been domesticated in antiquity and

was common in Europe and elsewhere (Chauvin 1968). Mouffet’s longest discussion is on bees (1967:889–921), but their social structure was not understood. Among other things, the queen was considered a king. Although Mouffet made the connection between caterpillars and butterflies and moths, he nevertheless discussed them in different chapters for the good reason that he seldom could connect particular adults with particular caterpillars (1967:957–974, 1029–1041). The same was true about the con-nection between grubs in the ground and beetles, which he also discussed in different chapters (1967:1005–1016, 1042–1044), though he knew that the whurlworm “The next year after they are bred, they are alwaies transformed into May Beetles” (1967:1043).

Fig. 4. Mouffet 1967:971: “The middle sort of Day-Butter-flies” 1 and 2.

Invertebrate animals and diseases were more difficult subjects to study during the 1500s than either vertebrate animals or vascular plants, because there were so many in-vertebrates, and they, and the causal organisms of parasitic diseases, were smaller beings. Although eyeglasses were invented about 1285 (James and Thorpe 1994), stronger magnifying lenses and microscopes were not developed until the 1600s, stimulated by development of the tele-scope in 1608 (Bud and Warner 1998:387). Despite the difficulties, physicians and naturalists made important progress in describing invertebrates and diseases, as well as interactions with other organisms.

Literature Cited

Beier, Max. 1973. The early naturalists and anatomists


during the Renaissance and seventeenth century. Pages 81–94 in R. F. Smith, T. E. Mittler, and C. N. Smith, editors. History of entomology. Annual Reviews, Palo Alto, California, USA.

Bodenheimer, F. S. 1928–1929. Materialien zur Geschichte der Entomologie bis Linné.

Two volumes. W. Junk, Berlin, Germany.Bud, R., and D. J. Warner, editors. 1998. Instruments of

science: an historical encyclopedia. Garland, New York, New York, USA.

Chauvin, R., editor. 1968. Traité de biologie de l’abeille. Volume 5: Histoire, ethnographie et folklore. Masson, Paris, France.

Eatough, G. 1984. Introduction. Pages 1–35 in Fracas-toro’s Syphilis. Translated by G. Eatough. Francis Cairns, Liverpool, UK.

Egerton, F. N. 2003a. A history of the ecological sciences, Part 10: Botany during the Italian Renaissance and be-ginnings of the scientific revolution. ESA Bulletin 84:130–137.

Egerton, F. N. 2003b. A history of the ecological sciences, Part 11: Emergence of vertebrate zoology during the 1500s. ESA Bulletin 84:206–212.

Fitzherbert, A. [or J.] 1882. The book of husbandry. Edited by W. W. Skeat. Trübner, London, UK.

Fracastoro, G. (1530, fide Wright 1930). Syphilis sive morbus gallicus. Niccolini da Sabbio, Verona, Italy.

Fracastoro, G. (1546, fide Wright 1930). De sympathia et antipathia rerum liber I. De contagione et contagiosis morbis et Curatione libri III. L. Iuntae, Venice, Italy.

Fracastoro, G. 1930. De contagione et contagiosis morbis et eorum curatione, libri III. Latin with English transla-tion by W. C. Wright. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, New York, USA.

Fracastoro, G. 1984. Fracastoro's Syphilis. Latin with English translation by G. Eatough. Fransic Cairns, Liverpool, UK.

Friedman, R. 1934. Thomas Moffet. The tercentenary of his contribution to scabies. Medical Life 41:620–621.

Gambuccini, G. [Latin: Gabucinus, H.] 1547. De lumbri-cis alvum occupantibus, ac de ratione curande eos, qui ab illis infestantur, commentarius. Joan Gryphium and H. Scotus, separate editions, Venice, Italy.

Howard-Jones, N. 1977. Fracastoro and Henle: a reap-praisal of their contribution to the concept of commu-nicable disease. Medical History 21:61–68.

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Kean, B. H., K. E. Mott, and A. J. Russell, editors. 1978. Tropical medicine and parasitology: classic investiga-tions. Two volumes. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, USA.

Ley, W. 1968. Dawn of zoology. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, USA.

Mouffet, T. 1634. Insectorum sive minimorum animalium

theatrum: olim ab Edoardo Wotton, Conrado Gesnero, Thomaque Pennio inchoatum. T.Cotes, London, UK.

Mouffet, T. 1967. The theater of insects. [Volume 3 of E. Topsell, The history of four-footed beasts and serpents and insects. Facsimile of 1658 edition.] Da Capo Press, New York, New York, USA.

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Simpkins, D. M. 1974. Thomas Moffett (Moufet, Muffet). Dictionary of Scientific Biography 9:440–441.

Théodoridès, J. 1966. Conrad Gesner et la zoologie: les invertébrés. Gesnerus 23:231–237.

Thorndike, L. 1941. A history of magic and experimental science. Volume 5. Columbia University Press, New York, New York, USA.

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Winslow, C. E. A. 1943. The conquest of epidemic disease: a chapter in the history of ideas. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, USA.

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Acknowledgments

I thank Anne-Marie Drouin-Hans, Université de Bour-gogne, Jean-Marc Drouin, Musée National d’Histoire Na-turelle, Paris, Benedicte Bilodeau, Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris, and Sidney A. Ewing, College of Veterinary Medi-cine, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma, for their assistance.

Frank N. EgertonDepartment of HistoryUniversity of Wisconsin-ParksideKenosha WI 53141E-mail: [email protected]


A Mussel’s Midday Migration: Reflections on the Intertidal Zone

On a summer day two mussels met,One a traveler the other setOn the rock where he was born,Feeling quite bored and a tad forlorn.Edulis told his cousin talesOf acorn barnacles and humpbacked whales,And the one who was always held down by his byssusSuddenly realized just what he misses.So he told his brother and the one convinced another,And then there were three who went down to the sea.

But before they’d gone far, they saw a sea star,The reason they never did roam so far from home.They called out for help as they raced by some kelp.A Thais replied, contemplating low tide,But the snail had grown fat and only wanted to chat.Said Californianus, please don’t detain us.We’re in quite a hustle, so said the mussel,Who harbored the fine wish of avoiding the starfish.

The three tried to go faster, in the face of disasterBut right behind was Pisaster: the Intertidal Master.All three longed for the life beforeWhen they’d stayed away from their predator,And just when they thought it would be their last day,A wave came and swept the Pisaster away.But their byssus threads held our three heroes on tightAnd they came through the onslaught feeling all right.They returned to their rock and from that day sworeThey would stay in their niches for evermore.

Meghan MacLean WeirGreen College, Oxford OX2 6HJE-mail: [email protected]


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