The rules to Mullein War are simple. Two combatants harvest a deceased mullein stem then continuously hit them together in a sword fighting like fashion until something snaps in two. The first person to have his or her stem break is the loser. The winner keeps his or her stem and uses it for the next battle. I have a brother that found a stem that lasted for three days and 21 bouts. It was amazing. I still feel inferior to him today, even fifteen years later.

Mullein, or Verbascum thapsus, is a non-native biennnial that grows in disturbed soils. In the first year the plants produce a basal rosette – a collection of low growing, very hairy, leaves. Because the leaves grow low the plants cannot handle much competition so are considered non-invasive because they have not caused much trouble in established plant communities. The leaf hairs create a signification boundary layer which reduces the loss of heat and water vapor by essentially slowing the rate that circulating air carries heat and gas away from the leaves. It is the same process that the hairs on our arms exploit and is why they stand up (giving us goose bumps) when you and I are cold (increases the boundary layer). In the second year the plants produce a single, tall (0.4-2 m), straight stem that has a large inflorescence with many flowers. At the end of the season the seeds disburse and the plant dies. The stem dries out and the coveted weapon of Mullein Wars is produced.

There is a huge, year old, rosette on the property that is sure to produce a fierce fighting weapon this spring (unless it waits for the third year to produce the stem, as some have been shown to do when they are stressed). If my brothers take a break from college I’ll have to slap them in the face with a leaf and challenge them to a duel.

During the cold winter months, below the snow layer, there exists a cache of seeds frozen in the soil. Many of these seeds are small and frail and may stay dormant for many years. Others will experience certain environmental cues that will cause a cascade of chemical and biological transformations leading to a life full of competition for energy and nutrients in order to survive and reproduce. Our subject was recently one such seeds and is now in it’s first and most vulnerable developmental phase; the seedling.

As a result of millions of years of evolution of fine tuning seed dispersal mechanisms; geological uplift, erosion, and glaciation; and a bit of dice rolling by mother nature, our subject was placed on a southern facing slope in a soil bed of glacial till. This is the exact spot where our subject will stay until its death and it is the exact spot where it will need to use all of the tools evolution has equipped it with in order to survive long enough to contribute its own seeds into the soil. This is no simple matter and in fact our subject is at a phase where the death rate is at its highest.

The reason survivorship is so low is because the seedling must establish itself, in a very unforgiving environment, with a limited food supply proportional to its seed size. Our subject came from a small seed. This was not a result of some error or misfortune but rather a result of its ancestor’s life history strategy – to produce many small seeds instead of a few large seeds in hopes that some, being randomly disbursed, will reach an easily habitable environment. In our subject’s case it seems as though the strategy worked. Although the seedling was left with little food, so it cannot cope with strong competition, it was placed in an open area rich with sun and nutrients, thus competition may not be a large factor.

Although competition may not be a large obstacle to success there are still plenty that our subject must overcome such as environmental stress, herbivory and disease. Environmental stress includes frost damage and dessication, or drying out of the plant tissue. In order to get a head start on the competition the seedling needed to germinate and start growth as early as possible. In a dense population of seedlings a day or two head start can mean life or death. The risk of growing early is that the days are shorter and the temperatures are colder. If the seedling grows too early it may experience too many cold nights where ice will form in its cells and will tear and rupture the walls causing certain death. Dessication is another stress and to overcome this the seedling not only needs to put its limited resources into shoot and leaf growth but also root growth. Soil moisture can be rare here in early spring where the majority of it is still locked up in ice crystals at higher elevations so our subject needs to send its roots far into the earth in hopes to siphon up as much moisture and nutrients as possible.

Growing a stem, leaves, and a root system is no easy task especially from a small reserve of food donated by the endosperm of the seed. Our subject must devote all of its initial energy into growth to rapidly gain access to sunlight, nutrients, and water. This leaves little to allocate to defense and so herbivory and pathogens are very real factors that are responsible for many seedling deaths. The seedling cannot move or run so cannot escape approaching herbivores or parasites. It is stuck in one place where it devotes all of its energy and reserves to growth so it can survive another day but could be all for naught if a single deer decides to take a bite in its location or a turkey decides to scratch the ground looking for insects. Our subject is vulnerable and just as many millions of years of random events led up to its position in this world a single random event can cause its doom.

I was asked to write about how I got into graduate school at WSU. I think reading about other’s experiences would have helped me while I was applying to grad school so I figure I better make my response public so other may benefit. Feel free to ask me any questions. Enjoy.

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The program that I am starting in August is at the graduate school of biological sciences in Washington State University. I will be pursuing a Masters of Science (M.S.) degree in physiological ecology with a concentration in plant sciences. Basically, physiological ecology means that I will be using the very minute aspects of biological systems (biochemistry, hormones, nitrogen and carbon cycles) to answer very large questions concerning things like whole ecosystems or even the entire biosphere. One great example of this is research being conducted by a professor at WSU, Asaph Cousins. Cousins and others have realized that photosynthesis and ecosystem respiration have distinct effects on the isotope composition of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels (the two contribute a different ‘version’ of the CO2 molecule). Using this knowledge Cousins is able to address questions concerning global exchange of CO2 by using molecular techniques to elucidate specific processes in leaf gas exchange. Basically, he is looking at the very specific mechanisms that gas is used in plants and using that knowledge to better understand the plant’s signature on the ecosystem level.

To get pass the first step for getting into grad school at WSU I had to meet certain requirements and do a lot of busy work. The most important, and awkward, experience was wooing a faculty member. Yes, I said wooing. Graduate school in the sciences is a lot like an apprenticeship so it is necessary to find a mentor (in academia we call them advisors – spelled incorrectly ). To find an advisor I presented myself in the best possible light by writing an essay about my ambitions, experiences, etc and telling the potential advisor how much I like him/her and how much we have in common. Yes, I was basically asking the person out on a date. For someone who has never tried online dating it was very strange for me.

Luckily Dr. Al Black (a very good professor, the head chair of the Washington natural heritage advisory council, in charge of a large research area called Smoot Hill, and the top dog of the biological graduate program), took some interest in me. I was flown to Pullman, put up in a hotel, and given a personal tour of the campus and faculty. Little did I know that the tour was actually an eight hour interview process where they attempt to break my brain. I was put in front of numerous professors who would rapidly teach me abstract concepts concerning each of their research interests and ask me very detailed and difficult questions concerning my own research experiences and knowledge. I was told I did an alright job during the interview but I was unable to be happy with myself because I was too busy drooling all over my shirt and sputtering nonsense.

So I got accepted and have Al Black as my advisor. I also was offered a position as a teaching assistant where I will co-teach biology labs to punk freshmen who do not want to be there. In exchange I get free tuition, free health insurance, and some money to buy oatmeal and Top Ramen. It’s a pretty good deal but not entirely special in the world of grad school in the sciences (to quote some lady: “If you pay for grad school in the sciences you’re a sucker. A sucker. Don’t do it!”).

Some facts:

WSU is ranked 2nd in the nation in plant sciences based on faculty research and publications, 7th in zoology, and 3rd in veterinary school (http://chronicle.com/stats/productivity/page.php?year=2007&institution=3875&byinst=Go).

It is common to associate moss with moist environments; in the temperate rain forests of western Washington and Alaska or covering trees and decaying stumps in the tropics. For one to cognitively link moss to moisture is not necessarily wrong because their entire method of reproduction relies on the presence of water. However, as illustrated in the picture above, mats of moss can grow in the relatively cold and dry climates of northeastern Washington. In fact, they are found in the hot deserts and the cold tundra; both of which are seriously lacking in moisture. How does this mat of moss survive and reproduce on something as barren as the surface of a chunk of limestone rock?

The ability for moss to survive in such marginal environments as the surface of a rock is a product of their extremely low maintenance. They are small and they are tough. The predominate generation of a moss has no vascular tissue like trees or grass and has leaves that are only one cell layer thick. Because moss lack strong water and nutrient transport they must grow low, sometimes in mats, giving them less structural mass to maintain with nutrients, moisture, temperature, and other concerns. The single cell layer of the leaf allows gas and water to be absorbed quickly and efficiently. Pore some water onto a mat of dried moss to see how quickly the plants spring to life.

The reproductive cycle of the moss is radically different from what may be intuited by a naive observer. The dominate life stage of a moss, the structure most of us are familiar with, is the gametophyte which is the stage where only one set of chromosomes is present in the organism. This is different than, say, a tree or a human. Both of which have two sets of chromosomes (the tree’s pollen and egg have one set just as our sperm and egg do). The male gametophyte produces sperm which must use water as a transport vessel to the female gametophyte. Fertilization occurs from the union of the egg and sperm and a young sporophyte (two chromosomes, one set from the male, one from the female) grows as a sort of parasite right out of the female gametophyte. The sporophyte matures and releases male and female spores that grow into male and female gametophytes. The cycle continues. [Note: the yellow in the picture above is the sporophytes and the brown/black is the gametophytes]

As stated above, water is required by the moss to transport the sperm to the egg. This is the exact reason why mosses grow best in moist areas. Because sperm is tiny, made of only a few cells, any minute bit of water is able to transport a bundle of them. A single drop of rain splashing onto a male gametophyte can engulf a group of sperm and transport them to multiple eggs. Thus one raindrop, timed and placed perfectly, can sustain a mat of moss for another generation.

The Loom has a very interesting guest post by evo-devo expert Dr. Jerry Coyne. Coyne lets off a nice diatribe against a New York Times blog post by Olivia Judson that claims recent evidence related to evo-devo corroborates with the theory that new species can arise as a result of single, small, genetic mutations that have large morphological or physiological effects. Coyne argues that the idea of macromutationism is completely wrong and that Judson’s arguments are fallacious conclusions of basic evo-devo research.

Coyne’s essay is a great read and I recommend it to everyone.

Just in case you need an evo-devo primer the New York Times has a good video by Sean B. Carroll and below is a video by 60 Second Science that does a great job of explaining the field of study.

What is Evo-Devo?

According to BirdWeb (Birdweb, 2005), Poecile rufescens favors “dense, moist, coniferous forests.” Although this picture was taken in a similar environment near Snoqualmie Falls, a study by Artman (2003) suggests that P. rufescens prefers a thinned habitat to those left untouched by commercial forest management.

A possible explanation of this may be increased food availability in thinned habitats due to increased ground vegetation and thus a higher density of seeds and berries.

References
Artman, V. (2003). Effects of Commercial Thinning on Breeding Bird Populations in Western Hemlock Forests. American Midland Naturalist, 149, 225-232.

BirdWeb. (2005). Chestnut-backed Chickadee. Retrieved January 13, 2008 from http://www.birdweb.org/birdweb/bird_details.aspx?id=330.

To better understand our natural world would you be willing to stick your tongue into a green sea anemone? No? Then do it vicariously through this weirdo (see video).

You have to love this stuff. And as a bonus, that guy is my housemate now…

The Encyclopedia of Life is a daunting project aimed at making key information about life on Earth easily and readily accessible (demonstration pages).  EOL has an incredible goal, to document life before it goes extinct.  Since the launch of the promotional site there has been little news on when the species pages will actually go live.  Until now.

Near the end of February, 2008 EOL will have 30,000 interactive pages live for the world to view.  Excited?  I sure am.