Watch out trees, it's a twister!

The other night I watched the movie Twister. I have always hated that movie—it scares the crap out of me. Today I came across a study in the September issue of the Journal of Plant Ecology about just that—tornadoes! So in the spirit of the now almost 15 year old film twister here is a great, natural study about how tornadoes affect re-sprouting and special heterogeneity in the Cross Timbers ecotone.

The transition zones between different ecosystems are known as ecotones. The most studied ecotones are ones that involve transitions between woody and non-woody vegetation. You would find these in alpine tree lines, coastal dunes and grasslands. Ecotones can be caused my both abiotic and biotic factors for example maintenance of positive carbon balance and competition, respectively. Myster and Malahy designed a study that was focused on the Cross Timbers ecotone in Oklahoma—the boundary between the eastern deciduous forest and the Great Plains grasslands.

Spare me some land or just go organic!

In my third year of Undergrad I took a course on the global struggle for food and food security and have since been really interested in organic vs. Conventional farming. We studied that topic alone for about 6 lectures and even had guest lectures from some local organic farmers. When I saw a study that compared organic farming and land sparing with respect to optimal yields and butterflies I couldn’t resist blogging about it. I mean, come on, who doesn’t love butterflies. And ... it’s a natural field study to boot!

As biology students I am sure we all know about the advantages and disadvantages to organic and conventional farming. Organic farming often yields fewer products but is generally better for the environment and uses no fertilizers or pesticides. Conventional farming uses large amounts of these pesticides but has yields that can realistically address the global struggle for food--something organic farming cannot do.

There actually is some value in reading what's on your coffee table

It seems surprising to me that as you glance over the current issues of the most popular science journals, very little is done about plants in general, let alone plant ecology. Of course, I look through the Journal of Plant Ecology and that’s all it is. But, very few of those experiments are natural experiments. There is such a heavy focus on manipulations and complex experimental designs the natural experiments seem to get lost in them.

For about 8 months, there have been three issues of Bioscience sitting on the coffee table in our lab. I was feeling very “blog-uninspired” today and thought –what the heck, I might as well flip through these and see if there is anything I could use. The first article I came across had to do with Biodiversity losses and ecosystem function in freshwaters. My first thought was- nope and I turned the page. But what I found right in the middle of this article was a beautiful chart that outlined my whole entire idea for starting a blog about natural experiments. Needless to say I read this paper, and have some interesting things to report!