We'll conclude the UBC Celebrate Research Week series a bit belatedly -- I was hoping to receive higher resolution images, but people get busy, so we'll make do. Katherine introduces today's researcher:

Richard White is a PhD student of Dr. Curtis Suttle, Professor and Associate Dean, Research (Faculty of Science) (Suttle lab). Today's entry is about an algae-infecting virus. The left image is of the HaNIV virus (from Lawrence, J et al. 2001. A novel virus (HaNIV) causes lysis of the toxic bloom-forming alga Heterosigma akashiwo (Raphidophyceae). J. Phycol. 37:216-222), and the second two images are of the alga Heterosigma akashiwo.

Richard writes about "Unraveling the viral diversity amongst marine phytoplankton":

Heterosigma akashiwo (pictured centre and right) is responsible for toxic blooms that cause mass economic impacts to marine fish population's worldwide. The name akashiwo itself comes from Japanese meaning "red tide", which is a phenomenon that this organism causes in marine ecosystems. The toxicity of blooms caused by Heterosigma akashiwo can affect all trophic levels of the marine environment from copepods, fish, echinoderms and mollusks, but the toxin is unknown.

Heterosigma akashiwo has a true adversary that regulates its population and helps safeguard Earth's ocean from its devastating bloom effects. A wide range of viruses infect Heterosigma akashiwo (pictured above left is an ssDNA virus - HaNIV), and these can be involved in the termination of blooms. Understanding these viruses provides insight into the natural control mechanisms that regulate red tides in nature.

Katherine adds: For those who are interested, you can see more about harmful algal blooms. A British Columbian resource also outlines their effect on people (Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning), as well as local beach closures.

Organized once again by Katherine, here's today's entry with an introduction from her:

Continuing the series for UBC's Celebrate Research Week">UBC Celebrate Research Week is another entry thanks to Dr. Roy Turkington, this time from his research undertaken in collaboration with Professor Zhou Zhe-khun. Dr. Turkington informed me that the first image is a general view of the canopy at the Ailaoshan Reserve. The second image shows one of three treatment plots of research being conducted by M.Sc student, Jessica Lu, where they are testing the effects of litter on soil nutrients, soil invertebrates, and germination & establishment of seedlings. The final image is from Jin Jin Hu (PhD student), showing his enclosures for testing the effects of rodents (and other seed predators) on germination and establishment of seedlings. Dr. Turkington writes:

Yunnan Province in southwestern China is a biodiversity hotspot containing more than 20000 species of higher plants (6% of the world's total). The biodiversity of this region is under threat from loss of habitat due to logging and the planting of economic plants. Fifteen to twenty percent of higher plant varieties are endangered, threatening the existence of 40,000 species of organisms related with them. One-third of all species of oak (approximately 150 species, Quercus plus Cyclobalanopsis) in these Asian evergreen broad-leaved forests belong to the genus Cyclobalanopsis and one of the dominant species in this genus is Cyclobalanopsis glaucoides. As a dominant species, it provides a major structural component of these diverse forests, yet seedlings of Cyclobalanopsis glaucoides are rarely observed, and even in years of higher acorn production, the number of oak seedlings is not significantly increased. Thus, an understanding of the factors that influence the long-term survival of Cyclobalanopsis glaucoides is critical to the maintenance of these forests.

These studies began in 2006 and are on-going. Specifically, we are testing if there is a relationship between large weather cells, such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the Southern Oscillation Index, with acorn production, and if acorn germination & seedling establishment is affected by weevils, small mammals, birds, or the quality and quantity of litter in the understorey of these forests.

Katherine continues with another entry she's organized for UBC's Celebrate Research Week series. She introduces Dr. Roy Turkington:

Dr. Roy Turkington is a professor of plant ecology at UBC based under the Department of Botany and the Biodiversity Research Centre. The Turkington lab is currently undergoing research in collaboration with Dr. Lauchlan Fraser from Thompson Rivers University, BC and Professor Zhou Zhe-khun at the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden and the Kunming Institute of Botany, Yunnan Province in China. Dr. Roy Turkington has been kind enough to share with us two entries regarding his research, first from the Kluane region in the Yukon, Canada, and in an upcoming entry, the Ailaoshan sites in Yunnan, China.

Today's entry, from Dr. Turkington, has photographs from the Yukon Kluane region, more of which are available on the Turkington lab website. The images are of Linnaea borealis (twinflower), Chamerion angustifolium (fireweed) and a study plot. Dr. Turkington writes:

Today's entry is again organized by Katherine for the UBC Celebrate Research Week series. She introduces Seema Sheth:

Seema Sheth is a Ph.D. student (Colorado State University) with the recently-appointed-to-UBC Dr. Amy Angert (Assistant Professor in the UBC Department of Botany (lab web page)). The lab studies the processes of adaptation in plants. Today's entry is from their work on species of Mimulus. The photographs, Seema informs me, are of Mimulus angustatus (purple/pink flowers) from Grass Valley, California, and Mimulus guttatus (yellow flowers) from the Red Hills Area of Critical Environmental Concern, California.

Seema (with input from Dr. Angert) writes about the evolutionary ecology of rarity in western North American Mimulus:

Most species are geographically rare, and all species occupy a limited number of areas, yet the causes of variation in the sizes and limits of species' geographic distributions are poorly understood. Identifying causes of rarity provides important insights into ecological and evolutionary processes such as dispersal, speciation, extinction, and adaptation. Understanding the factors that shape species' distributions also can improve our ability to prioritize species and areas of conservation concern, forecast changes in species' distributions in response to climate change, and predict the rate and spread of invasive species.

Properties of species' ecological niches, defined here as the set of environmental conditions under which births exceed deaths, may explain differences in geographic range size among species. For example, if a species can persist under a broader range of environmental conditions, then it should be able to occupy a greater geographic area than a species with a narrower environmental tolerance. This hypothesis predicts a positive relationship between niche breadth and range size. On the other hand, rare species may be more dispersal-limited, either because of intrinsically low dispersal ability or because they are younger and have had less time to expand across the landscape.

We are testing the niche breadth hypothesis within western North American monkeyflowers (genus: Mimulus, family: Phrymaceae), a diverse group of wildflowers that occupies a wide variety of habitats, including aquatic, alpine, grassland, and desert environments, and contains several species that specialize on microhabitats such as serpentine soils, copper mine tailings, geysers, and marble cliff walls. Due to their short generation times (6-12 weeks), ease of propagation, high seed production, and genomic resources, species in the genus Mimulus have become an emerging model in evolutionary ecology (Wu, CA et al. 2008. Mimulus is an emerging model system for the integration of ecological and genomic studies. Heredity 100:220-230). Further, the geographic distributions of Mimulus species vary markedly in size, are well-described, and largely encompassed within federally protected lands in western North America (Beardsley, PM et al. 2004. Patterns of evolution in Western North American Mimulus (Phrymaceae). American Journal Of Botany 91:474-489), thus representing an ideal group for testing hypotheses to explain variation in the size and limits of species' ranges.

To test the hypothesis that species with broader environmental niches occupy larger geographic areas than species with narrow environmental tolerances, we are using comparative and experimental studies. First, we compiled ~17,000 georeferenced occurrence records for Mimulus species that occur in western North America. We used these locality data along with climatic variables (such as annual mean temperature and precipitation seasonality) to model the climatic niche of each species and to quantify range size in multiple ways. Regardless of how range size is quantified, our results strongly support the prediction that range size increases with climatic niche breadth across species (see figure below ). To experimentally test these results, we are now quantifying niche breadth in terms of survival and growth of individuals across a range of temperature and soil moisture levels for six pairs of closely related Mimulus species that differ in range size. This will allow for a more comprehensive understanding of how broader niches may lead to larger ranges. Species with restricted distributions are thought to be more prone to chance extinctions than widely distributed species. Further, species with small ranges and/or narrow niche breadth may be more sensitive to climate change. Thus, understanding the relationship between physiology, niche characteristics, and range size will allow for better predictions of species' responses to changing climate.

Key to the figure (please note: not yet published formally and still requires peer review): Support for the hypothesis that niche breadth explains variation in geographic range size among species (N = 72). Raw species' data are shown here (transformed to meet assumption of normality), but results support predictions even after correcting for phylogenetic non-independence and sampling effort. Two closely related species that vary drastically in range size (see inset panel) and climatic niche breadth are highlighted here, and are part of an ongoing experimental study testing whether geographically restricted species have lower thermal niche breadth than their widely distributed close relatives.

Katherine has been busy assembling this year's UBC Celebrate Research Week series, starting with today's entry:

Dr. Jae-Hyeok Lee is an Assistant Professor with the UBC Department of Botany. He describes the research currently being undertaken by the Lee Lab as work in the hope of "understanding the ancestral conditions prior to the origin(s) of plant development".

Dr. Lee continues: In order to do this, the lab studies cellular mechanisms that orchestrate zygote development in Chlamydomonas, a green alga genus. Systematic approaches, including molecular genetics, comparative genomics and live cell imaging, have so far yielded a grand hypothesis that the green algal zygote is functionally and evolutionarily related to the plant sporophyte where most plant-specific structures such as leaf, seed, and flower have evolved. We believe that deeper understanding of green algal zygotes will guide us to follow individual evolutionary steps in the preceding billions of years from unicellular green algae to flowering plants.

The picture above was taken by a phase-contrast microscope and captures the most exciting and fierce moment of a green alga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii during its sexual mating. Oval shaped, and averaging 5 micrometers in length, a Chlamydomonas cell (in the lower right corner) is a very good swimmer, utilizing two flagella on its apical side to move as it looks for either sunlight or a mating partner. Nutrient starvation induces cells to become gametes that participate in mating reaction. They are either of two sexual types, plus or minus, each reacting to its opposite sex as their flagella adhere only to the flagella of the other sex (red arrow). Upon flagellar adhesion, two gametes shed their cell walls (yellow arrow) and proceed through a cellular fusion process which takes only a couple of minutes (blue arrow). The union of cells initiates dramatic restructuring to differentiate as a dormant zygote that can endures a cold and dry winter.

Well, my apologies all. Life and work have been very much getting in the way, so today's entry will be one to belatedly conclude the series for UBC's Celebrate Research Week.

Lindsay introduces today's author:

Dr. Quentin Cronk is a Professor in Plant Science at UBC's Biodiversity Research Centre where he works on flower evolution in legumes and the genetic factors that underly these morphological changes. Together with his PhD student Isidro Ojeda they have investigated the distribution of epidermal types in petals of legumes and how this feature has evolved within the family.

Dr. Cronk writes:

The first picture (A) depicts the distribution of the epidermal types in a "papilionoid legume" with a typical pea-type flower, Lotus burtii. The second picture (B) depicts the same in a "caesalpinioid legume" with a caesalpinoid flower, Cassia roxburghii. The latter is thought to be a more primitive flower type. The epidermal photographs were taken using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) of fresh petals that were put directly into the microscope.

Pea-flowers, exemplified here by Lotus burttii, have three distinctive types of petals, one upper (dorsal), two side (lateral) and two lower (ventral) petals. Each petal type has a different role during the flower-pollinator interaction. For instance, due to its position within the flower, the upper petal is highly visible and acts to attract pollinators, while the side petals in papilionoid flowers are mostly used as landing platforms for bees.

Ojeda and Cronk found, in a survey of 175 species, that most pea-flower types have the distribution of epidermal types depicted in figure A. Each petal type has a specific surface structure that gives each petal its own unique identity. For instance the bumpy surface of the upper petal reflects light in a way that makes the petal brighter and more attractive to bees. In contrast, legumes with a caesalpinoid-type flower do not have this diversification of epidermal types within the flower. The different types of petals cannot be differentiated at the epidermal level. This also applies in the redbud (Cercis canadensis), which has a flower that looks like a pea-type flower, but in fact it is a caesalpinioid legume, and the petal surfaces confirm this.

This survey has allowed the identification of major epidermal types and the general trends of its evolution within the family. Furthermore, it allows us to study the link between the underlying genetic controls (petal identity genes) and petal morphology. We are applying this to understand the evolution of related legume species with very different flower types, for instance in the transition from bee to bird pollination, as described in a previous UBC Research Week.

This broad survey would not have been possible without the living plant collections of botanical gardens. For this study we used the collections of the UBC Botanical Garden, the Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden in Florida, USA and the Jardín Botánico Regional at CICY, Mexico.

For more details of this work, please see the published paper: Ojeda et al. 2009. Evolution of petal epidermal micromorphology in Leguminosae and its use as a marker of petal identity. Annals of Botany 104(6):1099-1110. doi:10.1093/aob/mcp211.

A few more entries in the UBC Celebrate Research Week series remain. Lindsay introduces Dr. Mooney:

Dr. Patrick Mooney is a Professor in the Landscape Architecture program in UBC's School of Architecture + Landscape Architecture at UBC where he teaches sustainable landscape planning and management, ecological restoration, design studio and planting design. Dr. Mooney consults to developers, environmental groups, the B.C. Ministry of Environment, regional parks and city governments on habitat management and restoration. Dr. Mooney designed and supervised the installation of Maplewood Flats, a constructed wetland on the Burrard Inlet. The mud-flats that previously existed on that site were filled for a port facility that was never built and is now a Provincial Wildlife Management Area operated by the Wild Bird Trust (WBT) of BC. Since its installation, the WBT has recorded an increase in bird diversity from 208 bird species prior to 1995 to 231 in 2004.

Dr. Mooney writes:

Maintaining biodiversity in urban regions (PDF) requires the implementation of conservation actions that are informed by local knowledge. To meet this need, I've developed general biodiversity models that may be used to select candidate conservation areas, to enhance habitat in urban disturbed sites, to increase site level biodiversity and to guide ecological restoration for wildlife habitat.

The plant associations of three conservation areas on Burrard Inlet in the Metro Vancouver region were inventoried and mapped as habitat types (figure 1 -- the map)

The 62 species of birds that were found to use the sites on an annual basis were grouped according to their foraging guilds. The guilds are coded A through L in the second figure. It was found that that certain habitats support more species than others and some habitats support a high proportion of certain guilds.

Since most species use multiple habitats, a cluster analysis was conducted to determine which groups of habitats supported the most bird species. Three habitat assemblages - Deciduous Forest / Mixed Forest / Park; Shorezone / Old Field / Meadow and Old Field / Salt Marsh / Freshwater Marsh were found to contain the primary use habitats of the majority bird species found on the study sites (see Figure 2). All other possible habitat assemblages contained the primary habitats of three or fewer species.

Habitat Assemblage 1: Deciduous Forest / Mixed Forest / Park

Eleven species of birds from guild A, the gleaners, utilize this habitat assemblage for both primary and secondary habitat. This assemblage contains the primary and secondary habitat for 21 species. 13 of these species were found only within this habitat assemblage. These are black-throated gray warbler, brown creeper, chestnut-backed chickadee, evening grosbeak, orange-crowned warbler, Pacific-slope flycatcher, downy woodpecker, pileated woodpecker, bushtit, Cooper's hawk, cedar waxwing, Steller's jay and purple finch.

Habitat Assemblage 2: Shorezone / Old Field / Meadow

The habitat assemblage of shorezone/old field/meadow contains the primary and secondary habitat for 16 species or 25.8% of the 62 species in this analysis. This assemblage is notable in that primary and secondary use habitat for three of the four species in guild C, the probers, are captured by this assemblage. These are killdeer, solitary sandpiper, and spotted sandpiper. The exception in guild C is the sora rail which was found only in the freshwater marsh habitat type.

Habitat Assemblage 3: Old Field / Salt Marsh / Freshwater Marsh

This assemblage contained primary and secondary habitats for five species. Two species are particular to this habitat assemblage. The wood duck was found in both the freshwater and saltwater wetlands, while the sora rail occurred in only the freshwater marsh habitat.

The series for UBC's Celebrate Research Week continues today with an entry from Dr. Brian Klinkenberg today's photograph by him via Flickr) and graduate student Claire Wooten. Lindsay writes the introduction:

Dr. Brian Klinkenberg is a professor in the UBC Department of Geography where his research focuses on advanced spatial analysis with respect to physical, health and social sciences (and the intersection of these disciplines). Dr. Klinkenberg is also the editor and project coordinator of E-Flora BC / E-Fauna BC.

Dr. Klinkenberg writes: Understanding the spatial aspects of plant dynamics is a critical part of landscape ecology today. Recently in my lab our focus on spatial analysis has led us to explore the decline of yellow-cedar in BC (see gallery link at bottom of page). Exploring the spatial occurrences on these species in the landscape has led to key insights into distributions and biogeographic changes.

Claire Wooten (graduate student) and Dr. Klinkenberg co-wrote the following about yellow-cedar die-off:

For over two decades, the phenomenon of yellow-cedar decline has perplexed researchers. Yellow-cedar (Chamaecyparis nootkatensis) (D. Don) Spach), which ranges from southern Oregon to Prince William Sound, Alaska, was known to be declining on over 200,000 ha of undisturbed forest in southeast Alaska (Snyder et al. 2008). During an aerial survey in 2004, numerous large areas of dead and dying yellow-cedar were found in coastal locations in B.C., and the nature of the dieback was found to be consistent with the phenomenon in southeast Alaska (Hennon et al. 2005).

Research into the decline of this long-lived species began in the early 1980s and a sequence of symptoms was identified. The initial symptom was determined to be fine root death, followed by death of small-diameter roots (Hennon et al. 2006) (PDF). As the roots start to die, the trees develop thin off-colour crowns and necrotic lesions spread from larger roots up the bole (Hennon et al. 2006). The natural resistance of yellow cedar heartwood to decay allows dead trees to remain standing for 80 to 100 years after death. By examining the standing snags it was possible to establish that the decline of yellow-cedars began in about 1880-1900 (Hennon & Shaw, 1997).

Investigations initially focused on finding a biotic cause of the decline, but one by one the suspected agents were ruled out (Hennon et al. 1990). Attention then shifted to abiotic factors potentially associated with the decline--an association with wet, poorly drained soils was found. However the relationship with soil drainage is inconsistent, with limited decline occurring on wet sites at higher elevations (Hennon et al. 2006). Air and soil temperature were determined to be stronger risk factors than poorly drained soils (D'Amore & Hennon, 2006).

These clues led researchers to propose a new, complex hypothesis to explain yellow-cedar decline. According to Hennon et al. (2006), saturated soils create open, exposed canopies which experience soil warming early in the spring. This warming triggers the yellow-cedars to lose their cold tolerance, making them more susceptible to freezing injury. Snow appears to protect yellow-cedar against this freezing injury by preventing soil warming. However, the end of the Little Ice Age, which coincided with the onset of decline, has led to a reduction in snowpack at lower elevations (Hennon et al. 2006). This shift in climate may represent the environmental trigger responsible for the decline and suggests that the dieback may expand if warming trends continue (Hennon et al. 2006).

Our research questions are being addressed through a combination of remote sensing and GIS techniques. Spatial patterns of biophysical factors (e.g. elevation, slope, aspect) are being used in our assessment of the relations between the distribution of decline and the environmental predictors.

The high value of yellow-cedar wood and the desire to conserve species diversity means that a management strategy incorporating the influence of a warming climate is required. Ultimately, this research may provide insight into the devastating effects that climate change can have on a forest ecosystem.

Dr. Klinkenberg also adds an additional note regarding the name of this species:

There has been much debate over the taxonomic status of yellow-cedar following the discovery of a closely related tree species in northern Vietnam, Xanthocyparis vietnamensis Farjon & Hiep. Whether yellow-cedar is transferred to this newly established genus as Xanthocyparis nootkatensis or the older Callitropsis nootkatensis (D.Don) Örest name is adopted, will be determined at the next International Botanical Congress in 2011 (Mill & Farjon, 2006).

References

D'Amore, D. and Hennon, P.E. 2006. Evaluation of soil saturation, soil chemistry, and early spring soil and air temperatures as risk factors in yellow-cedar decline. Global Change Biology. 12: 524-545

Hennon, P.E., D'Amore, D., Wittwer, D., Johnson, A., Schaberg, P., Hawley, G., Beier, C., Sink, S. and Juday, G. 2006. Climate warming, reduced snow, and freezing injury could explain the demise of yellow-cedar in southeast Alaska, USA. World Resource Review. 18(2): 427-450.

Hennon, P.E., D'Amore, D., Zeglen, S. and Grainger, M. 2005. Yellow-cedar decline in the North Coast Forest District of British Columbia. Res. Note RN-549. Portland, OR: U.S. Dep. Agric., Pacific Northwest Research Station. pp.20.

Hennon, P.E. and Shaw, C.G. III. 1997. The enigma of yellow-cedar decline - What is killing these long-lived, defensive trees? Journal of Forestry. 95(12): 4-10.

Mill, R. R. And Farjon, A. 2006. Proposal to conserve the name Xanthocyparis against Callitropsis Oerst. (Cupressaceeae). Taxon. 55(1): 229-231.

Snyder, C., Schultz, M.E. and Lundquist, J. (Compilers) 2008. Forest health conditions in Alaska - 2007: a forest health protection report. Gen. Tech. Rep. R10-PR-18. Anchorage, AL: U.S. Dep. Agric., Forest Service, Alaska Region.

Thank you to BlueRidgeKitties@Flickr for contributing photographs to complement today's entry for the UBC Celebrate Research Week series (original image 1 | original image 2 | UBCBG Botany Photo of the Day Flickr Pool). Much appreciated!

Lindsay Bourque introduces Dr. Li:

Dr. Xin Li is an Associate Professor in the UBC Department of Botany and a research fellow in the Michael Smith Laboratories. Her lab's research focuses on understanding the innate ability of plants to defend themselves against pathogen infection. Using the model organism Arabidopsis thaliana to understand new regulatory components of plant disease resistance, Dr. Li sees a potential application in environmentally-friendly agricultural disease control. Arabidopsis thaliana is an annual native to most of Europe, Asia and northwestern Africa. It was the first plant genome to be entirely sequenced and was designated as a model organism in 1998. There are several features that make Arabidopsis thaliana (commonly known as thale cress or mouse-ear cress) an ideal model organism, including: a rapid life cycle (about 6 weeks from germination to mature seed), small genome and the availability of mutant lines (hence variation in disease resistance) and genomic resources through Stock Centres.

Dr. Li writes:

Plants have evolved sophisticated disease resistance mechanisms through long history of dealing with microbial pathogen infections. The kind of immunity we study is mediated by resistance proteins (R proteins), which are conceptually similar to animal innate immunity receptors. There are two basic functions of plant R proteins as immune receptors. One is to recognize the presence of the pathogen, and the second is to initiate a robust defense response to fight against the pathogen invasion. The conserved nature of R protein mediated resistance makes it possible to be studied in model plant-pathogen systems where the organisms have short life cycles, are easy to manipulate and have the great benefit of advanced genetic and genomic resources. For higher plants, that choice is Arabidopsis thaliana, the mouse-ear cress model that helps us solve mysteries in plant biology like the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) helps solve questions in animal development. Better understanding of plant R protein mediated immunity will not only help us develop better environmentally friendly disease control strategies in crop fields, but it can also lead to a better understanding of some of the animal immunity mechanisms mediated by receptors similar to R proteins.

In Arabidopsis, there are more than 200 predicted R genes. We previously identified a unique gain-of-function mutant snc1 by chance and it encodes an R gene. Our lab has developed snc1 as an autoimmune model to dissect the molecular events occurring after resistance proteins are activated. In the snc1 mutant, a point mutation resulting in a single amino acid change (glutamic acid to lysine) renders the SNC1 R protein constitutive active without interaction with pathogens. As a consequence of constitutive defense that reallocates resources from normal growth and development, the stature of the mutant plants is dwarf and the morphology sickly. Intriguingly, similar mutations in the same region of mammalian immune receptor Nod2 are also associated with human autoimmune Crohn's disease. The size of the mutant plants correlates with the level of defense, providing an easy readout of the immune responses (Figure 1).

Daniel adds: In other words, Dr. Li's lab is tackling the questions: what happens when a resistance protein is activated? What happens when a resistance protein is "always on" or at elevated levels? Even though there are benefits (a correlation between high resistance protein levels and minimal pathogen infection), there are also disadvantages (a negative correlation between high resistance protein levels and typical plant growth). This leads to the next series of questions asked by Dr. Li's lab: is it possible to grow plants with both high resistance protein levels and still have typical plant growth? If so, how? If successful and the relevant techniques are applied to crops, then it may be possible to have more environmentally-friendly food production, perhaps by reducing pesticide use or increasing yield/ha (and thus not requiring as much land for food production).

Returning to the series for UBC Celebrate Research Week, Lindsay introduces Dr. Rick Barichello:

Dr. Richard Barichello is a Professor in UBC's Faculty of Land and Food Systems and focuses on issues of agricultural economic policy, including policy reform in southeast Asian countries.

Dr. Barichello writes (excerpted from the article, "Agriculture in Indonesia: Lagging Performance and Difficult Choices"):

Poverty remains a major social issue in Indonesia, by any measure. Because most poverty is still located in rural areas, many agricultural policies embrace the rhetoric of poverty alleviation as one of their objectives. In the first two decades of the Suharto period, to the mid-1980s, agricultural policies that supported rice production contributed to pro-poor economic growth and reduced rural poverty. Poverty declined from 1990 to the Asian financial crisis of 1997/98, rose sharply with the crisis but declined again steadily from 1999 to 2008.

But over the past two decades, the contribution of these policies to economic growth has been reduced; government priorities shifted away from productivity-enhancing policies and flowed to rice price protection policies whose costs were growing. In addition, the leverage of agricultural price policies on rural poverty has been reduced. Raising the price of rice no longer reduces poverty because the poorest Indonesians are net rice consumers, wage rates now appear to be influenced most heavily by the non-farm labor market, and the benefits of price policies have been strongly tilted toward farmland owners. There have been efforts to soften the impact of higher rice and cooking oil prices for the poorest consumers through targeted consumer subsidies ("rice for the poor" targeted 19 million poor households in 2008), and expenditures on these programs increased in response to the 2008 price increases. The current price is roughly 10% above the world price for medium quality rice, but a 50% margin has been a good guide overall from 2000 to 2007. There is a longstanding political demand for protection of rice in Indonesia. That protection takes the form of preventing decreases in its price through the use of trade policy instruments, namely a tariff plus exclusive import rights granted to a well-known state enterprise, BULOG (the State Logistics Board).

Overall, rural poverty has been reduced since 1999 (figure from article), but this has been due to strong nonfarm economic growth and a dynamic rural labor market that features substantial off-farm employment and rural-urban migration. Among rice farmers, the supposed beneficiaries of higher rice prices, land owners are likely to capture most of the gains, while wage earners in rice farming (the landless) capture little if any. So, although the alleviation of poverty is still promoted as an important issue for agricultural policy, this is now largely political rhetoric. Much more could be done.

Daniel adds: Today's photographs are part of the image collection of the International Rice Research Institute (original image 1 | original image 2).

Continuing with the series for UBC Celebrate Research Week, Lindsay introduces Dr. Gary Bradfield:

Dr. Gary Bradfield is an Associate Professor with the UBC Department of Botany where he researches and lectures on plant community ecology.

Dr. Gary Bradfield writes:

Plant communities of forests, grasslands, and wetlands form a living tapestry that clothes the broad spectrum of terrestrial landscapes in which we live. The diversity of these communities, both in species composition and vegetation structure, provides enormous ecological benefits to a myriad of other, non-plant, species, and immeasurable social and economic values to human society. One of our great challenges for the 21^st century will be to deepen our respect and understanding of plant diversity to ensure its rightful protection into the future.

There are currently four ongoing research collaborations in my lab:

Climate change impacts on BC grasslands (image 1). As part of a large interdisciplinary team, we (graduate student Robbie Lee co-supervised by Drs. Gary Bradfield and Maja Krzic) will be examining the extent of invasive plant species in grassland communities and developing predictions of directions and rates of expansion of invasive species as future warming occurs.

Vegetation ecology of riparian buffers (image 2) after logging in high elevation forests. Spearheaded by Dr. Lyn Baldwin and graduate students Christine Petersen and Scott Black, we are examining relationships between the width of uncut strips of forest along streams ("buffer strips") and the diversity and re-colonization potential of the plant species they contain.

Vegetation responses to peatland re-wetting in Québec (image 3 of Andromeda polifolia taken by Steve Henstra in Yukon, but the species also grows in Québec). Linking to the Peatland Ecology Research Group at Université Laval, we (graduate student Steven Henstra co-supervised by Drs. Gary Bradfield and Line Rochefort) will be investigating the trajectory and timing of community-scale vegetation change resulting from hydrological restoration in several historically mined peatlands.

Post-fire succession in Interior Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. glauca) forests of southern BC. With recent graduate students Kaeli Stark and Scott Black, and in collaboration with Dr. André Arsenault, we are examining how plant communities re-assemble in the early stages after the devastating forest fires of 2003. The results are offering guidance for post-fire management actions such as seeding and salvage logging. Species such as Chamerion angustifolium subsp. angustifolium, shown in the image above (image 4), is a pioneering species that colonizes after forest fires, hence its common name fireweed.

Today's BPotD is the second in the series of BPotD's contribution to the 2010 UBC Celebrate Research Week.

Lindsay organized today's entry, selected the links, and introduces Dr. Suzanne Simard:

Dr. Suzanne Simard is a professor with the UBC Faculty of Forestry, where she lectures on and researches the role of mycorrhizae and mycorrhizal networks in tree species migrations with climate change disturbance. Networks of mycorrhizal fungal mycelium have recently been discovered by Professor Suzanne Simard and her graduate students to connect the roots of trees and facilitate the sharing of resources in Douglas-fir forests of interior British Columbia, thereby bolstering their resilience against disturbance or stress and facilitating the establishment of new regeneration.

Dr. Simard writes:

Mycorrhizal fungi form obligate symbioses with trees, where the tree supplies the fungus with carbohydrate energy in return for water and nutrients the fungal mycelia gather from the soil; mycorrhizal networks form when mycelia connect the roots of two or more plants of the same or different species. Graduate student Kevin Beiler has uncovered the extent and architecture of this network through the use of new molecular tools that can distinguish the DNA of one fungal individual from another, or of one tree's roots from another. He has found that all trees in dry interior Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. glauca) forests are interconnected, with the largest, oldest trees serving as hubs, much like the hub of a spoked wheel, where younger trees establish within the mycorrhizal network of the old trees. Through careful experimentation, recent graduate Francois Teste determined that survival of these establishing trees was greatly enhanced when they were linked into the network of the old trees.Through the use of stable isotope tracers, he and Amanda Schoonmaker, a recent undergraduate student in Forestry, found that increased survival was associated with belowground transfer of carbon, nitrogen and water from the old trees. This research provides strong evidence that maintaining forest resilience is dependent on conserving mycorrhizal links, and that removal of hub trees could unravel the network and compromise regenerative capacity of the forests.

In wetter, mixed-species interior Douglas-fir forests, graduate student Brendan Twieg also used molecular tools to discover that Douglas-fir and paper birch (Betula papyrifera) trees can be linked together by species-rich mycorrhizal networks. We found that the mycorrhizal network serves as a belowground pathway for transfer of carbon from the nutrient-rich deciduous trees to nearby regenerating Douglas-fir seedlings. Moreover, we found that carbon transfer was enhanced when Douglas-fir seedlings were shaded in mid-summer, providing a subsidy that may be important in Douglas-fir survival and growth, thus helping maintain a mixed forest community during early succession. This is not a one-way subsidy, however; graduate Leanne Philip discovered that Douglas-fir supported their birch neighbours in the spring and fall by sending back some of this carbon when the birch was leafless. This back-and-forth flux of resources according to need may be one process that maintains forest diversity and stability.

Mycorrhizal networks may be critical in helping forest ecosystems deal with climate change. Maintaining the biological webs that stabilize forests may help conserve genetic resources for future tree migrations, ensure that forest carbon stocks remain intact on the landscape, and conserve species diversity. UBC graduate student Marcus Bingham is finding that maintaining mycorrhizal webs may be more important for the regeneration and stability of the dry than wet interior Douglas-fir forests, where resources are more limited and climate change is expected to have greater impacts. Helping the landscape adapt to climate change will require more than keeping existing forests intact, however. Many scientists are concerned that species will need to migrate at a profoundly more rapid rate than they have in the past, and that humans can facilitate this migration by planting tree species adapted to warm climates in new areas. UBC graduate student Brendan Twieg is starting new research to help us understand whether the presence of appropriate mycorrhizal symbionts in foreign soils may limit the success of tree migrations, and if so, to help us design practices that increase our success at facilitating changes in these forests.

Daniel adds: Some housecleaning bits to add. Dr. Simard noted that a version of today's BPotD appeared in the Faculty of Forestry's newsletter Branch Lines, here: Simard, S.W. (2010) Why research matters to the forest systems of BC (PDF). Branch Lines, 20: 4-5. Dr. Simard also contributed the photograph of Cantharellus formosus. The illustration of the fungi and tree is courtesy of Shannon Wright. The schematic of the fungal network is by Kevin Beiler, and was published in: Beiler KJ, Durall DM, Simard SW, Maxwell SA, Kretzer AM. 2010. Architecture of the wood-wide web: Rhizopogon spp genets link multiple Douglas-fir cohorts. New Phytologist, 185: 543-553.

Today starts the annual series featuring research at the University of British Columbia as part of Celebrate Research Week. Note: the photograph of the plant was not submitted as part of the entry, but I added it for illustrative purposes: Macaranga peltata by J.M. Garg of Wikimedia Commons.

Lindsay introduces Dr. Reinhard Jetter:

Dr. Reinhard Jetter is an Associate Professor with joint appointment in both the Botany and Chemistry Departments at UBC. He also holds the Canadian Research Chair in Natural Plant Products. His research projects focus on plant biochemistry, especially on the mechanisms with which plants defend themselves against herbivores and adverse climatic conditions.

Dr. Jetter writes:

We use gas chromatography and mass spectrometry to analyze the chemical composition of plant surfaces. The chemical profiles differ greatly between species and between different organs of the same plant, in some cases even within one organ - for example between the upper and the lower sides of the same leaf. This can be seen in one of our projects where we found that the leaves of diverse Macaranga species are covered with compounds forming a smooth coating (first image via scanning electron microscope), whereas the stems of the same plants exhibit a surface that is very rough due the presence of microscopic crystals (inset image).

The crystals make those stem surfaces slippery for walking insects, and so help to protect the plant against many small herbivores. Slippery surfaces are difficult to scale only when they are inclined or even vertical, but would be useless on horizontal organs. So it makes a lot of sense that the plants make crystals only for the stems and not for the leaves. How do plants manage to be so efficient in the use of this defence mechanism? We found out that the slippery crystals consist of special compounds called triterpenoids, which are very similar to cholesterol. They are being made solely for this purpose, and we are currently investigating the genes and enzymes involved in their synthesis.

In other projects, the Jetter lab is studying the biochemistry of skins of crops (rye, tomato) and model species such as Kalanchoe daigremontiana ( commonly known as "mother of thousands") and Arabidopsis thaliana (thale cress). We want to understand how each species makes and accumulates different chemical compounds at the surface of its organs, and what their individual biological functions are.

Daniel adds: As an aside to local readers, I'll be giving a lecture on Monday: Biodiversity of Southern Alaska and Yukon. This is part of our education theme for this month on "Biodiversity and the North". The BPotD series on the topic will take place later in March.

Today concludes the UBC research series. We still have a few outstanding entries, but we'll add them to the general mix. Ruth continues with the series:

Dr. Lacey Samuels is an Assistant Professor in the UBC Department of Botany. Her research initiatives mainly focus on plant cell biology and the secretion of the cell wall.

Heather McFarlane is a PhD candidate from Dr. Samuels' lab and she writes: "The picture above is a cryo-scanning electron micrograph of mint (Mentha ×piperita) leaf surface (scale bar = 100 micrometers). Mint secretes essential oils into glands (G) on the surface of its leaves. These glandular trichomes are distinct from other types of trichomes, such as hairs (H). In nature, mint essential oils may serve to protect the plant against insect and other herbivores. Commercially, these oils are employed in a variety of products. In the Samuels lab, we study lipid export, using mint essential oil export to glandular trichomes as one model system."

"We also study lipid export using Arabidopsis thaliana and Sorghum bicolor as model systems. Cryo-SEM allows us to freeze cells that are actively exporting essential oils, and to examine these cells at high magnification. This helps us gain insight into the possible mechanisms of lipid export to and from plant cells."

After yesterday's interlude, we return to the UBC research series. Ruth continues:

Assistant Professor Jin-Gui Chen from the UBC Botany Department conducts research in plant cell biology. He writes: "Trichomes are hair-like epidermal outgrowths on the surface of leaves, stems and some floral organs. It is generally recognized that trichomes have protective roles. For example, trichomes interfere with the feeding of some herbivores. The most important trichome for human beings is the cotton fibre. Many trichomes, such as glandular trichomes in lavender (Lavandula) and peppermint (Mentha × piperita) are also important places for oil and fragrance production."

"By studying model laboratory plant Arabidopsis thaliana, scientists have found that the number and distribution of trichomes are largely determined by the interactions and competitions between several different types of transcription factor--proteins that regulate the expression of target genes. These studies make it possible to alter the number, property (e.g. length), and distribution of trichomes in plants with economic values. Shown on the top are leaf trichomes in a normal (wild-type) Arabidopsis plant. By controlling the expression level of certain transcription factors, the leaf could become glabrous (the middle photograph) or very hairy (the bottom image)."