{"id":76,"date":"2015-04-16T20:28:19","date_gmt":"2015-04-16T20:28:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/magazine\/?p=76"},"modified":"2015-07-14T13:50:43","modified_gmt":"2015-07-14T17:50:43","slug":"science-on-the-farm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/magazine\/2015\/science-on-the-farm\/","title":{"rendered":"Science on the Farm"},"content":{"rendered":"

The director of Case Western Reserve\u2019s University Farm dresses elegantly and works out of a charming office on the top floor of a former dairy barn. But Ana Locci<\/b> once had a less illustrious post on these 400 acres 10 miles east of campus. During the early 1980s, while completing her master\u2019s degree in aquatic ecology, she assisted her faculty advisor on the farm. Once a week, she climbed inside giant, foul-smelling fish tanks and scrubbed them clean. Fieldwork in the Snowbelt was no joke either, particularly for a native Venezuelan. \u201cI was in the ponds in the middle of the winter, breaking through the ice and doing all sorts of water measurements,\u201d she laughs. \u201cIt nearly killed me!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"University

University Farm Director Ana Locci inspects plants at the hydroponics facility in the Green Barn, which produces lettuce and endives for animals at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. Photo by Mike Sands.<\/p><\/div>\n

Consisting of several properties, with Squire Valleevue and Valley Ridge Farms the largest, the University Farm is best known for its recreational opportunities. Generations of students have stayed at the Pink Pig, a pig sty-turned-cottage. (A former silo across the lawn still serves as the cottage\u2019s restroom.) Many locals have traversed the farm\u2019s hiking and cross-country ski paths, enjoyed its picnic areas or taken continuing education courses on topics from beekeeping to blueberry farming. In recent years, the farm\u2019s food program has also earned notice. Last year, over 13,000 pounds of organic produce went to Case Western Reserve\u2019s campus dining program, local farmers\u2019 markets and the farm\u2019s community-supported agriculture program.<\/p>\n

Yet Locci, an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Biology, loves the farm most for the research opportunities it provides. Both science and science education have long been part of the farm\u2019s mission. Under Locci, who became director in 2000, they have increased exponentially.<\/p>\n

\u201cI used to do everything I could to bring research here,\u201d she says. \u201cAt this point, it\u2019s coming so fast and so quick that I don\u2019t need to. It\u2019s wonderful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrew Squire, the prominent Cleveland attorney who willed what is now the largest portion of the farm to Western Reserve University, wished for the female students of Flora Stone Mather College to \u201clearn practical botany\u201d and \u201clearn to love and enjoy the beauties of nature, trees, and flowers.” <\/span>The university inherited 277 acres from him in 1937, but research did not gain steam until the 1950s. Zoologist <\/span>Darhl Foreman<\/b><\/span>, professor emerita of biology until her death this summer, conducted one of the earliest projects, an examination of the effect of light on the reproductive cycle of prairie dogs. <\/span><\/p>\n

Since then, science at the farm has had its peaks and troughs. Locci remembers an active research community from her years as a grad student. But by the time she became director, that community had largely disappeared, and the Farm, she says, had turned into \u201ca picnic area.\u201d Locci was hired, in part, to forge ties with faculty members. She has been so successful that the farm is now one of the main attractions for new ecology hires in the biology department.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe farm was a huge draw,\u201d says Sarah Diamond<\/b>, assistant professor of biology, who studies how insects respond to climate change, biological invasion and urbanization. Since joining the faculty in January, Diamond has started collecting butterflies for her lab research in the farm\u2019s vast fields of goldenrod. She has also outfitted individual thistle plants, which provide a home for immature butterflies, with temperature- and humidity-monitoring equipment so that she can compare them with plants in an urban setting.<\/p>\n

\"Sarah

Sarah Diamond nets a red admiral butterfly, and undergraduate student Emily Makowski prepares an enclosure for housing the butterfly. Red admirals are being negatively impacted by the combined stress of climate change and urbanization. Photo by Mike Sands.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"A

A red admiral butterfly caught at the University Farm. The butterflies are brought to Diamond\u2019s lab, where their growth and development are assessed in environmental chambers that mimic the impacts of climate change and urbanization. Photo by Mike Sands.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like we have a field station, but with farm equipment and people who know how to run it,\u201d says Jean Burns<\/b>, assistant professor of biology, who studies biological invasions and the formation of plant communities. The farm staff has done everything from dig trenches to build deer fences around her research plots, she says.<\/p>\n

Assistant Professor Mike Benard, <\/b>who holds the George B. Mayer Chair in Urban and Environmental Studies in the biology department, explores population dynamics, particularly among amphibians. He, too, has benefited from the farm\u2019s equipment and the hard work of its staff. When he arrived at the university in 2008, he wasted no time in ordering 100 cattle troughs for use as artificial ponds. Each was six feet in diameter and weighed 90 pounds. \u201cWithin two hours of arriving, each of those ponds was moved to where it was supposed to be,\u201d Benard says. \u201cThat, to me, is the story of the farm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Numerous scientists from Case Western Reserve, Cleveland Metroparks, Holden Arboretum and other universities conduct research here. Last summer\u2014its busiest season\u2014the farm hosted at least 40 researchers. For example,\u00a0Christopher Cullis, <\/b>the Francis Hobart Herrick Professor of Biology and chair of the biology department, leads a group studying the mechanisms of genetic mutation in flax plants. Holden Arboretum scientists David Burke and Kurt Smemo are examining the effects of acid rain on soil microbes and plant growth in hardwood forests. Other scientists are engaged in applied research involving food production at the Farm.<\/p>\n

The renewed interest is partly due to the many new facilities the Farm has acquired in recent years. The Debra Ann November Research Greenhouse, a gift from Mort and Iris November<\/b>, opened in 2006. Two years later, the Flora Stone Mather Alumnae Association donated funding for a teaching laboratory. A hoop house and apiary soon followed. Now, even scientists who do their research elsewhere benefit from the farm. The staff, for instance, grows tobacco plants in the greenhouse for Professor Mark Willis <\/b>in the biology department. <\/b>(Willis uses moths in his research, and requires tobacco plants to raise them on.)<\/p>\n

Though they increasingly have company, resident scientists Benard and Burns conduct much of the ongoing research at the farm. (Many of Diamond\u2019s projects are still in the planning stage.) For them, as for Locci, the farm is something of a second home. As the director puts it: \u201cOn campus, I\u2019m \u2018Dr. Locci.\u2019 Here, I\u2019m \u2018Ana.\u2019 There are no doctors here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Natives and Invaders<\/h3>\n

On a sunny day in early September, the greenhouse was oven-like. A group of small potted roses, some visibly wilting, covered one table. Their parched state, it turned out, was intentional. Jennifer Murphy<\/b>, a graduate student in Burns\u2019 lab, is investigating what factors enable an introduced plant to proliferate and thus become an invasive species.<\/p>\n

\"Graduate

Graduate student Jennifer Murphy (left) and Assistant Professor Jean Burns (right) monitor an experiment at Valley Ridge Farm (the lower farm). Burns and Murphy are studying the role of soil conditions, including soil microbiota, in governing invasibility. Photo by Mike Sands.<\/p><\/div>\n

Multiflora rose, the subject of her experiment, is native to eastern Asia and was introduced in this country in the mid-19th century as a \u201cliving fence.\u201d It has since spread throughout the eastern United States, and to some areas of the farm, crowding out native plants. Murphy has planted the invaders and given some of them very little water. She will use the results to test her hypothesis that invasive multiflora rose has a high tolerance for drought and crowding.<\/p>\n

Murphy also suspects that the invasive rose may be encouraging more of its own kind by altering the bacteria and fungi that inhabit the surrounding soil. So members of the lab plan to collect soil from the roots of multiflora and of native roses. They will then plant native roses in multiflora soil and vice versa. As the experiment draws to a close, the researchers will examine how the plants react. The results should further understanding of the role soil biota can play in plant invasions. In addition, the two multiflora rose experiments could have practical implications for controlling invaders.<\/p>\n

While Burns works primarily with plants and Benard generally focuses on amphibians, their investigations sometimes align in interesting ways. The two scientists\u2019 research groups are both planning climate change studies that involve a good deal of snow shoveling, for instance. In Burns\u2019 lab, graduate student <\/span>Anna Osvaldsson<\/b><\/span> is leading a project to determine whether the delicate perennial flowers known as spring ephemerals, many of which are found on the farm, will be frozen out by climate change.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Anna

Anna Osvaldsson tends her climate change experiment at Squire Valleevue Farm.\u00a0Anna is a graduate student in the Burns lab, studying the effects of changing snow cover in the winter on spring ephemeral plants. Photo by Mike Sands.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThe snow acts like a nice warm blanket,\u201d Burns says. \u201cSo, paradoxically, as it gets warmer and there is less snow, we expect the ground to freeze more, and we expect that we might get more mortality on our native plants.\u201d The researchers will shovel snow onto some plants and off of others to determine whether that hypothesis is supported. <\/span><\/p>\n

Put them in the ground and Burns\u2019 experimental subjects tend to stay put. That is not the case with Benard\u2019s organisms of choice, at least most of the time. Benard often works with wood frogs. These unusual creatures, which are abundant near the farm\u2019s vernal pools, survive the winter by freezing solid. Benard has already found that the warmer winters climate change is bringing to the region cause female wood frogs to produce fewer eggs. He suspects those warmer winters also deplete the wood frogs\u2019 energy reserves. If the frozen frogs are thawed too much or too often, their metabolism should speed up, causing them to burn energy. To find out how that might affect the creatures, over the winter Benard will place wood frogs in small round pens he has set up in the woods. Then, as in Burns\u2019 experiment, the shoveling will begin. Afterward, Benard will compare the frogs that were buried in snow with those whose snow cover was cleared away.<\/span><\/p>\n

Those pens are already proving useful for a different project, another in which Benard\u2019s and Burns\u2019 interests overlap. Ohio is home to a large population of invasive night crawlers. (The Great Lakes region has no native earthworms.) They drag leaf litter from the surface, pull it into the soil and eat it. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThese invasive earthworms are spreading around here, and one of the things they do is reduce the amount of leaf litter that\u2019s on the forest floor,\u201d Benard says. That may be a problem for the wood frogs, which eat the tasty invertebrates that live in dry leaves. So one of Benard\u2019s graduate students, <\/span>Hilary Rollins<\/b><\/span>, populated the enclosures with frogs and differing quantities of leaf litter. Though the small frogs are difficult to see among the leaves\u2014they are tan with a streak of black eyeliner\u2014Benard is a master at finding them. Later in the fall, Rollins and Benard began to take them from their pens and measure their growth. If the data suggest that their size varies with the amounts of leaf litter, this will be an indication that invasive earthworms may be taking a toll on local wood frogs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Burns notes that these same worms may interact with another invader, a plant called garlic mustard. Garlic mustard contains allelochemicals, which stem the growth of co-occurring plants.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Mike

Mike Benard and his graduate students gather data from experiments on tadpoles raised in artificial ponds at the farm. From left: Kacey Dananay, Hilary Rollins, Benard and Mini Guo. Photo by Mike Sands.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThey can have really dramatic effects on other plants,\u201d Burns says. \u201cThey\u2019re basically poison.\u201d Burns wondered if the worms, through their eating habits, might be compounding the spread of garlic mustard\u2019s allelochemicals.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

The green frog (Rana clamitans) is one of the most common amphibians at the University Farm. Assistant Professor Mike Benard uses green frog tadpoles to teach students in his herpetology class how to conduct experiments. Photo by Mike Sands.<\/p><\/div>\n

To find out, members of her lab collected garlic mustard leaves from the farm and sprinkled them in pots seeded with a native plant, mayapple. Some pots were populated with night crawlers and others were not. Thus far, the worms have not influenced the mayapples\u2019 reaction to garlic mustard, but Burns says the experiment will take several years to yield results because mayapples are long-lived. Related projects are likely to follow. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe understand very little about the effects of earthworms on our native plant communities,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of a wide-open question.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Many Ecosystems<\/span><\/h3>\n

The farm\u2014with its varied habitats of hemlock and beech forests, primary forest, restored prairie, ponds and former farmland\u2014is full of unanswered questions. Getting students interested in asking those questions, and teaching them how to go about answering them, is another area that Locci has emphasized as director. In 2013, 19 different classes, on subjects ranging from geology to entomology to engineering, took advantage of the farm. <\/span><\/p>\n

On a Tuesday afternoon early this fall, undergraduates in Benard\u2019s herpetology class gathered around a small pond for a lesson in weighing tadpoles. It was a skill they would need for a subsequent experiment comparing the growth rates of tadpoles in two different ponds. The experiment would give the students experience in forming and testing a hypothesis. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHow many folks have held little live tadpoles before?\u201d Benard asked the class. Five or six hands went up. \u201cWere they alive when you were done?\u201d he asked, to laughter. Benard gathered several green frog tadpoles from traps he\u2019d set in the shallows of the pond and poured them into a water-filled plastic tub. He pre-weighed another, smaller container of water. Then, delicately scooping up a tadpole with a tiny net, he placed it gently on a gloved finger. He tilted his finger slightly to shake off a water droplet\u2014its weight could throw off the results\u2014and slipped the tadpole into the smaller container, which was still on the scale. \u201cBe careful,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s very easy to break off their tails.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Before long, Benard\u2019s students had taken over. He looked on happily. \u201cThey\u2019re not just looking at pictures of animals on slides,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re actually handling them and seeing how they move.\u201d Periodically a group of students flagged Benard down to ask about an unusual find. Juvenile newts show up in the traps, as do leeches and predatory water insects, intent on eating tadpoles. These serendipitous finds allow Benard to share his knowledge of the broader ecosystem. Did his students know that bullfrogs sometimes eat fledgling redwing blackbirds? Or that eastern red-spotted newts can choose to live primarily either on land or in water as adults? <\/span><\/p>\n

Many undergraduates conduct their senior capstone projects or other research at the farm and come to know the place nearly as well as scientists like Benard. <\/span>Drake Sweet<\/b><\/span>, \u00a0a senior biology major with a minor in environmental studies, obtained funding from the National Science Foundation for a project involving native plants and the soil they grow in. Plants cause changes in the biological composition of the soil, which in turn affect any new plants that grow there. Sweet, with Burns\u2019 help, is running an experiment to compare the effects related plants have on one another through the soil with the effects distantly related plants have. Rows of Sweet\u2019s pots run the length of the greenhouse. \u201cIt\u2019s a very large, year-long project,\u201d Burns says.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Undergraduate

Undergraduate researcher Drake Sweet is studying how biological changes that plants cause in the composition of the soil affect new plants that grow nearby. He obtained funding from the National Science Foundation for this project. Photo by Mike Sands.<\/p><\/div>\n

Locci hopes to bring even more students into the fold. This fall, for the first time, a dedicated bus runs daily to and from campus. New Student Orientation this year included a visit to the farm, complete with 44 seminars on every conceivable pursuit here, including much of the research. <\/span><\/p>\n

If Locci has her way, there will soon be even more research to share at Orientation. Her wish list is extensive. She\u2019s hoping to bring in goats to study their ability to keep invasive plants at bay. She\u2019d like to try introducing tilapia into the farm\u2019s hydroponic system. She plans to convert former farmland into organic hay fields, for research as well as to produce hay for the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. <\/span><\/p>\n

Above all, she hopes to wire the entire farm with high-tech devices called repliers. These antennae could give researchers a large range of abilities: to examine microclimates remotely in real time; track water levels in the ponds; measure the temperature, humidity and other characteristics of soil in the forests; and continually monitor bluebird boxes and collared animals. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAll the technology exists. It\u2019s just a matter of funding,\u201d Locci says. She glances up at the surrounding trees from the driver\u2019s seat of a four-wheeler as she steers down a rutted farm road. \u201cI think we\u2019d really upscale the level and quality of research here.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Andrea Appleton is a freelance writer in Baltimore.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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