| NSF Org: |
EAR Division Of Earth Sciences |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | July 25, 2013 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | July 18, 2014 |
| Award Number: | 1249831 |
| Award Instrument: | Fellowship Award |
| Program Manager: |
Lina Patino
lpatino@nsf.gov (703)292-5047 EAR Division Of Earth Sciences GEO Directorate for Geosciences |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2013 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2015 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $85,000.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $170,000.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2014 = $85,000.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
Akron OH US 44313-7646 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
Chicago IL US 60637-1468 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | Postdoctoral Fellowships |
| Primary Program Source: |
01001415DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.050 |
ABSTRACT
Dr. Andrew V. Michelson has been granted the NSF Earth Sciences postdoctoral fellowship to carry out a research and education plan at the University of Chicago.
Why species live in one area and not another is a central question of ecology that has broad implications for conservationists, scientists, and entrepreneurs. The investigation will explore the hypothesis that that certain species no longer live in areas near human settlement, while different species may have invaded those same areas. This species turnover results in a mismatch between the species living in an area and the species preserved in the fossil record of the same area since fossil species lived in the area before it was modified by people. This hypothesis will be tested by sampling across lakes on three Bahamian islands that have experienced different levels of human settlement: New Providence (highest impact), San Salvador (intermediate impact), and Rum Cay (least impact) using small crustaceans that are easily preserved in lake sediments.
In addition, he hopes to understand why certain species have invaded areas with high levels of human settlement and why others have gone locally extinct in those same areas. It is assumed that certain traits (such as body size and shape, presence of defensive structures, etc.) of species influence whether or not they can survive in modified environments. Dr. Michelson will use preserved records of the species (extending back about 5000 years) living in both modified and unmodified lakes to understand which traits of species allow them to live or go locally extinct in environments disturbed by people. By understanding the biological reasons for why some species can live in disturbed environments while other cannot will produce evidence-based conservation plans for species and ecosystems. This increased understanding will greatly improve conservation efforts in the Bahamas and be applicable to other areas across the globe.
Finally, Dr. Michelson will create a freely-available podcast to broadcast widely the results of this research and the research of other scientists. He will interview scientists about their research and how it relates to issues of broader interest like conservation and energy exploration. Undergraduate and/or graduate students will be involved in all aspects of this project, so will receive valuable training and experience in scientific research and how to communicate to the public the results of scientific research.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
We developed a new tool for conservationists and environmental managers to use to identify polluted habitats. We exploited the fact that ostracodes (bivalved microscopic crustacean) live on lake floors and have a hard shell, so the remains of dead individuals (in the form of their shells) accumulate in the same area where the organisms lived. They can thus be sampled at once- getting a snapshot of those species living today (“live”) and an averaged picture of the species living in the recent past (“dead”). In lakes which were impacted by humans, we showed that there is a mismatch between these living communities and death assemblages, similar to patterns observed in mollusks (snails and clams) from estuaries and marine environments.
Figure 1 and 2 show this result. FIgure 1 shows were we took samples and figure 2 shows live/dead comparisons from physically-similar lakes. In Figure 2, live/dead comparisons at points within lakes are shown with the same shape and either as black (impacted) or grey (“prisinte”). Samples that plot in the upper right-hand corner have high live/dead correspondence, while samples that fall outside of that right-hand corner exhibit low live/dead correspondence, meaning we either found different species in living communities and associated death assemblages (low value on y-axis) or the most (or least) abundant species was not the most (or least) abundant species in the living community as in the death assemblage (low value on x-axis) or both (low value on both axes). We again show this is a conservative method for identifying impacted habitats: one impacted lake on each of three Bahamian islands we sampled displayed high live/dead fidelity despite the known effects of humans. This could be either because a) the impact was not strong enough to change the living community or b) the impact is so severe or long-lasting that the death assemblage is no longer a good stand-in for a pre-human baseline.
We also worked to develop a new method for determining what lake environments were like in the past and how past climates affected those lakes. We wanted to show a strong, predictable relationship between the traits of species (like size and presence of certain features like spines or nodules) in modern communities and salinity of the lakes in which they lived. We are still working to understand this relationship. It seems the relationship between traits across the whole community and the environment is either more complex than we hoped or that only certain traits respond directly to the environment, not all traits in aggregate. We will continue working on both of these projects in hopes that they will prove useful indicators to identify candidate habitats to remediate and as proxies for past environments and climates.
Last Modified: 12/10/2015
Modified by: Andrew V Michelson
