Good news for the lab! Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie and Richard Primack receive Mercer Award for climate change research

By Richard B. Primack

“Any truth is better than make-believe.” 

-Henry David Thoreau in Walden

The Ecological Society of America (ESA) named former lab member Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie, who is now a postdoc at University of Maine, and Richard Primack as recipients of the George Mercer Award, awarded for excellence in a recent research paper lead by a young scientist. Richard and Caitlin shared the award with three co-authors, including lead author Mason Heberling. The study, entitled “Phenological mismatch with trees reduces wildflower carbon budgets,” appeared last year in the scientific journal Ecology Letters. 

Caitlin at her field site in Acadia National Park

The study demonstrates that trees are responding more rapidly to climate change than wildflowers, and this is having a negative effect on wildflower energy budgets. The BU team combined their own and Thoreau’s observations of trees and wildflowers in the 1850s in Concord, MA with photosynthetic data of wildflowers collected by Mason and his team in a forest near Pittsburgh. 

Richard wearing a face mask while carrying out his 18th field season in Concord -- and not practicing social distancing with Thoreau. 

The combined analysis shows that small differences in the responses of wildflowers versus trees to a warming climate could already be harming wildflower abundance, growth, and reproduction, with greater effects predicted in coming years.

Mason Heberling at his field site. 

Members of the group are continuing to work together to carry out some of the new observations and experiments suggested in their paper. 

Impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on biodiversity conservation

By Richard T. Corlett, Richard B. Primack, and Vincent Devictor

“In society you will not find health, but in nature.” -Thoreau in Excursions   

Conservation biologists are concerned with how the COVID-19 pandemic will impact the world’s biodiversity and our ability to protect it, as well as how it might affect the training and careers of conservation researchers and practitioners. We can already see that field and lab work have largely shut down, while teaching and other communications have moved online, with unknown consequences for training, data collection, and networking. The media report some examples of reduced human pressures on natural ecosystems, cleaner air and water, and wildlife reclaiming contested habitats, but there is also less enforcement in many national parks.  

From January 2020 to February 2020 the air over China became much cleaner.

Missed research means missed opportunities to identify conservation priorities, monitor the health of endangered species and ecosystems, and provide practical solutions for the protection and sustainable use of resources on which human well-being depends.

Laboratory work at virtually all universities has been discontinued, such as this investigation of the impacts of climate change on trees.

The pandemic also provides new possibilities and responsibilities. How will disruptions to field work and altered levels of human impact during the pandemic affect species and ecosystems we have been studying, monitoring and protecting?

Fieldwork in groups, as shown in this photo of sound monitoring at Walden Pond, has stopped, but individuals practicing strict social distancing can sometimes continue with field work.

Beyond the immediate consequences of this particular pandemic, some conservation biologists have started to focus on emerging infectious diseases and their links with biodiversity loss, human activities, and issues of sustainability.

This is a condensed version of an article which appeared in Biological Conservation.