The Scientific Method: A Reality Check

If you have ever heard someone say “I have a theory about that” they don’t. They’re most likely confusing the word “theory” with “completely unsupported, untested hypothesis”. All kidding aside, the words “theory” and “hypothesis” mean something very specific to a scientist, and the former is actually a much stronger statement than the latter. Since most people are not scientists but sometimes need to judge the value of someone’s statements, it can be useful to have at least a rudimentary understanding of how the scientific process works.

The journey to creating a theory is a long and arduous one and, in fact, one that most scientists will only ever contribute peripherally to. But every journey starts with a first step so that is where we will begin. In addition to the scientific jargon, I have taken the liberty of translating it into everyday vernacu… umm, language (it’s hard to stop using big words when you’ve spent 22 years in school).

Step 8

Write a paper for a peer reviewed journal.
Translation: Spend several months preparing a paper and ensuring that the formatting meets the requirements of the most prestigious journal in your field. Submit. Receive rejection letter. Reformat your paper for a less prestigious journal and submit. Receive scathing peer reviews of your paper. Swear. Reluctantly make suggested changes to the paper while grumbling about it to anyone that will listen. Even more reluctantly conclude that the reviewers’ changes do indeed greatly improve your paper. Submit final version. Send a reprint to your mother.

Although I was intentionally being silly, the fact of the matter is that a research project never goes off without a hitch.   Science is certainly one thing: a learning experience.

Last week I went blitzing-BIOblitzing that is. What, you may ask is a BioBlitz? BioBlitz’s are biological surveys that are periodically held by conservation organizations or universities to identify the species of plants, animals and fungi that inhabit a particular tract of land. In Manitoba, the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) periodically holds BioBlitz’s to identify the species on new properties that it acquires. The BioBlitz that I just participated in was of NCC’s recently acquired Fort Ellice property near the Saskatchewan border, just south of St. Lazare.

Having never been on a BioBlitz before, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. It turned out to be two days of hiking along the lovely Assiniboine River Valley, visiting with biologists I hadn’t seen for quite a while and seeing some beautiful rare plants, insects, and birds. It also meant getting covered in ticks and a boot-full of muddy swamp water but those are the normal hazards of field work.

Doing a survey with a large group of botanists made the event much more effective because if one of us didn’t know what a plant species was, someone else did. It was as if we had formed one big, really smart superbotanist! In addition to the plant people, there were also birders, a range manager, ecologists, bug catchers, a mammal expert, a couple of fungus guys, and even an archaeologist. We recorded all of the species we saw, and any plant, lichen, or fungus we couldn’t identify was collected to examine in the lab.

Highlights of the trip included spectacular sand dunes, a babbling brook, a recently hatched Sphinx Moth, mating Tiger Moths, and one of the largest morels I’ve ever seen. Now comes the sad part: waiting for the next BioBlitz so I can do it all over again!

Many people love to garden. But the way you garden can have a negative impact on the environment or a positive one. “Green” gardens are cheaper to maintain as they do not require high inputs of water, fertilizers, pesticides, or fossil fuels, and provide habitat for the many wild plants and animals that share our planet. Here are some tips to increase how “green” your garden is.

• Consider replacing some of the lawn you don’t use with trees, shrubs and/or flowers as they provide better habitat for beneficial insect and birds.
• Correct placement of trees and shrubs can also improve the energy efficiency of your home. Evergreens planted on the north side of your house block cold north winds while deciduous trees on the south side let the sun warm your home in winter but block it in the summer when it’s hot.
• Don’t even try to grow grass in dense shade. Cover with mulch or plant hardy, attractive, native ground covers like Western Canada Violet or Canada Anemone.

• Grow at least some native plants in your yard. Native plants are adapted for the climatic conditions that we get in Manitoba, requiring no fertilizers or supplemental watering when grown in the proper spot. Native plants provide food for many birds and beneficial insects like bees and hoverflies.
• If you like to grow exotic plants, include some that provide food for birds and/or insects. Many horticultural species like hydrangeas, peonies, begonias and fancy “double flowers” are not very attractive to our native pollinators. Exotic plants that do provide food for pollinators include: columbine, delphinium, globe thistle, mint, oregano, Goat’s-beard, and many more.

• Remember to put your yard waste  out for collection along with your recyclables and garbage if you live in Winnipeg.
• For more information on green gardening pick up the “Naturescape Manitoba” book published by the Manitoba Naturalists Society (Nature Manitoba).

Last summer I went to Spruce Woods Provincial Park to determine which insects pollinate the rare Hairy Prairie-clover plant, a species that only occurs in sand dunes. Oddly enough, even though Hairy Prairie-clover is rare, it was being visited more frequently than some of the common plants I have observed. But there was a dark side to all that activity: it was drenched in blood-the blood of innocents! Instead of the cute, fuzzy little bumblebees I had grown accustomed to watching, I encountered big, black and yellow or red wasps and large, colourful wasp-like flies! What were those crazy creatures? When I got my insect identifications back recently, I was shocked to discover that 40% of the species and 67% of the insect visits to Hairy Prairie-clover were by solitary hunting wasps and parasitic flies that prey on other insects.

The Sand Wasp (Bembix pruinosa) was the most frequent flower visitor to Hairy Prairie-clover. Although adult Sand Wasps consume pollen and nectar, the females also capture and paralyze small flies (e.g. Soldier and Horse Flies) to feed to their babies. The Sand Wasp larvae and paralyzed prey are well hidden in underground burrows. A related species of wasp called a “bee-wolf” (Philanthus sp.) was observed capturing and flying away with tiny Andrenid Bees (Perdita perpallida) that were busy pollinating Hairy Prairie-clover.

The Common Thread-waisted Wasp (Ammophila procera) is also a solitary hunting wasp but captures the caterpillars of Noctuid moths called Prominents (Notodontidae) instead of flies. A similar looking species, the Great Black Wasp (Sphex pensylvanicus), captures and paralyzes grasshopper or katydid larvae, and lays an egg on it to act as baby food. The Grasshopper Bee Fly (Systoechus vulgaris) also parasitizes grasshopper eggs. The female Grasshopper Bee Fly shoots her eggs in an area of loose soil suspected to contain grasshopper eggs. The hatched larvae crawl around in the soil until they find a suitable grasshopper host and then they suck it dry!

Similarly, the larvae of large Scoliid Wasps (Trielis octomaculata), are ectoparasites on Scarab Beetle (Scarabaeidae) larvae. The large females hunt down the beetle larvae in the soil, paralyze them and lay an egg on them. Some Scoliid wasps have even been used for the biocontrol of white grubs on sugar cane crops.

And those wasp-like flies? They were Conopid or Thick-headed Flies. The female flies lay their eggs inside bees or wasps. The hatched larva then slowly eats its host until it dies, eventually bursting from the exoskeleton after pupation.

Ironically, even the parasitic wasps are themselves parasitized. The females of the Bee Fly Exoprosopa shoot their eggs into the burrows of solitary hunting wasps, and the hatched larvae develop as external parasitoids. What a fascinating series of biological interactions surrounding just a single plant. Clearly it’s an insect-eat-insect-eat-insect-eat-plant world out there!

I was recently watching the hilarious yet scientifically accurate video on the mating habits of bees done by Isabella Rossellini (see more here). Coincidentally, I’ve also been reading about the quite bizarre and sometimes gruesome life cycles of wild pollinators for my upcoming Prairie Pollination exhibit. Inspired by Isabella, I found myself wondering what it would be like if people were like pollinators…

Ironically, some parasites of bees and butterflies are pollinators in their own right so their existence is ultimately beneficial to wildflowers in an ecosystem. In fact, the abundance of some of these parasites is actually an indicator of the overall health of the pollinator population. Essentially, if there aren’t enough bees to support their parasites then the population of bees must really be in trouble. Further, they may actually help improve the resilience and productivity of an ecosystem the way other top carnivores like wolves and sharks do. Unfortunately this topic has been virtually unstudied so we really don’t understand the true impact of pollinator parasites on ecosystem functioning. So don’t hate parasites because they kill – they’re just part of the sometimes morbid circle of life that we humans seldom see.

With the holiday season beginning, I often find myself thinking about celebrations and how frequently alcohol is part of them. Although people are familiar with the different kinds of alcohol-rum, vodka, beer etc. – not everyone knows what they are made of. And what is the difference between lager and ale anyway? Well you’re in luck. Alcohol comes from plants and ethnobotany is one of my areas of expertise. So if you’re terrible at small talk, here are a few bits of alcohol-related trivia that you might want to use as a conversation starter at your next holiday party!

Thanks to the multitude of beer commercials out there, you probably know that beer is made from barley (Hordeum vulgare) grains. Unless it’s made from wheat (Triticum aestivum) in which case it’s called Weizenbier or Wheat beer. But you might not know that some beers are brewed using corn (Zea mays), millet (Panicum miliaceum), or sorghum (Sorghum bicolor), (e.g. African Pito beer). In fact most of the most popular commercial American beers mix corn in with the barley to reduce the cost. The fragrant flowers of the hop plant (Humulus lupulus) are typically used to flavour beer but some breweries add spices or fruits like raspberries (Rubus) or pumpkins (Cucurbita maxima) to produce a more complex tasting beverage.

So what’s the difference between lager and ale? Lager is fermented under cold conditions and ale at room temperature using different kinds of yeast, which are by the way are a kind of fungus. In fact, alcohol is the waste-product of brewer’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae). So technically when you drink alcohol you’re drinking fungus-urine! But clearly that name didn’t have market appeal hence the names beer and wine.

When beer is distilled, a process in which some of the water is removed by heating or freezing the beer, the alcohol becomes concentrated and therefore more potent. Medieval alchemists considered distilled alcohol to be magical. In fact the words whiskey and aquavit both mean “water of life”. Whiskey, scotch, gin, bourbon, and some vodkas are made from distilled beers to which hops are not added, although vodka can also be made using potatoes (Solanum tuberosum), sugar beet (Beta vulgaris), and even soybeans (Glycine max)! Scotch is a special whiskey made by drying malted (=germinated) barley over a peat moss (Sphagnum) fire, adding some peaty water to the malt and storing the finished product in oak (Quercus) casks for at least three years. Gin is a clear whiskey that has been flavoured with a variety of plants, most prominently juniper (Juniperus). Bourbon obtains its distinctive taste by being aged in charred oak barrels.

The Japanese beverage sake is also a kind of beer made with fermented sake rice (Oryza sativa) not the rice varieties that we eat. However, both yeast and a mold (Aspergillus orzyae) and are used in fermentation.  The exact same species of mold is also used to make soy sauce.

Alcohol is also made from the stems and roots of plants. During photosynthesis plants produce a sugary sap in their leaves, which is transported through special tubes in the stems called phloem to the roots for storage as starch. The most commonly known stem libation is rum. Rum is made from a grass that produces lots of sugar: Sugar Cane (Saccharum officinarum). The cane juice or molasses (the by-product of sugar production) is fermented and aged to produce rum. The sap from Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum) trees can also be fermented to produce a kind of “maple rum”. Palm wine is made from the sap of date (Phoenix dactylifera) and coconut (Cocos nucifera) palm trees. Rhubarb (Rheum rabarbarum) stems can be crushed, mashed and fermented to produce a very nice “rhubarb wine”.

Tequila and mescal are alcoholic beverages produced by baking the fleshy leaves of Agave (Agave) plants that grow in the deserts of Mexico. After baking the leaves, the agave juice is extracted, fermented and aged in wood barrels, usually oak.

The starchy tubers of potatoes and roots of sugar beets are also fermented and distilled to produce some kinds of vodka. Since potato vodka is flavour-neutral it is often used as a base for flavourful alcohols (see below).

So if you enjoy drinking you’ve got a lot of plants and fungus to thank! And remember that if you are imbibing this holiday season don’t drive!

This September I was thrilled to be able to go on a tour of southern Manitoba with my colleagues here at the Museum. Our mission: to learn more about the people, places and wildlife that calls this part of the province home to generate ideas for new gallery exhibits.

One of the most memorable things about our trip was neither a person, nor a place, nor an organism. In fact, it wasn’t even an animate object – it was a force: the wind. For anyone who has spent time on the treeless prairies you know what I mean when I say that the wind has an almost tangible physical presence. Standing on the Assiniboine River valley slope on a lovely patch of mixed grass prairie near Minota, I almost felt that I would get blown away along with the Dotted Blazingstar and Hairy Golden Aster seeds. On a windy day such as that, it was easy to understand why so many prairie plants evolved wind-dispersed seeds. Plants in the Aster family are particularly adept at becoming windborne due to the extreme modification of their sepals.

Most of us have picked a dandelion and blown the fruits away but we rarely examine them closely or truly appreciate their beauty and functionality. Next time you see a dandelion look a little closer before you blow and admire one of the innovations of nature.

One of the problems with being a botanist working at a museum is that most of the botanical specimens cannot be displayed in an exhibit. The bulk of the collection consists of herbarium specimens (dried, pressed plants mounted on paper) that are very fragile and light sensitive. As a result they usually can’t be displayed for long (or at all) without being damaged. Further, a pressed plant is only a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional organism and can’t really convey the true beauty of the species. As a result, I need to be innovative when creating exhibits in ways that my colleagues with their fancy artifacts, skeletons, and fossils don’t have to be.

One of the ways that we represent plants in our galleries is by creating models of what the plant looks like when it’s alive. Our artists will go into the field, photograph a plant and then collect a specimen of it. Back at the Museum they take colour notes, do drawings, and take more photographs, to get as much information as they can. They then dissect the plant, make molds of each part, and later those parts are re-created out of a variety of materials, like waxes and resins. After painting all the plant parts, each of the pieces is then put together like a giant three-dimensional puzzle. The Western Prairie Fringed Orchid (Platanthera praeclara) model, our most complicated one, consists of 300 parts!

Another way that people will be able to appreciate the Museum’s botanical collection, as well as another hard-to-exhibit group of organisms-pollinating insects-is via our upcoming Prairie Pollination virtual exhibit. With funds from the Virtual Museum of Canada, the Heritage Grants Program of the Manitoba Government and The Manitoba Museum Foundation, this exhibit will feature over 200 specimens of prairie plants and pollinating insects. Visitors will be able to see photographs of the Museum’s specimens, photographs of the organisms in the field and interpretive information on how plants and pollinators interact with each other. Video tours of native prairie and The Manitoba Museum’s collection vault, learning resources for teachers and a variety of games and activities will help visitors learn more about these organisms and why they are important. Full and temporary staff (including me, of course) are busy preparing the content for this new exhibit, which will open in October of 2013. Prairie Pollination will be an innovative way for people to access information on recent Museum research and collections in an interesting and user-friendly way.

To help The Manitoba Museum obtain additional funds to create a mobile phone application that will link our collections with restored and remnant prairies where these organisms live (a virtual biocache) please consider voting for the “Click, Text and Pollinate” project at the Aviva Community Fund website, click here.

One of my favorite photographs is the one of a young chimpanzee reaching out to touch Jane Goodall’s face. This photograph was taken many months after Jane has started quietly and patiently observing the chimpanzees. Eventually her patience paid off and the chimps felt safe enough to make contact. I love the idea of being so close to nature that nature wants to touch you back.

Last month I had a wildlife encounter of the entomological kind. I was in Spruce Woods Provincial Park to observe the insect pollinators of the rare Hairy Prairie Clover (Dalea villosa) plant. Like Jane, I found that that the best way to ensure good observations was to simply sit down, keep still and shut up. Movement, especially sudden ones, and noise frightens the insects away. Fortunately for me it doesn’t take months for insects to become accustomed to you. After a few minutes of sitting still all sorts of marvelous insects the like of which I’ve never seen before were swarming over the plants.

As it turns out I wasn’t the only creature interested in observing strange animals.  I was the subject of much curiosity by my backbone-challenged subjects. A long-legged wasp investigated my camera bag. Then, a shiny copper bug landed on my hand and probed me with its proboscis. A grasshopper jumped on my shoe and began delicately nibbling one of my laces. A large cicada landed on my hip with a loud thump to check me out. But the most thrilling moment was when a beautiful black butterfly landed on my wrist and started licking me to get the salts in my sweat. It tickled and I giggled. Then I sobered and got a bit teary: this lovely creature trusted me enough to make contact so that it could obtain something it needed to survive.

Read any scientific paper and you are presented with cold, hard facts and stoic observations. Emotions do not belong in scientific journals. Conclusions are restricted to what the data can tell you. Scientists are trained to do this but it gives the public a distorted perception of what we are really like. I don’t know any field biologists that don’t love nature, and haven’t been deeply and profoundly moved by what they’ve seen. Jane Goodall learned something a long time ago: just as the animals being observed are changed by their experience, so is the observer. In observing nature, you grow to love it and are compelled to help save it because you see the truth of our reality: we are all connected, and in losing a species we lose a part of ourselves.

Recently the Manitoba Centennial Centre renovated Steinkopf Garden (the area between the Concert Hall and the Museum). I was part of the consultation process with the landscape architect company Hilderman Thomas Frank and Cram. I suggested including some native plant species in the garden since that way we could potentially use the area for programming. The architects were willing to do so, having used native species successfully in the past. One of the plants I suggested was a species of milkweed (Asclepias ovalifolia) since I thought it would help to attract Monarch butterflies (Danus plexippus). So one of the raised flower beds was planted with 44 Dwarf Milkweed plants last fall.

I went for a walk through the garden recently and was absolutely astounded. Not only were Monarch butterflies attracted to the plants, they outnumbered them! I counted 73 monarch caterpillars crawling around! Some were big and fat, and others still just little babies. And they were eating like mad. In fact they had eaten almost every single plant down to the veins. You’d think that being a botanist this would bother me but monarchs are just too cute to stay mad at!

My astonishment soon gave way to concern. The big, fat monarch caterpillars might be able to successfully enter the pupal stage and become butterflies but I was afraid that the little ones would starve. I decided to rescue a few of them and put them on the milkweeds that I grow in my backyard. Shortly after transplanting them they were happily (at least I assume they were happy but you never really know do you?) munching my milkweeds. I also contacted the other staff at the Museum to see if they could rescue a few as well.

The Museum staff came through with flying colours, relocating just about every single caterpillar to backyards, and community and public gardens. Apparently this abundance of Monarchs is happening all over North America with unusually large numbers of butterflies seen in Canada (Click for Winnipeg Free Press article). Growing milkweeds in your yard is a great way to help save these beautiful creatures from extinction. Plus you get to enjoy watching some of the loveliest insects in Manitoba!