Invaders Are Taking Over!

Last week, an article appeared on the site vtdigger.org, about the rise of a particular invasive species in Vermont - Japanese Knotweed.

We have Japanese Knotweed here on campus. The closest patch I know of is directly across the school entrance on Academy Road, just to the left to the entrance of the trail down to the woodlot (we passed it last week. Mr. Bugg also has noticed a lot of knotweed around his house). Alien plants are plants that come into new areas from other areas. Typically, their seeds or bits of plant are carried in by animals, boat ballast water, or people not careful about what's attaching to themselves (or their forest products - especially wood). Invasive plants are like alien plants, only they come into new areas and take over.

Invasives are particularly good at adapting to live in new habitats. And they multiple quickly. End result: they force native species out but conquering the habitat and depriving native species of much needed sunlight and/or nutrients. Or they simply multiply so quickly, that they literally smother native plants out. (There are also invasive animal species that operate in the same manner).

Some foks believe that climate change is making Vermont a more hospitable place for more and more invasive species. Tim Schmalz, a plant pathologist with the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets, says he isn't so usre. Schmalz remains skeptical of studies that say particular weeds will spread as the climate changes. "“There are a lot of things that may happen or may not happen,” said Schmalz. “It’s very hard to predict environmental change on that scale.”

Others belive that invasive plants and weeds will become much more acclimated to Vermont as our weather continues to change due to carbon dioxide build up. Invasives including Poison Parsnip, which secretes an oily substance that transfers easily to your skin. The substance (its sap) reacts with sunlight to give you a good (bad?) case of phytophotodermatitus (phyto = plant, photo = light, dermatitus, well, you know). The end result is that your skin feels like it's on fire. While it subsides over time, it never truly goes away.

Someimes there is no single cause. A bit of invasive comes in on manure. Or. farm equipment on loan. Or transport for intra-state commerce. There is so much change going on in our state. But maybe - just maybe - climate change is making Vermont a more hospitable place for these new invaders.

Take Japanese Knotweed for example. This hollow-stemmed plant spreads by underground stems. When it’s torn apart by floods, (or Hurricanes, as in "Irene") pieces of the stem wash into new areas. In a matter of weeks, it takes over - destroying gardens, natural habitats, and sometimes wreaking economic havoc.

Sometimes, invasives are good. Invasives have been known to speed up the re-forestation efforts in some areas devastation by flood or fire. They can also assist in re-establishing riparian growth, the shrubs or trees that grow along a riverbank and help maintain the strength and integrity of the soil that forms along the bank, preventing flooding.

But in truth, there is little saving grace in Japanese Knotweek. It's a nasty plant that is hard to get rid of, and takes over habitat. It deprives natural native plants of resrouces, and in so doing, deprives native animals of food from the plants that they replace. So what do you think? How can we - as a class - make a difference? How can we develop some kind of service learning project to clear our campus (and Mr. Bugg's yard?) from this invasive plant?

Please share your thought about invasive species and their eradication in your comments below! Thanks!

Let's jump right into the frying pan, shall we?

Figuratively speaking that is.

Just a few days ago, on August 19, the New York Times published an article previewing the work of the International Panel on Climate Change. This panel was made up of several hundred (!) scientists, working under the aegis of the United Nations, and includes some Nobel Prize winners. The upcoming report is the fifth time that the panel has published a report since 1988, and the news is not good. Basically, the panel rebukes those who doubt climate change, or speak of the process slowing down. The panel states that temperatures are continuing to rise in many areas. So are ocean levels. In fact, this huge committee reached consensus on stating that sea levels have the potential to rise more than three feet by the year 2100. This level of change would flood major cities across the globe, including Miami, New Orleans, New York, and Boston. Not to mention Shanghai, Venice, Sydney, and London.

 What's striking about this report is that for the first time, the panel members laid the blame on us. The report states that human activities, particularly those resulting in increased emissions, are the principle cause of the climate changes being observed and recorded.

What are those changes? Well, carbon dioxide levels, up 41% since the end of the 19th century, have increased at a faster rate in the past 20 years than has ever been seen in human history (at least as far as we can tell using ice core samples retrieved in the arctic and antarctic - I'll talk a bit more about this in class). And if you were born after April 1985, as all of you were, you have never experienced a single month of "below average" temperature.

Think about that for a second. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (our country's main weather and sea conditions information source) reports that 2012 was the warmest year - ever. (I'm assuming that they are referring to "ever" in the sense of human history. My guess is that the earth was a lot warming when the dinosaurs were roaming around the planet chomping on 30 foot tall ferns).

The main concern is that every increase, every single degree of temperature, adds a tremendous amount of heat energy to the planet. This energy has an exponential effect on other systems. This means that a 1X increase will cause a 10X increase in say, ocean temperatures, that would then cause a 100X increase in something else.  Looking at things exponentially, the possibility that human activities may lead to an increase in temperature of up to 5 degrees in the coming 200 years has the potential to be catastrophic. We may not be around to be effected by its full impact, but is that the type of environment we want to leave to our children's children?

 Every major scientific academy in the world, or at least 99.8% of them, agree that climate change is real and that it is happening now. Some scientists however question the role of mankind and human activities in creating this situation (or at least, in making it worse). There seems to be consensus that the panel has tried to be conservative in their predictions. In fact, they have even laid out some scenarios in which the temperature and sea level increases might be bad, though not nearly as catastrophic as many think.

What to do, what to do.

Well - what should we do? How should we react to this news?

I invite you to watch the video clip that I have embedded below, titled "The Most Terrifying Video You Will Ever See". It's a 9 1/2 minute long lectur-ette (not counting whatever ad YouTube as in front of it which I encourage you to skip!) and well worth seeing. After you watch the video, I'd like you to reflect on what I wrote, and what was presented in the video. After thinking about for several minutes, I'd like you to post a comment on the blog that reflects your personal response to the question: "What should we do?". One paragraph to relate your response to the video, and another with your top 3 choices about changes that you, or all of us, can make in our lifestyles right now to help things out a bit.

Because, the thought of doing nothing at all is, frankly, terrifying.

How Big is Big? How small is small?

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on;
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.
(Augustus De Morgan: A Budget of Paradoxes)

There's so much we don't know, so much we don't understand. Sometimes we are like elephants, trying to understand the mosquitos that bite us. Other times we are the mosquitos, trying to make sense of the enormity of the elephant upon which we have landed.

Think about this: scientists have just discovered the largest structured formation in the universe. A group of quasars; primitive, pulsating centers of potential galaxies that stretch across a space of 3 billion light years. In other words, light emitted from one end of this structure would take three billion years traveling at light speed to reach the opposite end of the structure. It boggles the mind.

At the other end of the size spectrum lies the bacteriophages. A bacteriophage is a virus that attacks bacterial cell. Imagine how small a virus is compared to a single bacteria. You could fit 4000 or so of these phages inside of the width of a human hair. They're incredibly small! So cover your nose and mouth when you cough or sneeze. You're ejecting tens of millions of these suckers each time you do.

The phage virus has a protein capsule head, a tail, and some legs that act like a tripod, allowing it to land/stand on the cell surface. It's a classic, instantly recognizable "bio shape" that sort of looks like a lunar (moon) lander:

Take a look at that sucker! It's a marvel of evolution! A sub-microscopic structure that has evolved for one purpose and one purpose only: to ensure its own survival. To reproduce. The head/capsule (capsid) is like a jiffy-pop popcorn pan. Except there's no popcorn inside of the phage capsid - what's inside? You got it - phage DNA. It's code of viral life. Or semi-life. Or, whatever a virus is, scientists aren't really sure. The phage lands on the bacteria, drills its way through the bacterial cell wall, and then injects its own DNA into the bacterial cell, forcing the bacteria to make copies - millions and millions of copies - of the phage DNA and new viruses.

These viral offspring fill the cell to the bursting point, at which time the cell releases millions of new viruses. It's quite similar to what's going on in many people who are combatting the influenza virus - "the flu" - right now. ("The Flu" - so named because Renaissance Italians believed that those who got sick fell under the influenza (influence) of unhealthy astrological alignments.)

The evolutionary precision of this design is magnificent, and has been known for decades. But something was recently discovered that blew me away. The virus's legs, those tripod-like things, are not merely a way for the virus to stand and attach to the bacteria. Recent electron micrographs reveal that they remain tucked away - folded up into the phage until they're needed. And then, the virus unfolds its "legs" and they do something amazing: they walk. They walk the virus along the surface of the cell looking for a good point of attachment. A suitable entry point for its own DNA.

Scientists have taken a series of electron microphotographs of this process and have recreated the series of events that occurs. Now, watch this CGI recreation of the process below. There's a blue protein capsule, and the yellow legs. And that DNA that has to be injected to infect the cell. The phrase "dynamic conformation" is used. It just means that the legs are capable of changing their shape.



How does this occur? Why does this occur? How does the virus - which obviously doesn't have a brain, or even the neural net of a starfish - "know" how to do this? Is the virus alive? And if the virus is alive, does this mechanism demonstrate a primitive kind of intelligence? Don't laugh - searching for, and locating the proper point of entry seems pretty intelligent to me. Luke Skywalkeer had a heck of a time trying to do it.

What are the lives of animals and plants ultimately about? Survival. Reproduction. Passing on their genetic material to the next generation. Some viruses, the phages, attach to bacterial cells in order to do this. And 90% of all of the cells in the human body, 90% of human mass, is composed of bacteria - not blood, heart, lung, skin etc. So what does that make us? Who, or what are we? Are we merely the containers, the environment, required by a more plentiful yet more primitive form of life? Who is really in charge? Is it humans, with their arsenal of antibiotics and vaccinations? Or is it this unbelievably small form of life that lives within us, benefitting us, yet also holding the potential to become lethal and harm us?

Are we the elephants? Or are we the mosquitos, gazing out at the vastness of the universe of which we are but a small part?

What are your thoughts on this?