Carnegie Museum of Natural History

One of the Four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh

Blogs from Powdermill Nature Reserve

Powdermill Nature Reserve is Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s environmental research center. Located 55 miles southeast of Pittsburgh in Rector, Pennsylvania, Powdermill is a field station and laboratory where researchers do long-term studies of natural populations in western Pennsylvania. In addition to being positioned for Appalachian-specific studies in ornithology, ecology, invertebrate zoology, and botany, Powdermill is a great place to spend a fun-filled day outdoors with the family.

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Snowflakes and Snow Fleas

by John Wenzel

river and trees in the snow

When Shakespeare wrote “Now is the winter of our discontent,” he certainly was not referring to entomologists.  Botanists, mammalogists, ornithologists, and herpetologists spend most of the winter in the office waiting for spring. But many entomologists remain busy because insects that live under water go into high gear and treat the winter as their growing season. Hatching from eggs in spring or summer, these aquatic “macroinvertebrates” get their Thanksgiving dinner as the leaves fall into the stream. The insects are grazing and hunting underwater, growing to adulthood, preparing to fly away next spring when the air is warm again.

I was lucky to grow up with a 10 acre woodlot on one side of our house and a 12 acre pond on the other. As a kid, I loved to be out in my row boat or exploring the woods, hunting wildlife, catch and release. My parents encouraged my interests in nature, providing books and equipment that allowed me to increase my knowledge and experience as I grew.

I raised caterpillars through metamorphosis, marked turtles that I would find again years later, and nursed orphaned baby animals. Initially, I had no special preferences other than those that seem to come naturally to all humans. Mammals capture our affection, we all wish we could fly like birds, predators are particularly interesting, as is anything colorful or rare. By the time I was in college, I decided to study insects as a career for many reasons, and chief among them was a very pragmatic element for a striving academic: if you know about insects, you can find fascinating species in your backyard, wherever you live, anywhere in the world.

Since college, I have learned a great deal about many other groups, but when winter is approaching, I enjoy very much being an entomologist.  Even on the coldest day in January, I can go out to a stream and find abundant insects doing their thing, below the ice in the cold water. Some specifically emerge in winter when there are no predators around. At Powdermill Nature Reserve, we have plenty of wonderful winter insects, and it is great fun to hunt for these gems.

scorpionfly

Here you see a female Boreus scorpionfly who came up from a patch of moss to walk across the snow looking for a male in late December. Also called a snow flea, Boreus is so rare that few entomologists ever see them alive. There is a deep reward in learning to appreciate small things, and I have never regretted becoming an entomologist, especially as winter approaches.

Want to know more about winter bugs? Read about the first Powdermill Christmas Bug Count.

John Wenzel is the Director at Powdermill Nature Reserve, Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s environmental research center. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

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From Metes and Bounds to GPS: Part 1

By James Whitacre

Did you know that George Washington was a cartographer? Well, technically his training was in surveying, but back in his time, surveyors would typically create beautiful maps to show off their surveys. Other famous Americans, such as Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and both Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, were also surveyors.

The map below is of one of Washington’s many farms near Mount Vernon, VA, which shows off his stellar map-making skills. Around the time when Washington was surveying land, the profession was gaining more ground as the industrial revolution was taking shape and the US was expanding.

map of George Washington's farm

A plan of my farm on Little Huntg. Creek & Potomk. R., George Washington, 1766; Source: Library of Congress

As I look in awe at Washington’s map, I can’t help but wonder how surveyors and cartographers collected and visualized their geospatial data before computers and GPS were around. It truly is a great mix of science and art. However, Washington and his fellow surveyors of antiquity used much different techniques than we use today.

Surveyors would use chains, rods (which were literally poles of a fixed length), and a surveyor’s compass or a Theodolite to quickly measure distances and angles. The Gunter’s Chain measured 66 feet long and contained 100 links. This chain could be used to measure many other lengths, for instance a rod (aka a pole or perch) equaled 25 chain links (16.5 feet), 10 chains equaled a furlong (660 feet or 1/8 mile), and 80 chains equaled one mile (5,280 feet). Further, an acre is defined as a one chain by one furlong (66 by 660 feet), which is 43,560 square feet (Are you able to follow all that math?).

The Theodolite contains an optical telescope with cross-hairs that is used to sight direction and then the angle or bearing can be read off a scale. Surveyors would also use sophisticated instruments such as zenith telescopes, sextants, or octants to determine the positions of the sun or stars which could also help with determining latitude and longitude.

By recording the measurements and angles or bearings from these instruments, surveyors would describe the land using a system called metes and bounds. This system also incorporates physical features, such as trees, stones, and streams, to describe the boundaries. Metes and bounds were originally used in England, and it is still used today, even in Pennsylvania. The image below is an example from one of Powdermill’s metes and bounds descriptions. Surveyors and cartographers can decipher these descriptions and use geometry (which comes from the Greek “earth measurement”) to find property boundaries in the field, or draw and chart the measurements on to paper, thus creating maps.

example of metes and bounds description

Example of Metes and Bounds description from Powdermill Nature Reserve; Source: Westmoreland County, PA, Recorder of Deeds

At the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Lab at Powdermill Nature Reserve, we spend a lot of our time collecting scientific data for research in the field so that it can be mapped and analyzed. Today, however, we use sophisticated GPS units, mobile devices, and high-end GIS software to help us efficiently collect, analyze, and visualize our field data. Stay tuned for my next blog post where I will discuss how GPS works and how we use it in our everyday research at Powdermill Nature Reserve.

James Whitacre is the GIS Research Scientist for Carnegie Museum of Natural History, where he primarily manages the GIS Lab at Powdermill Nature Reserve, the Museum’s environmental research center. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

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Pennsylvania Botany 2018

by Bonnie Isaac

Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH) was well represented at PA Botany 2018. The 4th Biennial Pennsylvania Botany Symposium took place on November 2nd and 3rd at the Penn Stater Hotel and Conference Center. CMNH staff were there in full force.  PNR Director John Wenzel, Post-Doctoral Fellow Mason Heberling, Botany Collection Manager Bonnie Isaac, and Botany Curatorial Assistant Sarah Williams attended in addition to over 200 other people. This event features a day of workshops followed by a day of presentations. CMNH Botany folks were involved in both the workshops and the symposium talks. Williams & Isaac assisted workshop leaders, Heberling was a student in one of the workshops, and Wenzel was a symposium speaker.  CMNH Botany volunteer Joe Isaac was the instructor for the workshop for Botanical Consultants.

Curatorial Assistant Sarah Williams, Post-Doctoral Fellow Mason Heberling, PNR Director John Wenzel and Botany Collection Manager Bonnie Isaac at CMNH Table in the Exhibitor hall at PA Botany 2018.
Curatorial Assistant Sarah Williams, Post-Doctoral Fellow Mason Heberling, PNR Director John Wenzel and Botany Collection Manager Bonnie Isaac at CMNH Table in the Exhibitor hall at PA Botany 2018.

John Wenzel’s presentation highlighted some of the exciting things going on at Powdermill Nature Reserve and CMNH integrating botany and technology. John showed the crowd some of the cool techniques developed at PNR for forest study using drones and computer simulation of trees as well as introducing them to the new AR Perpetual Garden App available for free in app stores. This app helps people learn about the effects of the deer population on an environment. It shows how the forest should look compared to how the forest looks when deer are over abundant. The app features Woodland In Balance vs. Woodland Out of Balance Scenarios along with dialogue to explain the differences and why they differ.

CMNH Botany has been active in this event since its inception in 2012. We hope to see more people attend this conference on plants and how important they are.  You can find more information for this conference and other plant related items at PABotany.org.

Bonnie Isaac is the Collection Manager in the Section of Botany. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

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Keeping Birds Safe with GIS and Citizen Science

By Jon Rice and James Whitacre

Almost 600 million birds die every year in North America after colliding with buildings. BirdSafe Pittsburgh, which has been a museum program for over four years, has collected over 1,500 birds that collided with windows. These birds have been collected in Downtown and surrounding areas, and through our efforts, we have learned what increases the likelihood of birds colliding with windows.

windows modified with a pattern birds can see

Locating and Researching Bird Strikes

Using the power of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), we have been tracking and collecting where birds have collided with windows. This will help us to find collision hotspots and assess the types of buildings that cause the most problems for birds. Our efforts so far have concentrated on downtown Pittsburgh with a crew of dedicated volunteers.

However, we are now inviting you – the public – to help us find bird strikes in your neighborhood. We have developed a form on our website for you to add bird strikes to our database. If you find a bird dead or stunned, you can help us add to our database of bird strikes using the form. It will guide you through how to add pictures of the bird, add the location to the map, and fill out the required data. Any bird added will help us expand our research.

We already know that skyscrapers, low-rise buildings, and residential houses alike threaten birds, albeit unequally. According to a study published in 2014, low-rises account for the majority of building related mortalities at 56%, with residential houses accounting for nearly all the rest at 44%, and high-rises only accounting for less than 1%. But, how do the buildings in downtown Pittsburgh and the surrounding neighborhoods fit into this picture?

By analyzing the precise locations of bird strikes in Pittsburgh using GIS, we hope to assess the types of buildings impacting bird deaths. By collecting fine scale data where birds strike windows, we could identify specific problem windows that birds strike more often than others. This would allow us to focus mitigation efforts to specific areas of concern rather than along an entire building façade. For instance, treating 10 windows on a building side instead of all 100 windows would result in considerable cost-savings while maintaining the same effect on decreasing bird strikes.

How You Can Help Save Birds

bird sitting on the sidewalk

Birds hit windows because of the reflections caused by sunlight hitting the glass and looking like open sky, trees or habitat. By breaking up the reflections with anything following a “2-inch-by-4-inch rule,” birds are less likely to strike the window. The 2-by-4 rule refers to the space between horizontal elements at no more than 2 inches apart, and the space between vertical elements at no more than 4 inches apart. These simple and cost-effective measures will reduce window collisions while maintaining the aesthetic qualities.

By helping us collect bird strike data and modifying the windows of your home or business, we can decrease the number of bird-window collisions and maintain stronger bird populations.

More information about BirdSafe Pittsburgh can be found at birdsafepgh.org.

Jon Rice is Citizen Science Assistant and James Whitacre is a GIS Research Scientist at Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Powdermill Nature Reserve. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

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A Striking Success in Protecting Birds

by John Wenzel

A particular point of pride of our bird research is the BirdSafe Pittsburgh program. A consortium of environmental groups and concerned citizens is working to create a more bird-friendly city, from restoring urban habitat to advising builders and architects on designing structures that will be less dangerous to birds. One of our prime collaborators has been Ashley Cecil, who was Artist in Residence at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Ashley’s art is bird-themed, including one work that was reproduced on adhesive film that reflects UV light and is highly visible to birds. This film can be applied to windows so that birds will see Ashley’s pattern and avoid collision rather than see a reflection of a distant tree they would approach, striking the window. The film is available in color, making the window look like a stained glass, and in transparent form, resembling lace.

Ashley Cecil in front of her art work

But does the film work? If you put the film on the window, does it reduce bird strikes? As the Director of Powdermill Nature Reserve, I thought I should lead by example and test the film on my own house. I have been monitoring bird strikes at my home since August of 2015. From about 6:00 am to 8:00 am, three or four days a week (at total of six to eight hours a week), I listened for strikes and recorded them. They are not random, nor evenly distributed. Certain windows seem to be a repeated problem, while others never seem to get hit. My house has 15 windows of various dimensions, plus a cathedral window that is 11 feet high and 21 feet wide. No bird has ever hit that window as far as I know. Most strikes occur when migrating birds are coming through, usually April and May, or September and October. When there is a flush of migration, it shows: I had seven strikes from August 27 to 31 in 2015, in only 10 hours of observation. Ignoring seasonal variation, and averaging across the entire data set, a rough estimate is that I observed about one strike for every 20 hours of observation. On June 14, 2018, our Urban Bird Conservation Coordinator, Jon Rice, installed the transparent film on the five most dangerous windows, leaving the others bare.

Jon rice applying birdsafe window

We have had zero bird strikes since the film was installed. To assess the effect of the film, consider that in the same period in 2017 we had seven strikes, in 2016 we had four, and in 2015 we had nine. Years have some random variation, but clearly, there is a reduction from these earlier three years’ average of 6.7 down to 0. More than that, my wife Donna and I became more vigilant since the installation of the film, and we logged about 10 or 12 hours of observation per week rather than six or eight we did for the baseline. If we use the baseline expected frequency of one bird per 20 hours of observation, then with the more thorough observations we would have expected a little more than one bird every two weeks, or about 10 birds in the 18 elapsed weeks, rather than 6.7. Using a simple “chi-square” statistic to estimate the difference between an expectation of 10 birds and an observation of zero, the probability is one in a thousand that we would get zero birds by random variation from an expectation of 10 birds. In other words, if our recent sample differs from our baseline probability purely by chance, we would have to measure 1,000 years to get one year as far from expectation as we got in 2018 following application of Ashley’s film. According to our scientific standards, we reject proposals that have a probability of less than one in 20. Our analysis is less than one in 1,000. We conclude that the film works very well to prevent birds from hitting windows.

You can contact Urban Bird Conservation Coordinator Jon Rice at RiceJ@CarnegieMNH.org.

John Wenzel is the Director at Powdermill Nature Reserve, Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s environmental research center. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

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Boogie Woogie Aphids

by John Wenzel

aphids on a branch

Aphids are usually small wingless insects that suck sap from plants, usually specializing on one kind of plant. Many species can reproduce rapidly by parthenogenesis, where females give live birth to daughters without mating. They can build up great numbers quickly, which is why aphids are often pests of crop plants. In late summer or early autumn, populations are about as large as they are going to get, and soon a generation of both male and females that has wings is produced. These will disperse and mate before winter comes. The winged females will lay eggs that last over winter to start the cycle again in the spring. In our area, one amusing species is the beech blight aphid (Grylloprociphilus imbricator) that feeds on beech trees. The aphid produces from its abdomen profuse wax fibers that give it a woolly appearance. In the photo shown here, the aphid itself is just a small brown dot at one end of the white fluffy wax mass. The wax is essentially a shield, and a predator that bites into the woolly floss will come away with nothing but wax. These aphids have a defensive behavior of waving their abdomens and the wax shield when they are disturbed, as you can see in this video of dancing aphids.

Because sap has far more sugar than nutrients, aphids need to get rid of the sugar by excreting it in the form of honeydew. Under a mass of aphids like that shown here, the honeydew will accumulate on the branches or the ground below the aphid colony and will attract flies, bees, wasps, and other insects seeking the sweet liquid. There is a black sooty mold (Scorius spongiosa) that grows only on the honeydew of beech aphids, and can build up a large mass. Neither the aphids nor the mold are detrimental to beech trees, so there is no need to try to exterminate either of them. If they are considered a nuisance by a homeowner, it is easy to wash the aphids off the branches with a hose.

John Wenzel is the Director at Powdermill Nature Reserve, Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s environmental research center. He has published research on the evolution of web building behavior. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.