Summertime Offers Long Days, Hot Times For Science In Field

by: NEERAJA SANKARAN It's summertime! Time to grab sand pails and suntan lotion and head for the shore. But not everyone who goes out to sea and wades in the tidepools is there for a vacation. For some scientists, at least, a trip to the beach on a summer's day is all in a day's work. Scientific Spelunker:Serban Sarbu explores the ecology of isolated systems at the Movile Caves in Romania. Take the researchers at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Mass. Since it was founded in 1888, this independent, nonprofit laboratory has served as the summer home for a variety of biologists studying the creatures that inhabit the coast along New England, at the convergence of the Gulf Stream and Labrador Current. Although MBL remains operational year-round, with about 200 full-time staff members, director John Burris points out that the laboratory's population "swells to about 1,000 each summer." A little more than half of these visitors, he says, are students and faculty for graduate-level summer courses in such disciplines as physiology, neuroscience, and embryology. The rest are scientists, who come to Woods Hole in the summer and rent laboratory space at MBL. Scientists agree that summer can be a very productive time, as universities do not conduct regular classes, leaving investigators relatively free to pursue their pet projects. Unencumbered by teaching and administrative responsibilities, many choose to conduct their field studies during this period. "The research here runs from soup to nuts," observes MBL's Burris, enumerating a host of marine creatures native to the waters of Woods Hole that become the targets for various researchers. "We have a strong neurobiology presence: Scientists have been coming to study axonal transport in squid for over 75 years; cell biologists come to study surface clams; a whole spectrum of scientists work on sharks and skates [the family of rays]; and still others study such diverse subjects as vision or defense mechanisms in horseshoe crabs." Bench at the beach: Rodolfo Llinas spends summers at Woods Hole (right image) studying axonal transmission in squid. A neuroscientist who does brain research on mammals during the year, Rodolfo R. Llinas, chairman of the department of physiology and neurosciences at New York University Medical Center, has been a regular summer visitor to MBL for more than three decades. He spends his time there studying the process of synaptic transmission--communication between nerve cells--in squid from May to September, when the creatures come close to the shore in abundant numbers. As a model for studying synapses, Llinas says, the squid is at once "spectacularly unique and totally generalized. It has the largest synapse ever to be found in a living system, at least 10 times larger than any other. So, for purely physical reasons, one can make observations about nervous transmission which would be difficult in other animals "For me, the squid system serves a dual purpose," he adds. "It serves as a muse for ideas which I can apply when studying mammalian systems, while also acting as a paradigm which allows me to measure or test my results from other systems. Tales from Toolik: Biologist Brian Barnes uses the brief Alaskan summers to observe ground squirrels in the wild. "I could not do this work in New York," Llinas notes. "It is impossible to maintain squid in the laboratory." In addition, he declares, "MBL is the ultimate watering hole for scientists. I get an opportunity to meet my colleagues from other places and exchange ideas and information with them." Arctic Endeavors Not all scientists opt to gather by the sea, however--some have far more unusual locales in mind as they pack up their summer gear. For most of the year, the Arctic Circle remains virtually untouched by humans, its vast, intractable expanse of snow, ice, and subzero temperatures discouraging even the most perfunctory exploration. But for a few months every summer, the region undergoes a dramatic transformation, according to University of Alaska, Fairbanks (UAF), biologist Brian Barnes. "With almost constant daylight through June, July, and early August, the Arctic is a productive and busy place. Everything is warm and green." During this ice-free season, Barnes and some 150 others will be in residence at the Toolik Field Station, an arctic research site located in the foothills of the Brooks Range in Alaska. Owned and operated by UAF's Institute of Arctic Biology, the station hosts an array of researchers, representing such disciplines as biology, ecology, hydrology, and geology. Barnes, the chairman of the station's steering committee, goes there each summer to study the behavior of ground squirrels in their natural habitat. "I am interested in the physiological ecology of these animals-- namely the physiological mechanisms like hibernation that allow them to adapt to their environment," he says. "The squirrels spend nine months of the year in hibernation underground, during which time their body temperatures drop to -3'C. The first thing they do when they come out is mate, and by early August they begin to hibernate again. "One of the things that interests us is how they are able to breed so early--we will be attempting to correlate their hibernation temperatures with breeding status, for instance. We can only look at pieces of what is happening through our lab work--the field work is important to tie our physiology findings in to what is happening at the level of behavior." Barnes and his student Loren Buck, who traveled to Toolik in April, were the first visitors to go to the station this year. "With 100 percent snow cover and -20'C, we skied out to watch the first males emerge from hibernation," Barnes comments. Another visitor to the station this summer will be Michael Miller, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Cincinnati (UC). Miller, whose area of expertise is limnology-- the ecology of fresh waters--was among the 10 initial users of the Toolik Station in 1975 and has visited the station every year since then. "Originally, we had to fly out to Toolik from Point Barrow, Alaska, and we set up camp at the edge of the lake," he recalls. "That first year we had a camper trailer, and in 1976 we pulled in a mobile home which served as lab, dining room, and kitchen. We slept in tents." Describing his summer studies, Miller says, "We will be looking into the basis of the productivity of a suite of lakes in the region, as well as measuring some of the land-water interactions, namely the exchange of organic matter and nutrients between the two." Such experiments also are ideally conducted in the summer, when the lakes and rivers are thawed. During the rest of the year, Miller pursues his limnological studies in other locations, including Midwestern rivers in the U.S. and the Amazonian lakes. Exotic Expeditions Thomas Kane, another UC biologist, is also headed away from home this summer, although in a completely different direction: to the Movile Cave in southern Romania. Kane has an interest in the ecosystems and evolution in isolated habitats such as caves. With no natural entrance into its depths, the 1,000-foot-long cave was discovered in 1986 by a group of Romanian scientists, one of whom--Serban Sarbu--is now Kane's graduate student. "The cave represents a completely closed system, going back 5 million years to the late Meiocene period," explains Kane, who learned about the cave and began visiting it after Sarbu joined his laboratory. "The water in the cave is on the order of 25,000 years old. We found about 48 species of animals--mostly arthropod--in these caves; 33 of these were never described earlier," he adds, citing examples such as a water scorpion and a blind leech. This summer, Kane and UC bacteriologist Brian Kinkle plan to study the food web in the cave. "There had been no food from the outside in all these years--the food chain is ultimately based on chemoautotrophic bacteria that use sulfur from the waters as their energy source," he explains. The Movile Cave research has received funding from the National Science Foundation and the Washington, D.C.-based National Geographic Foundation. While Kane, Kinkle, and Sarbu go spelunking and cave-diving into the depths of Movile, Peter Kuniholm of Cornell University will be leading a troupe of students--as he has done since 1973-- through the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas to drill holes and extract wooden cores from ancient buildings and living trees. At home, Kuniholm is an associate professor of art history and archaeology and a curator of classical antiquities, specializing in applying scientific methods to date artifacts and buildings. Upon their return to the U.S., Kuniholm and his students will subject the wooden cores to a dating process called dendrochronology, or tree-ring dating. "Trees and wood are a very beautiful document of time--they are accurate to the year," notes Kuniholm, who has an extensive dendrochronological database for the region encompassing "the eastern borders of Turkey, Northern Lebanon, Cypress, Greece, Crete, Bulgaria, and parts of southern Italy." The process, which Kuniholm describes as "extremely labor- intensive," involves counting the number of rings in a cross- section of wood, with each ring representing one year. Besides their value in dating various edifices, Kuniholm says, the dendrochronological databases yield information on climate changes. "In a way, the wood is a decoder of weather--unusual blips in a sequence of rings indicate certain extremes in climate in certain years," he explains. Such data could be of use in retracing climate changes that occurred prior to systematic record-keeping, he suggests. Home Fires Burning Of course, not everyone sees summertime as a chance to get away; in fact, most institutions continue to function through these months. Officials from different universities point out that summer outreach programs are a significant part of the yearly activities at most schools across the U.S. At Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), for example, William Brown, head of biological sciences, has organized a series of workshops on the use of computers in science for teachers from Pittsburgh's public schools. The university also plays host to the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Sciences, an all-volunteer effort that brings high school students from the area on campus to work in labs. CMU biology professor Peter Berget runs this program. In the Math and Marine (M&M) Science Program at the University of New Hampshire, ninth-graders from Maine and New Hampshire visit the Durham campus to conduct field studies under the guidance of David Burdick, an assistant professor of natural resources. UNH also hosts a four-week, experiential program in which 10th- and 11th-graders develop projects. Subosh A. Minocha, a professor of plant science, directs the program. Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia is conducting a teacher-enrichment program, inviting junior high school teachers to participate in a six-week research experience at the university. Edward B. Christian, assistant dean for student affairs and special programs, is heading the program. Twenty high school students who have completed their junior year will live on the campus of the State University of New York, Binghamton, for six weeks and will work in the laboratories of the institution's chemistry researchers. The program is directed by Udo Brinker, a professor and chairman of the department of chemistry. Whatever their pursuits, scientists agree that the summer months go by in a rush of activity, whether at home or abroad. Those who do travel find that the time away is one of discovery, catching up, and rejuvenation. "It offers a change of pace," observes Llinas. "For a few months each year, I go away from the rush and bustle of Manhattan to Woods Hole, where I can see the ocean from the window of my laboratory. I keep promising myself that one of these years I will actually go to the beach there!" (The Scientist, Vol:9, #12, pg.1, June 12, 1995) (Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.) garfield@aurora.cis.upenn.edu 71764.2561@compuserve.com The Scientist, 3600 Market Street, Suite 450, Philadelphia, PA 19104 U.S.A.

Summertime Offers Long Days, Hot Times For Science In Field

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