The life history cycles of the bay checkerspot butterfly and its host plant, Plantago, don’t match up anymore. When the butterfly eggs hatch, the plant is no longer edible. Photo: kqedquest.

Tomorrow is our summer solstice—the longest day of the year here in the Northern Hemisphere. For folks in the Southern Hemisphere, tomorrow is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. The solstices occur thanks to the tilt of the earth. Humans have been recognizing and celebrating the solstices throughout history; Stonehenge is just one example. But we humans are not the only creatures that pay attention to day length. The life cycles of myriad plants and animals are controlled by the length of the day.

Many plants and animals are sensitive to the photoperiod, or day length. As day length grows longer throughout the springtime, many species of plants begin to flower. Other plants are triggered to reproduce when the day length becomes shorter. In these plants, a protein is actually responding to the number of hours of darkness, not to the hours of light. Many animals respond to day length, too. For many bird species, a critical day length initiates their reproductive maturation and is their cue to begin migrating. Decreasing day length also prompts hibernation in many animals. In all of these examples, photoperiod is controlling organisms’ phenology—the timing of life events, like plant flowering and bird egg laying. Phenology is often tied to the seasons, because of organisms’ responses to day length.

Phenology can also be controlled by other factors, like temperature and the amount of rainfall. As the days grow warmer because of climate change, the timing of organisms’ life cycles is shifting. Spring happens earlier than it used to, and many springtime life events are happening earlier too. In major 2003 study of nearly 700 species, including birds, insects, frogs, flowering plants, and trees, 62% of species’ life cycles had shifted over an average of 45 years. Birds and frogs bred earlier, migrating birds and butterflies arrived sooner, and plants flowered and buds burst earlier.

This is likely leading to a widespread phenological mismatch; while some organisms are responding to earlier springtime temperatures, other organisms are still tracking day length. This means that insects emerge ready to feed on particular plants, but the plants are not yet edible. The insects don’t get their food, and the plants don’t get pollinated. Or migrating birds arrive hungry, and their food source has not yet ripened.

It is difficult to know to what extent phonological mismatches are taking place. A proper study of phenology requires a lot of data—many widespread observations of when a particular plant is flowering, or when and where a particular migratory bird is present. This is where you come in. The National Phenology Network has a citizen science program that allows people across the country to record their observations of plants and animals. This crowd-sourced data will be used to determine the extent and effects of shifts in the timing of organisms’ life cycles.

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Image Credit: Alex Wild.

For those of us fighting losing battles against them in our kitchens, ants are just ants. But the species responsible for the majority of those invasions has a name: the Argentine ant.

Argentine ants have had amazing success as an invasive species in the US. Their West Coast super colony numbers in the billions and spans from Mexico to Oregon. But aside from invading homes, they've had a dramatic effect on native ants and local ecosystems.

While many of us may not think ants are particularly important, ants hold a number of key ecological jobs, as I learned in this week's story. They disperse seeds, aerate soil just like earthworms, and recycle nutrients just like nature's garbage men (well, garbage women. Worker ants are actually female). For more on ants throughout the world, check out this QUEST TV story.

Listen to the QUEST radio story Bay Area Ant Invasion

Argentine ants are certainly tiny, but thanks to their numbers, they've out-competed native ants for resources and attacked their colonies. So, many of the ecological jobs that native ants do are disappearing. Scientist have also documented the decline of coastal horned lizards, which depend on native ants a food source.Check out an interactive map of native ants.

Citizens are helping track Argentine ants and their impact on native ants through a citizen science project, the Bay Area Ant Survey, run by the California Academy of Sciences. You can find more information on how to submit ant specimens of your own here. And for a little more about how they're collected, check out this post by QUEST's Jessica Neely.

In their native range in Argentina, these ants aren't such a nuisance. They don't form the super colonies that we see in North America. It's almost a terrible ecological irony: since the ants in the US descended from a small group introduced by humans, they're genetically similar. So, colonies that would normally fight over resources now see each other as relatives. With no ant wars, they've put that energy into expanding.

So, what can we do when Argentine ants show up in our kitchens?

I asked the two scientists I interviewed for this story and their answers were pretty fascinating.

First, Cal Academy's Brian Fisher on the use of chemicals:

Second, UC Berkeley's Neil Tsutsui on what makes our homes look so good to ants:

Listen to the Bay Area Ant Invasion radio report online.

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Bay Area birders participate in the Audubon Christmas Bird
Count. Credit: terriem on flickr.com

Though it's easy to forget, any kid with a magnifying glass can tell you that you don't need a fancy degree to be a scientist. All it takes is a curious mind and a keen eye for observation. And in case the mere thought of a world full of wonders isn't enough to get you motivated, there are dozens of ways your personal observations can contribute to formal, published research. It's called "citizen science".

The idea behind citizen science is that ordinary folks, spread all across the country (or the world!), can collect valuable data on a breadth and scale that would be impossible for a single researcher to do on her own. It's particularly suited to projects that require lots of field observations but not a lot of special tools – things like counting creatures or measuring snow. And while the Internet has made the process of recruiting volunteers and reporting data easier than ever, for most projects, no technology is necessary. One of the oldest citizen science projects, the Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count, has been happening for over a hundred years!

In case you have any doubts about whether a scattered group of untrained citizens can really produce valuable data, just check out this week's headlines about how climate change is affecting bird populations (they're moving north). The news is based on an Audubon Society study that looked at 40 years worth of citizen-produced information.

So how can you get involved? There are all kinds of projects, some that are ongoing, others that happen at a particular time. Here are a few to consider:

• From February 13th – 16th, 2009, you can participate in the 12th annual Great Backyard Bird Count, another Audubon Society project (in partnership with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology), either on your own or by joining up with the Sacramento Audubon Society's organized events.
• As fellow blogger Ben Burress reported last month, from March 16-28, 2009 you can monitor light pollution through Globe At Night.
• Track a plant through the seasons with Project Budburst.
• Visit AntWeb's Bay Area Ant Survey to find out how to help discover and document the native and invasive ants in the Bay Area.
• Monitor frogs in your area with Frogwatch USA.
• Keep track of the weather with the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, & Snow Network.
• Follow the Monarch butterfly migrations with a variety of projects.

There's so much science out there, just waiting for you to get involved. Go observe!

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Composite image showing centers of urban light emission
Credit: NASAWant a chance to do some "citizen" science, contribute to an international investigation, and have some fun to boot? An opportunity is coming up in March: Globe At Night. All you need is your eyes….

The problem is summed up in two words: light pollution. A good deal of light produced by human civilization–streetlights, porch lights, shopping malls, security lighting, night time work lights, store fronts, parking lot lights, billboards, neon signs, the list is lengthy–shines or reflects upward into the atmosphere, there scattering off of suspended particles, like dust grains, water droplets, ice crystals and the like.

The scattered light shines back down from the sky, and we see it as a dull nocturnal glow, sometime faint, and sometimes quite pronounced. The amount of scattering particles in the air has an effect on the brightness of the night sky, but the root of the matter is the amount of light sources whose light escapes upward. The closer you are to the heart of an urban area, the more light pollution you will be subjected to.

So what? What's so harmful about that sky glow? Sometimes it can even look kind of pretty….

Well, the fact is, if you've never seen a clear night sky far from sources of major light pollution, you may not appreciate what you're missing: the sight of a clear and dark night sky in which you can literally see thousands of stars. And if you have seen a pristinely dark night sky before, think about the fact that, in 2008, half the population of the Earth was living in cities, many of whom may never have been out of their urban worlds, and for whom the night sky is naturally a dull version of day with a handful of washed out stars above.

There are also effects of light pollution on wildlife that include disturbance of day/night sleep cycles, less cover of darkness from predators, and even effects on plant life.

Globe At Night is a program that's been going on for a few years now whose aim is to measure and monitor the varying levels of light pollution around the world by using individual people as the instruments of measurement.

And it's pretty simple to participate in. The idea is that the brighter the light pollution is in any given location, the few stars you can see. The faintest stars quickly become drowned out in the sky glow, leaving only the brighter ones for your eyes to pick out. All you have to do is go outside on one or more nights in the last half of March, find the constellation Orion (which is pretty easy to find, even in a city), and count the number of stars you see there. Then, report your count through the Globe At Night website, where you'll also be able to see the observations of everyone else around the world, as well as find full instructions for participating.

Now, calendars marked? Know where Orion is? Have a sweater handy? You're all set….

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