Fishing in the Florida mangroves.

There I was, a mosquito biologist on a hot summer day, knee deep in the mud of a mangrove swamp bordering the Indian River Lagoon, the long estuarine system along the Florida east-coast.  I had given up trying to get a “biting count” (believe it or not, you actually try to count the number landing on you in one minute…an ‘index’ of misery!).

I had stood in this very spot two weeks before, and there were none, but shortly after that the tide had risen sharply, flooding the mangrove swamp and apparently hatching the myriad of saltmarsh mosquito eggs secreted in the mud.  I had missed finding the larvae, a critical part of any control effort.

Frustrated, I jammed my dipper, the long-handled scoop which is the main tool of the mosquito larvae sleuth, into a small puddle. No larvae, of course, but four small fish darted frantically about in the dipper. Always interested in fish, I glanced at them and could not immediately identify them, so I placed them in a bucket.

Sometimes it is the smallest things that are life-changing: this simple act, placing the four little fish in a bucket, has led to over 25 years of research and insights into the remarkable life of a very unusual fish.

The mangrove rivulus is the only known vertebrate which is a selfing, simultaneous hermaphrodite, able to “clone” themselves.

The “well known” part was due to a very unusual sex life: this is the only known vertebrate which is a selfing, simultaneous hermaphrodite—they “clone” themselves. Adult rivulus have a complex reproductive organ, and internally self-fertilized eggs are laid which hatch into exact genetic duplicates of the parent…with some exceptions, as you shall see. Oddly enough, pure male rivulus, which differ from the “herms” in having a bright orange/red tint, had been caught in the wild, but their function was unknown: sexual reproduction had been documented in the lab but never in the wild…but more on this later.

Covered with mosquito bites, I kept glancing in the bucket on the way back to my office that day. Once I got an ID on my fish, a few days later I was back in the mangrove swamp, peering at the small puddle where I had collected the fish. But this was no common puddle! I immediately recognized it as a water-filled land crab burrow. With a quantum leap in collecting technology, I plunged a small net into the murky depths of the burrow, and withdrew it with 5 more rivulus.  A few more dips, and I had a total of 13.  I was floored to realize that I had just collected more rivulus in one location than anyone ever had before.

Setting traps for rivulus in Florida mangroves.

More than a Hole in the Ground

After gently placing the fish back in the burrow, I left, wondering if this association was mere coincidence.

The great land crab (Cardisoma guanhumi) is a large blue crab found throughout the shorelines of the tropical Atlantic, but it is actually a terrestrial crab. It digs burrows in saltmarshes and mangroves and sometime inland for some distance. The burrows are dug to the depth of groundwater, typically about 2-3 ft. deep, and the crab uses the pool of water to moisten its gills.

I began to suspect that the “scarcity” of rivulus had more to do with “looking in all the wrong places.” I was right. I checked crab holes far and wide, in every saltmarsh and mangrove swamp where my job led me. In the ensuing years, I have collected several thousand rivulus, and not just in Florida: I have found them in Belize, and also in Honduras, the Bahamas and Cuba.

The relationship seems well established. So, in Florida at least, rivulus is not as rare as originally thought, but still rare enough to warrant designation by the state as a “Species of Special Concern” and collection is prohibited without a permit.

Fish or Amphibian?

Early in my burrow-peering days, I found that sometimes rivulus would be out of the water, stuck to the side of the burrow, well above the water line. This behavior apparently offers the fish a means of avoiding poor quality water. During these aerial jaunts, the fish becomes torpid and respires through an extensive capillary network in the skin and fins.

My colleague Dr. Patricia Wright from the University of Guelph in Canada has been studying the physiology of emersion in her lab for years, and her findings are remarkable. My own lab study has shown that they can live at least two months out of the water in damp habitats: when re-flooded after 66 days, they were skinny, but eager to eat and devoured mosquito larvae immediately!

The adaptive value of emersion was dramatically revealed when I came upon a macabre scene inside a crab burrow where dozens of small minnows had been stranded by receding tides.  Not as hardy as rivulus, the minnows began to die and rot, and I observed several rivulus emersed above and on the rafts of floating corpses, waiting for conditions to improve.  A week later, when all trace of the dead fish was gone, only live rivulus were left in the burrow.

It turns out that rivulus will also occupy small, shallow pools at higher elevations in the mangroves. These pools flood and dry intermittently with higher tides or heavy rainfall. It is rare to find other fish species here, as they die when the pools dry. In Belize, my colleagues William P. Davis and Bruce J. Turner and I were puzzling over where the rivulus went when such pools dried.  We had assumed that they would retreat to adjacent crab burrows or burrow into masses of mangrove leaf litter.  It turns out that there were other housing options when your pool dries up.

Dr. Eric Reyier and I performing a visual census. I’m wearing pink “tags” for labeling filed sites.

The Birds and the Bees

Speaking of sex (were we?), I have already alluded to the mysterious presence of male fish in an hermaphroditic species. Why would nature find this necessary? We know that male fish regularly show up in laboratory colonies of rivulus, and rearing the developing eggs at lower temperatures (~ 20° C /68° F) produces a high percentage of males, but low temperatures are not a common phenomenon in the tropics.  So, my colleagues and I were shocked in our initial collections in Belize to discover that fully 25 percent of the population was male, and this high ratio has now persisted for over two decades. A few stray males have shown up in Florida, and a couple from the Bahamas and Honduras, but something strange is going on in Belize, because there the fish is reproducing sexually.

Apparently, in the presence of these flashy males, the herms somehow suppress internal self-fertilization (a fascinating physiological problem in itself!) and lay unfertilized eggs, which are then fertilized externally by the males.  Of course, in the murky confines of a crab burrow (not the most romantic of settings), this has never been observed, but geneticists can tell by looking at the DNA that ‘sex’ is happening here!

When some wild Belize fish produce self-fertilized eggs in captivity, the offspring are not genetically identical. This means that at some point in prior generations, sexual reproduction occurred. Cloning has taken a lesser role here. Why? We don’t know. And the real puzzler is why would you need sex in an animal that appears to be eminently successful without it? After all, if you are distributed from southern Brazil to central Florida and throughout the entire Caribbean and western tropical Atlantic, you must be doing something right.  This extensive range does speak to the advantages of ‘waif dispersal’: it only takes a single individual to found a population.

As they say, much remains to be done, but I thank my lucky stars that I did not discard that dipper full of murky water on that fateful, mosquito-ridden day 25 years ago.  I still stalk the mangroves and look for other miracles. And there are others out there, to be sure.

D. Scott Taylor was raised in east central Florida and has a PhD in marine biology. His career interests are in mangrove fishes, where he has studied at field sites in Belize, Honduras, Cuba, the Bahamas and coastal Florida, battling mosquitoes the entire time.  He is currently a land manager with the Brevard County (Florida) Environmentally Endangered Lands Program, charged with managing and restoring Florida’s diverse natural habitats.

This guest blog is part of our 2013 National Wildlife Week celebration of trees and the wildlife that depend on them.

Efforts began in August 2008, when PCC’s Business Development and Entrepreneurship Center (BDEC) acquired an Appleseed Biodiesel reactor and set up the reactor on the PCC campus with the advice and assistance of a colleague from a nearby community College. Assembled from locally acquired materials, the reactor is used to produce biodiesel fuel from residual cooking oil. The biodiesel fuel can be used for a number of purposes, including fuel for vehicles or even to heat homes (fuel oil).

As lead instructor in PCC’s Biotechnology and Laboratory Technology programs, I became involved in setting up and using the reactor as well as instructing students in both the BDEC Continuing Education and the Curriculum (credit) program on the production and use of biodiesel fuel from recycled and renewable sources. The experience was enhanced greatly by collaborating with colleagues from other colleges in the North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS) and NCCCS BioNetwork.

BioNetwork supports the NCCCS mission of aligning world class workforce training and education to the biotechnology, pharmaceutical and life science industries. BioNetwork trains at all levels of this industry, upgrading the skills of incumbent workers, from entry level to management.

Sharing ideas with others in NCCCS and BioNetwork is a valuable partnership. Through these programs, PCC has been awarded grants to purchase analytical instrumentation to train students for these industries. Two of these pieces of equipment are the Fourier Transform lnfrared Spectrophotometry (FTIR) and Karl Fisher Titrator.

Randy Durren (rear) explains to student Sabrina Cardwell (front) how to set up the FTIR program for testing biodiesel

The Karl Fisher Titrator is a very specialized piece of analytical equipment that is important in the production of biodiesel fuels. This instrument is used to test for the presence and amount of water found in a substance.

As a member of the Environmental Sector of the North Carolina Curriculum Improvement Project (CIP), I learned about the Greenforce Initiative. This offering is a collaboration of Jobs for the Future and National Wildlife Federation where funding for the grants is provided by The Bank of America Charitable Foundation and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Through the Greenforce Initiative grant, I received funding for training and travel to attend a training session on using the FTIR and the Karl Fisher Titrator for biofuels applications.

As a result, 16 Biotechnology and Laboratory Technology associate degree students at PCC have received training in this technology. PCC also has offered training to the community, including an upcoming training in October 2012 to be offered through PCC’s BDEC to serve local residents. During this session, I will provide additional information on fermentation of bioethanol as a fuel source, along with the biodiesel, to increase the scope of class content. PCC provides these public offerings as an ongoing community service.

Georgette Ambruso, a PCC student who participated in the training, was complimentary of the opportunity to be trained. “As a student in the Laboratory/Biotechnology program at PCC, I was able to take part in some very special training this semester,” she said.  “Sally Banks from

Denzel Williams (left), Randy Durren (center) and Bryant Lofton (right) observe the results from using the Karl Fisher Titration to test biodiesel fuel for the presence of water

PCC plans to increase rural education and training opportunities related to production of biodiesel and ethanol. Now that I have learned to use both the FTIR and Karl Fisher titrator to test biofuels for content and purity, PCC will offer a “confirmation of purity” source with the assistance of the BDEC, the Continuing Education, and the curriculum (credit) instructional programs. We also plan to continue establishing partnerships and collaborations for the promotion and usage of sustainability, “green” technologies and biofuels from renewable sources. This will contribute to the process of creating new employment opportunities in the area.

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As a member of the North Carolina Community College System, Piedmont Community College serves Caswell and Person counties. Its main campus is located in Roxboro, NC, and its branch campus is located in Yanceyville, NC. Randy Durren is the lead instructor in the College’s Biotechnology and Laboratory Technology programs. He was honored to be named the 2011 Biotechnology Instructor of the Year for NCCCS BioNetwork. For more information, visit the College’s website at www.piedmontcc.edu

The moose population in northeast Minnesota is being devastated by climate change. (Dick Forehand)

But this week, the chances for action on reducing the severity of climate change by reducing carbon pollution are starting to look up.  The President and Congress are giving ever more attention to the need for bold climate action, and we’re seeing growing momentum across the country.

Bold Words From President Obama

In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Obama built upon the promise he made in his inaugural address—to “respond to the threat of climate change, knowing the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations”—by laying out his commitment to reducing carbon pollution and fighting climate change with a set of concrete proposals.

“The good news is, we can make meaningful progress on this issue while driving strong economic growth. I urge this Congress to pursue a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change, like the one John McCain and Joe Lieberman worked on together a few years ago. But if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.”

Congress is paying attention

President Obama’s inaugural address and State of the Union speech emphasized the need to take strong climate action, and it looks like Congress is paying attention. On Wednesday, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held a briefing on the latest climate science for members of Congress.  Four distinguished scientists testified that the impacts we’re seeing from climate change are just beginning: the next few years will see increasing sea level rise and extreme weather events, and failure to take serious action to cut carbon emissions will only increase the damage to wildlife, fragile ecosystems, and public health.

Senators Bernie Sanders and Senator Barbara Boxer introduced comprehensive legislation on climate change, an important first step in taking action on climate in Congress.  The legislation would tax carbon emissions at $20 a ton, with the goal of cutting U.S. carbon emissions 20% from 2005 levels for 2025.  More than half of the revenue—as much as $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years—would be returned to taxpayers as a monthly rebate.  Much of the remaining revenue would be used to fund energy efficiency and clean energy programs.  NWF sees putting a price on carbon as a key tool in fighting carbon pollution, and will continue to work with members on both sides of the aisle to advance climate solutions.

Ignoring climate change is risky

Yesterday, we got another sign that the government is starting to realize the dangers of continued inaction on climate change. The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the independent, nonpartisan “congressional watchdog” that submits reports to Congress on how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars, announced today that it is adding the financial risks posed by climate change to its “high-risk list.” The high-risk list, released at the start of each new Congress, includes 30 federal programs that are at high risk of waste, fraud, abuse and financial loss—essentially, the GAO identifies areas where the federal government is mismanaged or inefficient.  The addition of climate change to this list is huge news: the watchdog is telling the government that the failure to address climate change is putting us at huge financial risk.  Ignoring climate change is, simply, bad business.

In the announcement, the GAO confirmed what we’ve always known: carbon pollution puts people, property, and the environment at risk, and we must both fight future pollution and adapt to become more resilient to the changes that are already occurring.  Climate change adaptation just makes sense, and ignoring climate change and its risks puts the federal government—and the country—in an incredibly vulnerable position.

Speak up for the polar bears, moose and wildlife across the country threatened by climate change–send a message to President Obama urging him to move forward on limits to carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants.

Tuckerman Ravine Trail 1962, The Forest Historical Society

Cameron Wake, a climate scientist at the University of New Hampshire drafted the letter and recruited colleagues from the Granite state to sign it after seeing a similar effort by scientists in Iowa. The signers are professionals who have devoted their careers to studying climate change, its impacts on our natural resources and communities, and real-world options for responding. People like:

• Erich Osterberg, a Dartmouth professor studying how glaciers and Greenland responded to past climate changes so we can better predict how they might behave in the future.
• Jeannie Sowers, a political science professor at University of New Hampshire, who does research on the political implications of climate change and other environmental stress, especially in the Middle East.
• Ellen Douglas, a hydrologist and engineer who works on adapting water resources to climate change.  
• Serita Frey, an ecologist researching how climate change and other environmental stressors affect the health of soils

That these experts span a range of academic and practical fields speaks to the fact that the impacts of climate change are more and more pervasive. It is crucial that we bring this diversity of expertise to bear on understanding the scope of the problem and devising effective responses.

I applaud these scientists for having the courage to step into the fray. And, I hope that our political candidates might have the same courage to address climate change with the urgency needed to safeguard the environment, economy, and outdoor traditions of New Hampshire and beyond.

Galileo's tomb in Tuscany (Flickr's Rob Glover)

In 1600, the Dominican friar Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for his then heretical belief that the Earth rotated about the Sun.  And it took nearly 360 years before Galileo was finally pardoned by the Pope for his scientific studies demonstrating the same. While we no longer literally burn scientists at the stake, they still face persecution for upsetting the apple cart.

Take the case of Dr. Michael Mann, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, who authored a key paper demonstrating the earth warming at a rapid rate over the last century. Some of his e-mail correspondence was stolen, and rather than the thieves being found and prosecuted, the deniers of climate change including the self-appointed Chief climate change denier Senator James Inhofe, went after Mann. They never provided a shred of scientific data disproving Mann’s conclusion.

Last month, yet another of so many investigations that I’ve lost count, completely cleared Mann of any wrong doing. In fact, the repeated exonerations of Mann lend even greater validity to his climate change research, which has withstood far greater scrutiny than the fact that the oil and gas industry has contributed more to Senator Inhofe’s campaign chest than any other industry.

Or take the case of Dr. Charles Monnett, who published a paper on his observations of drowned polar bears. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE), formerly the Minerals Management Service (MMS) which permits oil and gas wells, investigated Monnett for some completely unrelated, alleged, and obscure violation of ‘procurement’ processes.

Nonetheless, misguided investigators grilled him for hours about his polar bear observations, confiscated his field research notebooks, and even inquired about his relationship with Al Gore. Feeding off the seriously off-track investigation, the climate deniers claimed that climate change must not be real because of the investigation. BOEMRE put Monnett on administrative leave and suspended scientific research on polar bears that he’d had some involvement in. Then, last month the investigation stalled, BOEMRE hasn’t formally charged him with anything, he’s back at work, and the suspension of the polar bear research was reversed.

Climate deniers should do the research, provide the evidence, and publish in peer-reviewed scientific publications. The problem is, climate deniers don’t have the evidence. So instead, they persecute the scientists, just like Galileo was persecuted for his unpopular, but correct science.

Isn’t it time for a change? The press should stop giving ink and air time to deniers using junk science. Real climate science demonstrates the importance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions now; the Earth can’t wait even a few more years, let alone the nearly 360 years it took to vindicate Galileo.

Rupert Murdoch (courtesy World Economic Forum)

Will the media finally start asking if Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. was connected to the illegal hacking of climate scientist emails?

I’m more optimistic today after word the investigation into voicemail hackings is expanding to include email attacks:

Scotland Yard will expand its investigation of The News of the World and its parent company, police officials said Saturday, adding a new inquiry into possible instances of computer intrusion to the current accusations of phone hacking and payments to police officers.

The new investigation was opened after an examination of “a number of allegations regarding breach of privacy” received since the Metropolitan Police, also known as Scotland Yard, reopened inquiries in January into possible crimes by newspaper employees, a statement said.

It’s been frustrating that for all the rightful attention paid to The News of the World phone hacking scandal, virtually no journalist has been willing to ask if News Corp.’s lawbreaking extended into email hacking.

Given how quickly the stolen emails were handed to climate science deniers who were then immediately featured on Fox News, it’s a fair question to ask.

When the hacked emails were subject to independent investigation, climate scientists were vindicated. But given the clear as well as alleged connections between Scotland Yard and News Corp., there’s been no similar independent investigation of who stole the emails in the first place. And as much as journalists were eager to report to the controversy on the emails, they’ve shown little interest in doing the hard work of tracking down the thieves.

So far, there’s been no public evidence that News Corp. was involved. But how long do we have to wait before someone directs some sunlight into that corner of Rupert Murdoch’s infected empire?

Why, as the budget is being trimmed by 10-20%, is the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) environmental education program being eliminated entirely? (This national program has been modestly funded for nearly 20 years, recieving just $9.7 million last year.)  Why are some in Congress attacking basic environmental protections like the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, climate change research and the Endangered Species Act?

And please tell me why Congresswoman Adams of Florida is offering amendments to prohibit education about energy efficiency of all things?  Here’s the official summary of that amendment that was fortunately defeated!

“An amendment to prohibit the use of funds for maintaining, developing, or creating any Web site which disseminates information regarding energy efficiency and educational programs on energy efficiency specifically to children under 18 years of age.”

Why are some in Congress so averse to balanced, age-appropriate, engaging environmental education?

I have my theories…

Part of me fears that there is indeed a concerted effort by ultra-conservatives in Congress to stop education about the natural world. I hope I’m wrong!  And there is actually some strong evidence of the growing bi-partisan support for environmental education.

Did you know that more than 70 Republicans have co-sponsored legislation or voted in support of environmental education in the last three years?  Many on both sides of the aisle see sound environmental education as critical to America’s competitiveness and ability to innovate in a global economy.

I frankly believe that we in the environmental education community (myself included!) must do a better job in telling a compelling story in Congress about why environmental education is critical, not just “nice to do.” The research that so clearly shows the multiple benefits of environmental education for student achievement, creativity, innovation, America’s competitiveness, interest in science and math, and so much more.  Yet our key programs are the first to be cut, and not just cut, but completely eliminated.

Without this critical support from EPA, and other agencies that support environmental education like the U.S. Forest Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and others, we will be leaving future generations in the dark, missing critical knowledge to be successful in life.

We will leave them in the dark about how to make good decisions that impact the air they breathe, the water they drink and new opportunities of the clean energy economy.  We could lose a generation that will be faced with monumental environmental challenges and no skills or knowledge to not only adapt, but thrive in this new reality.

The good news is, there’s still time to act, to fight back, to tell your Representative and Senators that we are not going away, that environmental education will not be eliminated.  Future generations will rely on our advocacy over the next few weeks as we try to turn around these proposed House cuts when the Senate considers their spending bills.

I hope you will join us by calling your Members of Congress, signing up for regular updates and calls to action for environmental education funding or following me on Twitter @PatrickNWF.

Today the bi-partisan No Child Left Inside Act (NCLI) (S.1372 and H.R. 2547) was introduced by Senators Jack Reed (D-RI), Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Congressman John Sarbanes (D-MD).  The NCLI Act will provide states with incentives to create environmental literacy plans. Historically, this legislation has been overwhelmingly bi-partisan passing the House back in 2008 with 68 Republicans voting in favor of the measure.  As the Elementary and Secondary Education Act works its way through the House and Senate for reauthorization we have been busy working with the NCLI Coalition on Capitol Hill educating Members of the importance of environmental literacy for our future success in the 21^st Century. Currently there are over 40 states that are in various stages of working on environmental literacy plans and the introduction of NCLI helps to fuel the momentum.  NCLI will help put environmental education back in our nation’s classrooms and provide our future workforce with the environmental foundation they need today, to address the environmentally-based economic problems of tomorrow!

TAKE ACTION: Urge Congress to support the No Child Left Inside Act!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sound crazy? But according to Greenwire (sub. req.), that’s what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) continues to tell scientists in its Sea Grant research program – they can talk about our problems, but they can’t talk about solutions:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has announced it will continue to distribute guidance that discourages scientists receiving Sea Grant research grants from speaking out on “issues of public debate,” despite a petition from an advocacy group to reverse the “gag rule.”

NOAA rejected a petition from the advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility that asked the agency to alter their guidance related to the National Sea Grant College Program which funds scientific research. The guidance tells recipients of marine research grants to avoid advocacy “at all costs” — a policy that forces academics to keep quiet or risk losing their funding, according to PEER.

“Gagging scientists is bad enough, but the policy’s vagueness makes it even worse,” said Dr. Doug Inkley, the National Wildlife Federation’s senior scientist. “At a time when scientists are increasingly coming under political attack, it opens a gaping hole for a witch hunt about where scientists cross the line into ‘advocacy’. It doesn’t serve society well that the scientific experts on an issue are excluded from making management/policy recommendations in their area of expertise.”