Okay, I will definitely check these out- thanks!
Another research question. Do fire fighters and forest treatment or thinning crews spread plant pathogens and disease? If so, by what means and how to prevent it? This question arises out of discovering a lot of crazy things going on with shrubs after they did a forest thinning treatment.
If I were to be in the ecology field (and related) I think I would like to research the chemical relationship between Lepidoptera and their host plant, ie. what makes certain species choose certain plants as food, how polyphagous they are etc. For species within a certain taxonomic grouping what are the taxonomic relationships between their host plants (eg. Asterocampa celtis and Hestina assimilis both feed on Celtis sp.) Also the relationship between parasitoids and their hosts.
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Oh, where do I begin? I tend to fixate on a particular species that catches my fancy for some reason, and try to learn everything about it. If a species has no economic value ā positive or negative ā and isnāt of conservation concern, there is seldom very much research on it. Iām probably an expert on several such species, to the extent that āexpertā can apply to a species that has been neglected due to lack of interest, but I doubt that I will ever know which ones.
One bigger question that has come to mind lately is the flipside of invasive species: of all the species transported to new continents and planted out or released, only a relatively small proportion become invasive. There has been considerable research on what characteristics make a species likely to become invasive; but I wonder why donāt most species have those characteristics? To put it another way, why are most species NOT invasive when transported to a new area, even if it has a similar climate to their native range? With all the plantings of oleander, for example, all over California ā including different colored cultivars, which must, therefore, be genetically distinct ā why donāt we find little wild oleanders popping up in neglected, shrubby spots?
A related question is why do we have genera with a few widespread species and many localized species? The genus Rattus has 64 extant species, but only three ā Rattus rattus, Rattus norvegicus, and Rattus exulans ā have spread across the world and become pests.
Iād love to have been one of those old-school explorers that went out and did species inventories in remote places (Like Darwin in the Galapagos) and got to name all the new species they found. Preferably somewhere up in the mountains for me, though. Bonus points for discovering anything so weird the scientific community immediately assumes itās a fake.
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Iāve observed a similar thing in Cretanweed near me. I was wondering what mechanism is behind that.
For myself, Iād like to learn much more about Lichens. I grew up in the outer boroughs of New York City when our air quality was too bad for Lichens to survive, and now that they are growing here I wish I knew more. Unfortunately I probably need a microscope and some other gear to really ID the many varieties.
If I could sponsor some elseās research, I have a hypothesis that invasive species (especially, but not exclusively, plants) establish themselves because they have some quality that humans find attractive. If they did not, weād have killed them off as soon as they arrived. Iām not sure how to objectively study this or quantify the attractiveness of invasives, but if there are any grad students or researchers out there looking for a topic, please steal this idea and let me know what you learn!
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I am also very curious about lichens. I live in the high elevation mountains and Iād like to go back and photograph the same ones over long periods of time to see changes along side air quality measurements both from cars and forest fires.
There are 2 distinct categories I can think of right off the top of my head for invasives.
- Intentionally introduces with good intentions but failed.
- hitch-hikers. Many plants have seeds that are āstickersā and hikers unintentionally spread them in their boots, clothes, cars, shoe tread, or luggage.
And RE: jasonhernandez74
Again, I can quickly put into 2 categories
- introduces species via one of the 2 methods above that donāt outcompete native plants/animals because there are natural endemic predators or pathogens that keep them in check.
- ā¦ that do outcompete native plants/animals without any natural predators or pathogens to keep them in check.
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You might want to check out this book. It focuses on lichens in NYC. https://www.amazon.com/Urban-Lichens-Field-Northeastern-America/dp/0300252994/ref=asc_df_0300252994/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=509078909957&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=7071600487924216042&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9007020&hvtargid=pla-1219781224521&psc=1
You can actually get pretty far with lichens without a microscope or chemical laboratory, especially for the the larger ones novices are likely to take note of. You will likely need a little equipment, but on the much more approachable scale of a handlens and occasionally a couple household chemicals.
The impression that a microscope is needed IME mostly comes from the fact that advanced specialist litterature (which may be the only available sometimes) will both want to cover everything and often assume that the users are already familiar with the characteristic species and/or often know how to get to a family or genus intuitively, which in turn means that their keys are designed with the assumption that most things run through them will be those that do require microscopy anyway.
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Ooh! Exciting! A new lichen book! Thanks!
Watched a podcast today with Asa Raskin about the Earthās Speciesā project.
One thing they need to help pave the way to communication with animals is data. Iād love to expand the data on a species vocalizations with perspective and context.
De-extinction has one major flaw: much the environment that supported anything larger than a cockroach has moved on. Unless you can also recreate the environment to support the āressurectedā, your shiny new brachiosaurus could be killed by itās first mosquitoes bite. (Rats. Now well never find out of itās really perfectly safe to hang out with sauropods like in that movie. Hmmā¦ Maybe if we tried to mingle in a hippo herd?)
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Agriculture and industry built around weeds (weedy plants). Not in the sense of forcing people to eat weeds, but what uses would they have if similar focus was put into them as was and is put into creating plastics from petroleum.
Something like Goodyear Tire Company making rubber out of Dandelion (Taraxacum kok-saghyz), I guess?
Maybe a new food or fuel could be created out of a weed thatās currently composted.
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This might be already known but why do some butterflies flutter around the treetops so much without seeming to land on anything?
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I would really love to duplicate this study in various ways. Basically they created a road in the forest with just speakers to imitate the sound of cars. Then they tracked the species around it to see if they avoided the area.
https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/acv.12302
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Not exactly glamorous, but I would like to help fix the wasp genus Chyphotes. Species described from only one gender is the biggest issue, so DNA could help match males and females. More interesting would be understanding their life cycles better.
Another project that sounds fun would be to confirm the host associations of Ripiphorus beetles. Actually, that genus also needs to be fixed so males and females can be keyed consistently!
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Far too many things to list here! Some of the most interesting ones for me though:
- Springtails. Everything about springtails, honestly, but just having the money for proper microscopy equipment to ID them down to species and describe new species would be an absolute dream of mine. So many of them are unidentifiable without some very intense microscopy, and even common species tend to be undescribed ā there is precious little information about them overall, since they lack economic significance to drive research.
- Total taxonomic overhaul of Armadillidae and description of all those weird tropical isopods. Itās not just isopod-hobby-poachers that lump anything vaguely round and flared into Cubaris, thereās almost no formal agreements on their taxonomy and no genetic or morphology studies to allow for the classification of new species. Thereās hundreds of undescribed neotropical and Southeast Asian isopod species out there ā species currently being imported en-masse by poachers for the pet trade without any information about the animals or their habitats.
- Troglomorphic arthropods. This isnāt a pressing taxonomic issue like the above ones, I just want to learn about those weird springtails and amphipods from Krubera cave.
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