Scientists Learning from Nature: Oklahoma Academy of Sciences Field Meeting Spring 2014, part two.

See the entry below for the OAS field meeting, part one.

Since there was such a small number of people at this field meeting, most of the field trip activity involved the whole group at once instead of numerous separate field trips. We took morning and afternoon trips on April 5 at Lake Murray State Park. It was a lot of fun to have everyone together, because wherever we went we could learn about everything all at once (mostly about plants and insects). There is a lot of fascinating conglomerate rock around Lake Murray, and I wished there was a geologist along to tell us about them.

Lake Murray is surrounded by a perfect example of a cross-timbers forest consisting mostly of post oak (Quercus stellata). This species of oak grows slowly on poor dry soil. The cross-timbers forest, found mostly in Oklahoma, is the only kind of forest that post oaks dominate. We also saw blackjack oaks, white ashes, black hickories, and chittamwoods, all of which had leaves that were just beginning to expand. It was beautiful to see how leaves and flowers are neatly packaged into buds. This was a late spring; back in 2012 the leaves of these trees were already fully expanded by this time. Because these forests are open and dry, cactus plants grow in the understory. Among these are Coryptantha missouriensis, a tiny cactus down in the leaf litter, the bright red fruits of which were mature and falling from the stem.

The sporophytes were emerging from the mosses.

Mosses and cacti growing together? The mosses are dormant during the dry summer when the cactuses are fully active. We also visited a transition zone between forest and prairie, where we saw forest edge trees such as chittamwood and persimmon, as well as grasses from tallgrass, midgrass, and shortgrass prairies.

We pretty much knew which plants we would find, but when it comes to animals, you have to wait until you stumble across them. We saw a leaf-footed bug that smelled like almonds, because it produces cyanide as a defense against predators. We saw a large moth almost perfectly camouflaged in the leaf litter, except for the big predator-scaring eyespots.

We saw cottony fluff on a beavertail cactus, produced by cochineal insects as a defense against predators. These insects were the original source of carmine dye, and the skillful use of a knife can reveal the bright crimson color under the fluff. One group of explorers even surprised a nest of shrews.

We benefited immensely from the expertise of botanists Gloria Caddell of University of Central Oklahoma (see photo below) and Suneeti Jog (behind the mosses in the photo above) of Northeastern Oklahoma State University and entomologist Ken Hobson of the University of Oklahoma. Mycologist Steve Marek of Oklahoma State University helped us find mushrooms and understand the lichens, which were astonishingly crowded all over the oak branches and bark (see photo below). David Bass of the University of Central Oklahoma looked for aquatic invertebrates, and Michael Shaughnessy of Northeastern Oklahoma State University showed us how to interpret animal tracks. Gregory Plumb of East Central University brought his computer and screen to demonstrate how geographers integrate many kinds of digital information and also brought his telescope for viewing Jupiter. We pretty much searched all of heaven and earth we could find at Lake Murray.

One of the most rewarding aspects of the field trips for me was that six of my students took these trips, and were able to learn from scientists other than me (they already hear plenty of stuff from me). The three morning students were Maryam and Nasim Akhter and Brian Ridgway; the three afternoon students were Bobby Long, Ben Singleton, and Kristin Brooks.

One of the students told me that she had never been out in the woods before. Clearly, for her, the most important part of this trip was just getting out in the forest and noticing how much is in it. And I wanted them to experience nature as fully as possible without compromising safety. I induced them to eat greenbriar shoots, wild mustard, and cactus fruits (which is what the students are doing in the second photo). Some of these students plan to study medicine. Therefore I and Connie Murray, a botanist at Tulsa Community College, talked with them about wild medicinal plants. There were also a few students from other Oklahoma universities.

Also, despite all evidence to the contrary, there is life after being OAS President. We found past president Craig Clifford, of Northeastern Oklahoma State University, lying in a gutter. But he was not there for the usual reasons a man might be in the gutter; like many of us, no posture is too embarrassing to get that perfect photograph.

I believe it was also important that I got to demonstrate what a good ecologically-minded citizen does. A lot of people who come to the lake deliberately leave behind huge numbers of beer cans and bottles, some of them smashed. With help from others, I collected as many of these as I could (not, of course, broken glass) to take back and recycle. The attitude of responsible stewardship, which we all felt, could not contrast more greatly with the deliberate offense that litterers show to nature and to the other humans with whom they live. One of my favorite experiences at Academy meetings is to be among people who care about the Earth and the other humans who share it with us.

Evotour, part four. The Purisima Hills

From Paso Robles (see previous entry) I headed south to Lompoc, which is known mainly as an agricultural center with vast fields of broccoli, artichokes, and flowers; and as the city closest to Vandenberg Air Force Base. My parents and I briefly lived there over thirty years ago. Every afternoon, a strong sea breeze blows in, bringing mist and fog. One time I saw it blowing a refrigerator box down the street. Not every part of coastal California is a tropical wonderland.

My main purpose was to visit the Purisima Hills, north of the city. Although just a few square kilometers in extent, perhaps the largest diatomite deposit in the world is found here. I made a Darwin video there, in which Darwin had been reading Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants, and had been expecting to learn something about the hills, but instead it was just about a man and a woman in a bar. But the Purisima Hills are really white, because they consist almost entirely of the shells of dead diatoms that accumulated over hundreds of thousands of years starting about five million years ago. I have not posted the video yet.

The reason this place is of great interest to science educators is that it represents absolute proof that geological deposits could not have been produced by a Flood of Noah. These are not flood deposits. They formed from dead diatoms that accumulated undisturbed in a shallow sea, without the intermixture of very much sand, silt, and clay. Mineral deposits are found nearby, but the diatomite deposits are nearly pure. And they represent more diatoms than could exist at any one time in one place. There is no way a Flood could have produced this, unless God decided to filter out all the diatoms and slop them down in one place, for reasons that are unknown and certainly not found in the Bible. Of course, creationists think that God scooched all the large mammals into some places, all the dinosaurs into other places, to make it look like they lived at different times, just to play with our minds today. But diatoms? What kind of God would play with our minds by scooping billions of diatoms and slapping them down in one location, which ultimately became Lompoc, California? Diatoms float because they produce oil. The diatomite deposits also contain petroleum, which is in this case the transformed product of diatom oil. That’s why there are no side roads on which I could retreat to make my video away from highway noises: all side roads are blocked and posted with serious oil-company no-trespassing signs.

Also at this location is a small population of bishop pines (Pinus muricata). Like Torrey pines near San Diego, the bishop pines grow and produce mature cones, but the cones do not open and release seeds unless a fire burns them. Then the burned forest is immediately replaced by a solid growth of small pines. There was a fire in the Purisima hills about 1964, and another in 1995. These pines (like Torrey pines, Monterey pines, and digger pines) are not only adapted to inevitable fires but capitalize on them.

Not only is the fire cycle an interesting adaptation, but also the pines represent an example of evolutionary radiation. Different species of pines have evolved in different locations in the coastal California hills: Monterey pines south of San Francisco, bishop pines south of them, digger pines throughout the coastal hills, and Torrey pines near San Diego. In addition, the Purisima population of bishop pines are genetically distinct from the main population, which is found over a hundred kilometers north of the Purisima Hills. Speciation at work.

The Santa Ynez Valley, adjacent to the Purisima Hills, is also famous for having the world’s largest species of lichen, Ramalina menziesii. The strong winds bring moisture and minerals to these impressively long lichens that hang from the branches of the Quercus agrifolia coast live oaks. Lichens themselves are a wonderful example of symbiosis, and of symbiogenesis, which are major forces in evolution.

Note: I have posted a video on my YouTube channel that shows the Transit of Venus as the sun sets into the Pacific Ocean. I have also posted a YouTube video about my visit to the San Andreas Fault, described in the previous entry.