Response to Wayne Gall's message regarding collecting and sorting
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 11:31:20 -0500
From: Chuck_Parker@nps.gov (Chuck Parker)
Subject: Collecting and Sorting Team
To: wgall@buffnet.net, moth@ra.msstate.edu, cover@oeb.harvard.edu,
dietrich@denr1.igis.uiuc.edu, foster.mercedes@nmnh.si.edu,
bright.cheryl@nmnh.si.edu
Cc: pick@pick.uga.edu, Keith_Langdon@nps.gov (Keith Langdon)
Wayne, My responses are highlighted in red.
Chuck -
At this time I am still interested and available to work on
the Collecting Working Group (CWG) for the ATBI of GSMNP, and am
planning to attend the second ATBI workshop in Gatlinburg from 14-17
December. I trust that you will keep me posted re: registration,
lodging, etc. I have visited the ATBI web site and submitted the
information requested for participants.
I believe the ATBI for GSMNP is an exciting biodiversity
initiative of national and international significance. I am
interested in contributing to the effort, but have several questions
that I must ask myself and you, as to how I can most effectively do
this.
Regarding logistics: Is my continuing participation justified
given my remote location from GSMNP? Would the interests of DLIA be
better served by having participants that are based in much closer
proximity to GSMNP than Buffalo? In planning my work schedule for next
year, what time commitment is expected of me? This will be the second
meeting I have attended where the Buffalo Museum of Science has
covered my costs for attending. I appreciate that the ATBI is still
in its formative stages, and needs the goodwill and support of
prospective collaborators. But at some future point, would it not be
reasonable to expect that since cooperating agencies (such as our
Museum) are giving participants (such as me) release time (i.e.,
in-kind contribution of my salaried time), that DLIA could leverage
funds to cover the costs of attending these workshops?
First of all, thank you for continuing to be supportive of the ATBI
and wanting to participate on the Collecting and Sorting Team (CST -
please note the new name - Hey, it must be a full-fledged bureaucracy
already!). Your distance from GRSM is not a problem for us. We do not
have enough expertise within North America to undertake this effort,
let alone within the region surrounding the Park. Some participants
will be close by, others will be thousands of miles away. Hopefully,
with the Internet, email, voice mail, faxes, etc., we will still be
able to communicate easily with everyone who is interested in
participating. The difficulty comes when travel is necessary. DLIA
will be providing money in a variety of ways for people to work on the
ATBI. More of the details about that will be available at the December
meeting. One idea is that DLIA will make grants to as many
participants as possible on the order of a few hundred to a few
thousand dollars each, to cover travel, lodging, expenses, equipment,
and supplies. These can be renewed yearly, provided the recipient
meets whatever requirements DLIA establishes. As far as this
December's meeting, I still don't know what I will be able to offer to
team members who want to attend. I will know more Friday evening after
our next planning session, and I will let you know what I can offer.
I think it is great that your institution is supporting the ATBI by
assisting you through travel and release time. Please let your
administration know how grateful I am, and how much it means to the
Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the ATBI, and Discover Life in
America to have that kind of support from the Buffalo Museum of
Science. No matter how much money we raise for this project over the
coming years, now is the critical time to get this effort underway and
we need the gracious support of individuals and institutions to help
get us over the initial fund-raising hump, if you will. It is a great
deal of importance to the fund raising arm of DLIA to be able to
approach potential contributors and point to the support we are
receiving from the scientific community. Contributors are much more
likely to be generous if they see a broad base of support among
scientists and scientific institutions, and financial support such as
travel and time are more impressive than words of support.
Regarding organizational structure: Are members of the CWG
also active participants of the Taxonomic Working Groups (TWIGs)? If
not, and if the CWG needs "to coordinate closely with the TWIGs," and
if "we [the CWG?] will be dependent on TWIGs to point us to the
appropriate methods, literature, and discussions of related issues
that may be helpful," why not eliminate a layer of bureaucracy by
having the CWG composed of representatives (selected specialists) from
the TWIGs (e.g., an entomologist, a non-insect invertebrate biologist,
a vertebrate zoologist, etc.)? There seems to be inconsistency in the
statements that members of the CWG will not be doing collecting on
LRAs, but individual authorities doing traditional collecting outside
LRAs "may want to spend a considerable amount of time exploring the
Park to their best advantage." Will the CWG or TWIGs decide who the
individual authorities will be, and coordinate their efforts? There
also seems to be inconsistency in the notion that an important task of
the CWG will be to make the inventory process as efficient as
possible, but that that CWG members will not be involved in setting
up, maintaining, and emptying traps--then what is it that the CWG will
make efficient? Only determine the human resource requirements?
Wouldn't the TWIGs be able to do this more efficiently since they have
specific knowledge of the collecting techniques and efforts required
for their particular organismal groups?
Participants may be involved at any level they wish. I will be a part
of the aquatic twig as well as the CST, and I expect most other CST
members will be involved in a twig, as well as. However, at least one
person has told me that their involvement will be limited to just the
CST, since they are too busy for any broader committment, and that is
fine. What I mean to imply with the statement that members of the CST
will not be doing the collecting on the LRAs is that we envision, at
present, that most of that activity will be done by technicians.
There are several reasons for this, including the fact that plans call
for 250-2500 plots, each with malaise traps, pitfall traps, funnel
traps, etc. Servicing those plots will be a full-time job, especially
since there is no real off season. Because of the mild climate here,
Pickering is running his 16 malaise traps in the Park year-round.
Those traps require a 40-mile hike every two weeks to replace the
collecting heads, and many hours of student time in the lab at UGA to
sort out just the ichneumonoids. When we get geared up with hundreds
or thousands of plots to be visited regularly, it will be necessary to
have several full-time teams of technicians servicing the plots,
chasing off bears, repairing the traps, nets, etc., labeling samples,
returning everything to the lab, and so on. When samples are
delivered to the lab, they then have to be processed, which includes
sorting, mounting, labeling, entering into the database, and sending
sorted, labeled specimens to the appropriate specialists. This will
be another massive job that we need to make as efficient as possible.
I, personally, love sorting bulk samples just to see what's in them.
However, nothing has been more difficult than to find employees who
will spend hours on end doing that. Usually after a couple of days
they are ready to quit. And, a poorly sorted sample is more work to
resort than to sort correctly in the first place. So this will be a
critical step to get done correctly. I can't imagine sending unsorted
samples to a mite specialist to sort out the mites, then ask them to
pass the "residue" on to a carabid specialist to pick out the ground
beetles, who then passes the sample on to a pselaphid specialist, and
so on. So several central sorting efforts will be necessary. The
Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the Smithsonian has a kind of
"sample triage" procedure that they use for bulk samples from around
the world. Cheryl Bright of that Division has agreed to join the CST
in order to help us in designing something similar for the ATBI.
Ernie Bernard of the University of Tennessee, the leader of the
apterygote twig (and acting leader of the nematode twig), has offered
to set up a litter processing center at UT if DLIA will provide help
with getting the funnels and other materials set up there. Other
similar efforts will be required for malaise traps, pitfall traps,
etc. Unless, of course, someone has a better idea of how to proceed?
Why not just have the twigs set up the plots the way they want and do
away with the CST altogether? I don't think that would be at all
efficient. For instance, there are potentially participants in
several different twigs who might be interested in the specimens from
malaise traps. But, there are many different designs of malaise
traps, just as there are many different designs of pitfall traps,
flight intercept traps, etc. Using a wide variety of designs of the
same type of trap may appeal to the independent streak in each of us,
but it impedes our ability to compare data from trap to trap, and plot
to plot, is less cost effective, more of a maintenance headache, etc.
Multiply those concerns times the number of types of pitfall traps,
light traps, emergence traps, pan traps, etc., and the difficulties
quickly get out of hand. For the structured component, I think it is
important to make certain compromises by standardizing on one
(possibly two) design(s) of malaise trap, one or two designs of pit
fall trap, whether and when we use baits, etc. Where there are strong
feelings about design A vs design B, we could either use both, select
A instead of B, or help work out an acceptable compromise. There will
be disagreements within twigs, too, of course. The Coleoptera twig
covers a huge number of species that occupy a wide variety of
habitats. No one approach will be suitable for everyone. For some,
any compromise may be unacceptable, in which case they always have the
option of using their favorite techinque anyway. And, not all
organisms lend themselves to the structured part of the effort.
Certain microleps, for example, must be collected individually, and
then pinned and spread almost immediately by an expert in order to be
useful systematically. And, I don't see the structured approach being
particularly useful for the aquatic twig at all.
I trust that these are the kinds of questions that will foster
useful discussion. I look forward to hearing from you.
I hope I have covered most of your concerns. Please let me know if I
have missed anything, or, more important, if you think the approach I
am advocating is incorrect.
I will let each of you know the results of the Friday planning session
especially as it relates to attendance at the December meeting. By
the way, we are trying to get Peter Raven to give the keynote address
at the meeting. He is on our science advisory board, along with Ed
Wilson, Ron Pulliam, and others I can't remember.
Wayne has a different email address than I gave in the previous
message - wgall@buffnet.net
Cheryl Bright has joined us on the CST. Her email is -
bright.cheryl@nmnh.si.edu
Chuck
| Discover Life in America | Science | Collecting Planning | Parker - 18 November, 1998 |