NSF Proposal
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1999 19:01:54 -0400
To: dwagner@uconnvm.uconn.edu
From: pick@pick.uga.edu (John Pickering)
Subject: NSF Proposal, plus 5 other things
Cc: mkaspari@ou.edu, msharkey@byron.ca.uky.edu, skillen@pick.uga.edu
(OK Mike, skip to the NSF proposal (6) at end, if you're to busy to read
all of my witty prose. Sharks and Eli, most is relevant.)
Wrong-way Wags,
Thanks a million for all your efforts with everything. Very much
enjoyed your participation and company at the December meeting. We most do
it again soon. Several things:
1) Thanks for sending Eli the copies of your wonderful caterpillar guide.
I'm sure that you sent them a lot faster to us because the request came her
rather than me. You're such a sucker for a pretty smile. I'll remember to
go through Eli next time I need something in a hurry from you. Anyway, I
promise to put your books to good use - i.e., promoting you. Hopefully,
I'll have more success hanging on to them next time!
2) Regarding our Board of Directors, Sharks and I would like you to become
a full board member. If we can convince the Board that your worthy talents
more than compensate for your navigational skills, it would be a great
honor for you -- another crown jewel on your vita, though not quite as
brilliant as your caterpillar guide. (See I never cease to promote your
book!) In addition, being a board member would be a fantastic opportunity
for you to give up a huge chunk of you academic life, not to mention any
personal life, without ever getting your feet dirty or having to see
another hairy caterpillar. If you are interested, please send me an
electronic version of your CV -- and make sure that it includes your
wonderful book! We need to put it on the Web so that our Board can
consider you with other potential new members in May. Please be rash and
say "Yes."
3) I agree with your assessment of where to go with the Lep TWIG and with
taxonomy in general. Your idea of sending out official letters of
invitation to participate in the ATBI to members of the systematic
community is a great one. How effective would it be if it came from Keith
& myself, versus our leading systematic brethren, Don, Mike, and Rex,
versus our blue-ribbon advisors, versus all of us? I agree that it would
be a very powerful statement if Janzen, Pulliam, Raven, Wilson, and soon, I
suspect, Lovejoy, were all to be co-signers. We might even be able to get
some high level cosigners from Interior and possibly other agencies. In
short, a blue-ribbon endorsement that taxonomists should help. Along these
lines, I'll first push to finish the request from Interior, through State,
to the Canadians for their taxonomic help. We also need to succeed at
getting a request from Interior to Agriculture for help from the ARS and
Forest Service taxonomists.
4) Thanks also to Norm and you for the ECN endorsement. It will go on our
website shortly. What is ECN's website URL? I would like to link our site
to yours.
5) Regarding next year's ECN meeting, thanks for the heads-up. After
returning from the ECN meeting, I mentioned to Joe McHugh the possibility
of combining a Discover Life and ECN meeting. But haven't moved much
further with it. Athens is not much cheaper than Atlanta and certainly
much more expensive than the Glennstone in Gatlinburg. Hence, I don't
think that it is a wise idea to have a general Discover Life meeting in
Athens. In fact, I think that Jody has already arranged for the Glennstone
again in 1999. Nevertheless, I'm looking for input. While I'm pleased
with the way the a taxonomists are integrating into the ATBI, I sense that
there is a need for each TWIG to have more time to itself. Hence, on
Friday and Saturday, 10-11 December, 1999, after the main Discover Life
meeting, I propose that each TWIG meet. This could be done at 20 sites,
one for each TWIG. What do you think of this? How about if we had the
non-insect ones meet in Gatlinburg and the insect ones as part of or as an
add on to the ECN meeting in Athens? This would minimize travel costs and
maximize attendance. As far as Joe's work load goes, as long as I
contribute as a local organizer in Athens, he could anticipate higher
attendance and less work.
6) Regarding our integrated NSF proposal, yes and no. Yes, I'm absolutely
sold on the idea of putting together the proposal that you outline --
parasitoids on leps, invasion of exotics, changes over time, etc. This is
where I envision the bulk of my research heading in the medium term,
especially if Sharks and you are game, as you seem to be. However, no, or
possibly, maybe on this NSF go-round. Can we put together a SUCCESSFUL
proposal by this February? I doubt it -- unless we scale it back to the
three of us and ask for a very modest budget. Remember, Dan's got much
more credibility, Mike's gone 13 Jan - 2 Feb, you're gone to ALAS, and we
(at least Mike and I) have our responsibilities with the ATBI's start. If
you take the lead, then I'll contribute. However, I feel that we'd be
better off waiting.
Hence, how about the following?
Let's combine forces with Eli and the rest of the Discover Life's Education
Team. I'm planning to be the PI on their NSF proposal to extend our
teacher/minority training in Georgia to the Smokies and beyond. Currently,
the concept for this proposal is for training teachers to have students do
science, but the scientific focus has yet to be identified. How about if
we develop it around caterpillars and parasitoids? We could involve
teachers and students in caterpillar hunting and rearing and get much more
data than we would by ourselves. In exchance, the teachers and students
would learn about life, how to do science, databasing, technology, etc.
I'm sure that NSF would be interested if we balanced it well. Given that
caterpillar season is in the summer, I'd even advocate getting
undergraduates as REUs to run summer camps for young caterpillar hunters
and their teachers, and, in return, the REUs could develop senior theses.
What I like even more about this idea is that this NSF program has a
preproposal that is due on 1 April (I think), which weeds us out if we're
totally off-base with five-pages-of-effort rather than an all of January
shot-in-the-dark for a proposal that may lack a requisite molecular
component. If successful in April, we'd have until August to put together
a full-blown proposal. In short, a much more reasonable time line, and I
think, overall a proposal that is more likely to succeed.
Scientifically, if you and Mike are both game, we could propose TESTING
HYPOTHESES with student involvement beyond grunts with a comparison of the
fauna in Georgia, Kentucky, Connecticut, and the Smokies, quantifying a 100
common leps, their host plants, parasitoids, and comparing ours to historic
data, i. e., appealing to the conservationist/exotic-impact crowd. It
would be nice to get matching support from ARS and Forest Service, plus the
support of the lep, dip, and hymenoptera ATBI teams and others who might
want our by-catch. Any leads on the USDA? Frankly, if we go this route,
we might want to even include the relation of (fire) ants on lep community
mortality. Nice to have an experimental side with tanglefoot to teach the
kids expimental design with appropriate controls (and include Mike Kaspari,
if he's still game). I'm sure fire ants have wiped out much of my
open-field/edge lep fauna, for example. If we fail with this educational
proposal, we'd at least be ready for next year's integrated proposal.
Input? Please call before you leave for ALAS on Saturday. It is unlikely
that we will overlap in CR this month.
Cheers,
Pick
| Discover Life in America | Great Smokies | NSF_IRC | Pickering - 06 January, 1999 |