The 3D lab

Hero-rats

Posted on December 27, 2013 by lembrechtsjonas

It is Christmas again, traditionally the period in which one of the local radiostations organizes a benefit campaign for some praiseworthy charity organization.

This year, the university of Antwerp contributed to the campaign by raising money for one of their own projects, called Apopo. This project is a wonderful example of the use of biology in our society. The Apopo-project is a university-supported and Africa-based training program for rats to detect landmines and tuberculosis.

Isn’t that just plain wonderful use of biological knowledge?

In 2010, on an internship with the university to Tanzania, we visited the training site of these hero rats. For no more reward than pieces of delicious banana, they help to clean post-war regions from highly dangerous landmines. They use their sensitive little noses to smell the ammunition. This same skill and hunger for bananas can be used to recognize the smell of tuberculosis in sputum samples, significantly speeding up tuberculosis diagnosis in highly populated areas in Africa.

Wonderful project, no doubt about it, but unfortunately very expensive. It costs approximately 6000 euros to train a rat. From then on, it can luckily be used for a long time, sniffing through fields and warning the mining service where to find the explosives. Fortunately, they are not heavy enough themselves to let the mines explode, so sacrificing the cute little heroes is not necessary.

(They proudly joined the ‘Animals’-gallery on the right of this blog).

Posted in Belgium | Tagged Apopo, Office, Rats, University | 3 Comments

Profiling the bad boys

Posted on December 22, 2013 by lembrechtsjonas

In war, it is important to profile your enemies. You should know the qualities and the weaknesses of the other party, to adequately predict their next move.

As I said on the results page, invasiveness is not a skill known to every plant. Plants need the combination of the right characteristics, with a little bit of additional luck. Here, I profile some of the most likely candidates for invasion: the ruderals (check those badasses out on the picture!).

These species are designed for the guerrilla-war: they travel fast, have fantastic germination capacities even in the most horrible circumstances and reproduce like rabbits in the shortest possible timespan.

They like human presence, because they are perfectly adapted to survived in disturbed plots where other plants fail to thrive. Between cracks in roads, on the railroad, vertically on walls, simply everywhere where they can find a tiny hole. This is the exact explanation for why they are so widespread in cities and all kind of places influenced by humans. They follow us everywhere were we expand our concrete world.

The above gives a traditional view of an ideal invader: quickly reproducing plants, always first to germinate on disturbed plots. However, as I will show later, we will need another profile if we look at invasion in mountains. There, the ruderals turn out to be not the main danger. We will have to re-profile our enemies there, or we will totally miss the point.

Posted in The research | Tagged Aliens, Disturbance, Invasiveness, Plants, Research, Science | 5 Comments

Spoiling the birds

Posted on December 20, 2013 by lembrechtsjonas

I like spoiling those happy little feather balls before my office window. After a trial period, in which I tried to seduce them to come closer to my window, I now installed some more high-tech equipment:

It seems to work pretty fine, as the regular visits of great tits (and occasional squirrels) continue. With the increasingly cold weather, even more birds seem convinced to visit me and my generosity. I ticked off blue tits, long-tailed tits, robins and even some goldcrests.

Blue tit

Although my fancy supply mechanism looks perfect, most birds still seem to prefer the cheap stuff. I don’t know why, although they showed furious picking behavior towards the plastic cover (no, my fierce friend, you’re not getting anything by just hitting the plastic!). Maybe it is all just a little bit too complicated for their tiny bird-brains.

Nevertheless, I am waiting excitingly until it starts freezing, because then the feathered traffic will only increase!

These and some other cute pictures joint the picture gallery ‘Animals’ on the right of my blog. I strongly recommend taking a look!

Posted in Belgium | Tagged Animals, Birds, Garden birds, Office | 6 Comments

The results

Posted on December 18, 2013 by lembrechtsjonas

On monday, I taught a course on plant invasions in extreme environments to the master students during their course on Plant Ecology.

These students had the luck on their side as they were the first to see some of my own research results. I only showed a glimpse, of course, because I want to wait with the big revelations until my work is published.

On this page, I want to give a brief overview of where my research is heading. Every time I get to the next step, it will be added to the story on this page under ‘The results’ in the menu.

Snow

The picture on the left shows a mountain system on a bright day in the middle of spring. Obviously, that’s not a very nice place for plants to live. Only the tough ones, with millions of years of evolutionary adaptation, manage to survive. They are armed with adaptations to short growing seasons, frost, snow, strong winds, stony soils, lack of nutrients and excessive radiation.

For lowland plants, this world is a true nightmare. They don’t have all these nice adaptations, like small leaves, huge root systems, water holding qualities, anti freezing solutions,… They have broad, vulnerable leaves, created to grow quickly when resources are available.

It is clear that these plants do not belong up there. However, and that is the whole point of the story, they ARE growing there. In the beginning there are only a few, some loners here and there. Later on there show more and more plants up. Nowadays, great groups of them are marching uphill. There are a lot of factors behind this strange and recent behavior and it is my scientific duty to find out the truth.

I will tackle the problem from several sides at once (I have several years to fill!). First things first: I answer the question how these invaders find their way up the mountains. This turns out to be a funny one: they come by car, by truck, by foot, even by ski lift… No human transportation method too strange or it can be used by plants to get uphill.

So far so good, but how do they cope with this horrible climate I mentioned before? They can not stay safely in a car and put the heater on! No, they can’t, but they can use their fellow plants for pretty much the same purpose: as natural heater. Nicely sheltered under a well-protected shrub, circumstances can dramatically improve.

Moreover, the alpine climate may be much better suited for invaders than seems on first sight. There isn’t one climate in the mountains. They have a whole patchwork of warm and cold, dry and wet, sheltered and exposed sides. All of them more or less suited for invasion. By using the best spots, the invader can get hundreds of meters higher than expected.

Summer snow

It turns out hiding under vegetation is a valuable trick. But most of the time, it seems to be difficult for a new plant to germinate underneath the hostile vegetation of the alps. Once more they profit from a bit of human help: our destroying capabilities expose bare soil, creating nice open spaces for invaders, free of competition.

As you can see, the two previous explanations show signs of contradiction. Both processes work together: the help of the vegetation is a plus, the competition a minus. The invaders have to choose and weigh the options. What their choice will be, depends on how bad the climate is in that location.

Being a successful invader is not for everybody. It needs the ideal mix of plant superpowers, most of them pointing towards a chameleon-approach. An ideal invader is a plant that fits everywhere: cold or warm, dry or wet.
I am curious to find out the answers on all these different questions. I hope I can soon share them with you.

Posted in The research | Tagged Ecology, Experiment, Field ecology, Publication, Research, Science | Leave a comment

Eating hay and looking pretty

Posted on December 15, 2013 by lembrechtsjonas

I already mentioned it in my previous post: working on a campus that is kicked out of the Antwerp city center is nothing to feel sad about. It gives me the satisfaction of a warm welcome by these beautiful horses everyday on my way to work.

Most of the time they are just standing there close together, eating hay and looking pretty. But what else should a happy horse do?

Posted in Belgium | Tagged Animals, Horses, Office | 3 Comments

City-visit

Posted on December 13, 2013 by lembrechtsjonas

I spend all my working days at the university of Antwerp. The city of Antwerp itself however stays out of sight most of the time, because the life sciences have their own green campus outside the city center.

Working outside the city center has two main advantages. First: I have the beautiful countryside as a working environment. Second, I can visit the city of Antwerp as a real tourist, enjoying such internationally celebrated landmarks as the Central Station and the main shopping street.

Antwerp city

I decided to visit Antwerp for some hours in this wonderful December-period (Christmas-shopping, you know), in which random kinds of decoration were put all over the city. The giant wooden Christmas balls especially pleased me, even though I missed their pretty little lights at night.

The Central Station already had a reputation of special attractions, this time in the shape of a dinosaur, mighty and tall as he overlooked the central hall. I positioned myself under his raised foot and tried to imagine the beating of my heart if he would be real and towering over my head like that.