The 3D lab

KittenR

Posted on March 3, 2019 by lembrechtsjonas

I finally got an opportunity to put my R skills to ‘good use for society’: I visualised the numbers of kittens that were brought to our local animal shelter throughout the season, and modelled how much milk, kitten food, and foster homes are needed to take care of them .

And, oh dear, these numbers! Season only slowly starts in April-May, but then numbers rapidly take off to over 80 kittens present in the shelter at the peak of the season in July. If you know that all these kittens need to be raised by foster parents until they are old enough to be adopted, you can imagine there is a big team of volunteers needed (ideally around 25 foster families, especially in the summer months).

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The animal shelter takes care of over 200 foster kittens each year (picture credit Kami St.)

To make the life of this team of kitten lovers and the animal shelter a bit easier, I visualised how much kitten food they would need throughout the season on a daily basis. Herefore I linked up the age of each kitten on each day with the average amount of milk, wet or dry food a kitten should eat at that age.

The conclusion? A stock of 231 liter of kittenmilk, over 1000 kg of dry food and around 400 kg of wet food should last them through the season, based on last years numbers.

The youngest kittens still get their milk from a bottle every few hours, day and night

Interestingly, these graphs visualise some distinct patterns within the season. Our first graph already showed three peaks: a first big one with the bulk of the kittens in July, but a clear second wave around October, and a last little bump in December.

These peaks are even clearer in the graphs of the necessary food supplies. As kittenmilk is only needed for the youngest, and wet food when they are transitioning from milk to dry food, peaks in the different food needs stand out clearly throughout the season. The youngest kittens peak in June, August and October, yet at the height of our kitten season in July, there is virtually no need for kittenmilk. At that point, the cohort of youngest kittens – which will stay longer in their foster families and now transition to wet and then dry food, are now joined by older kittens (perhaps thrown out of their homes when they are approaching the age of vaccination and sterilisation, an unwanted expense for many unvoluntary kitten owners). The result is a group of older kittens, mostly eating dry food, that are largely gone to their forever homes by the time the new wave of kittens arrives around August.

Last year’s foster kitten (left) taking care of a little fluffball from this year’s bunch

This is the first year that I have such detailed information on kittens at hand. I hope to continue monitoring this in the future however, as I am curious to see if there is a climate signal in the data. For example, this second and third bump in the number of kittens (especially visible for the milk-loving youngest ones) could relate to an increase (and delay) in the length of our summers here in Belgium. It would be fascinating to link this up to interannual variation in weather, to see if long and warm summers indeed increase the length of the kitten season at our shelter.

Freshly fed kittens, with the milk still on their noses

PS: no, this post was not an excuse to finally post some of these cute kitten pictures on this otherwise very scientific website!

Posted in Belgium, General | Tagged Animal photography, Animal shelter, Animals, Cats, Kittens, Nature, Pet photography, Pets, Photography, R, Science | Leave a comment

Home?

Posted on February 25, 2019 by lembrechtsjonas

This is the 5th post in a series of stories from our fieldtrip to South America. Check out the arrival in Concepcion, the first and second fieldwork day and this post on pine invasions <–

Lush meadows at the feet of the mountains in Chile

Sometimes, one travels far to arrive seemingly close to home. That was the experience I got on our last fieldwork day in the Chilean Andes, where we surveyed some of the long-term MIREN-plots at the feet of the mountains in National Park Malalcahuello.

Taking nutrient samples in a longterm survey plot

What we found there was a vegetation so European that it could have very well been southern France or Switzerland. Not only the feeling of the lush green nutrient-rich meadows, but also – and mostly so – the plant species themselves.

Verbascum thapsus in a Chilean roadside, exemplifying how the species can withstand almost everything.

The whole vegetation, both in the roadsides and in the meadows bordering them, consisted virtually entirely of European weed species. If you would have dropped me there blindfolded, I would have taken me a while to tell that these roadsides were not in Europe. It is this kind of invasions that provided the exact reason why the Mountain Invasion Research Network came into existence over 15 years ago: they are brought here by humans following agriculture, and are now spreading rapidly towards higher elevations in the mountains. And they are doing so well so far away from home!

Echium vulgare

It was a weird feeling that my Western European botanistic background allowed me to identify all species in a Chilean vegetation plot. But I only saw familiar sights: Echium vulgare, Verbascum thapsus, Trifolium repens and pratense, Achillea millefolium, Anthoxanthum odoratum and many more. They were all there, and thriving.

Lupinus polyphyllus, one of the few non-native meadow species in the region with a North American and not a European origin

Skipper butterfly on a European thistle

And so we spent a warm summer afternoon at the end of January in a Western European meadow, bathing in the sun and feeling very much at home. Forgetting for a second that at home, 4-degree-rainstorms were what we should get.

Yet, at home in Flanders, we would have called this nature. Here, it was an invaded countryside, with close to no native species in sight. A beautiful landscape, yet with a dark edge to it.

Alstroemeria aurea, one of the few native species seemingly thriving in the roadside. Its golden flowers an exotic touch to the otherwise almost entirely European flora.

Posted in Chile, General | Tagged Andes, Chile, Ecology, Flower photography, Global change, Invasive species, Landscape photography, Nature, Nature photography, Plants, Travel photography | Leave a comment

Pines!

Posted on February 19, 2019 by lembrechtsjonas

This is the 4th post in a series of stories from our fieldtrip to South America. Check out the arrival in Concepcion, and the first and second fieldwork day <–

Road through a native Araucaria-forest, with the view on the Lonquimay-volcano obstructed by recent pine invasions

Our local partner in Chile, the Laboratorio de Invasiones Biológicas (LIB), has a very important task at hand: understanding and managing the problem of invasive species in Chile and the Andes, a problem that is almost nowhere in the world as bad as it is in the region around Concepcíon. Visiting the group, the area and the important work they are doing served as a real eye-opener to me, showing the situation in the field behind all the data I have seen: oh, how rapid and impactfull the spread of invasive species can be!

A line of lodgepole pines planted above the treeline at the foot of the Lonquimay-volcano

We were lucky enough to have time for a short visit to one of their study sites in National Park Malalcahuello, where they are battling a rapid expansion of lodgepole pines (Pinus contorta) into and beyond the native Araucaria-forests (see my previous post for more details on the Araucaria). The pines are spreading rapidly since some small plantations have been planted in the national park in the 70s, and now cover an area of over 100 hectares with their dense green needle-rich branches.

Information sign on lodgepole pine invasion

The LIB is working hard to understand the nature of these invasions, their impacts on the system, and the possibility of managing them. And all of that is urgently needed, as the pines are found to be highly resistant, and highly effective invaders.

A dense stand of expanding lodgepole pines, with stems growing in all directions, creating an understory that is almost impossible to pass

The LIB is monitoring the long-term effects of different management strategies on the abiotic conditions and the biodiversity in the park, and following up on recovery of the native diversity (or new pine seedlings) after pine removal for restoration purposes.

The Araucaria forests are also invaded by some smaller secondary invaders, like the European red (left) and white (right) clover

A very important project to keep track off, and I hope to be able to report here on the main outcomes of this study and its high conservation importance!

Prof. Aníbal Pauchard of the LIB, showing us around the invaded areas

Posted in Chile, General | Tagged Andes, Ecology, Global change, Invasive species, Landscape photography, Mountains, Nature photography, Photography, Science, South America, Travel | Leave a comment

Malalcahuello

Posted on February 8, 2019 by lembrechtsjonas

This is the third post in a series of stories from our fieldtrip to South America. Check out the arrival in Concepcion and the first fieldwork day <–

The Lonquimay-volcano, towering over the native Araucaria-forests

Fieldwork day 2 of our South American journey brought us to national park Malalcahuello, where our next mountain road was waiting to be surveyed, under the all-seeing eye of Volcan Lonquimay. There, we were introduced to the amazing Araucaria-forests.

The Araucaria, or monkey puzzle tree, is a common sight in many European gardens, where he is often planted for his excentric looks. Seeing the tree in its native habitat, growing tall and proud on the steep mountain slopes, is simply breath-taking.

Echium vulgare, a common introduced European weed in the park

Yet these native forests are also threatened by non-native species. Again, the roadsides we monitored were packed with familiar species, often even more common here as in their native range in Europe.

Verbascum thapsus, one of the most common mountain invaders across the globe

That is another interesting question we hope to be able to answer with this study: are these plants relying on the same mycorrhizae to invade in the Andes as they use in their native range? A nice package of root samples, soon to be send to our University of Antwerp-lab, should shed light on that.

Acaena pinnatifida, the Argentinian biddy-biddy

Fieldwork in the Andes also introduced us ample of times to the so-called Argentinian biddy-biddy (according to its rather short Wikipedia page). Despite its cute name, Acaena pinnatifida is a rough fellow. On its own, it hammer the concept of ‘assisted seed dispersal’ right into you: their seeds are provided with spiky little extensions that cling to your cloths like the best velcro. We spend a significant part of our time getting these annoying clingy hedgehogs off of us!

But even the most dreadfull biddy-biddy fields cannot take away the beauty of this amazing park in the Chilean Andes. We spend the night at the foot of the mountains, in a beautiful Swiss lodge, shared a local wine with our amazing Chilean colleagues, and looked forward to another day of fieldwork in that wonderful place.

To be continued…

Posted in Chile, General | Tagged Andes, Ecology, Fieldwork, Global change, Invasive species, Landscape photography, Nature, Nature photography, Science, South America, Travel, Travel photography | Leave a comment

Laguna del Laja

Posted on February 3, 2019 by lembrechtsjonas

This is the second post in a series of stories from our ongoing fieldtrip to South America. Check out the first one <–

Our first day of fieldwork in the Chilean Andes brought us to Laguna del Laja, a national park at the foot of the Antuco-volcano. There, in a desolated landscape of rocks and gravelly slopes, we would survey our first South American mountain road.

A mountain road through a desolated landscape

In that alien world, we would study the interactions between different plants, and between plants and the belowground world along mountain roads, in order to understand better how climate and human land use together shape the mountain vegetation.

A lonely patch of Rumex acetosella in a volcanic wasteland

At high elevations, there does not seem to be much to interact with, though, as plants are far apart in the volcanic wasteland. Yet that first view is deceiving: a lot is happening below the soil surface, where mycorrhizae (root fungi) dictate the crucial nutrient uptake of most plants. We are sampling these roots, and will use DNA-analyses to get an idea of the diversity of mycorrhizae in the system.

A Senecio-species braving the harsh conditions of the high Andes

Roads will be drastically changing all these interactions, both above ànd below the soil surface. How that exactly works, that is still a mistery, but the data of this fieldtrip, combined with data from several other collaborating MIREN-regions, will hopefully shed light on that in the near future!

Cytisus scoparius, a common European invader in South America. In the background: the peak of the Antuco-volcano

Very important in that regard is the role of roads as highways for non-native plant species, rapidly funneling new intruders upwards towards higher elevations. These non-native species are bound to mess up the established interaction-network. At the same time, the present interactions will be crucial to define the faith of the invaders.

A native cushion-forming cactus (Maihuenia) between the volcanic rocks

The Chilean Andes have very high amounts of non-native species, especially compared to some of our other study regions in northern Scandinavia. That is another reason why we are here: to compare the effect of invaders on the vegetation in high versus low-impacted regions.

For now, it is the sampling that needs to be done, the questions will be answered later (after hard work in the field, in the lab and behind the computer). More on all that to follow!

Posted in Chile, General | Tagged Andes, Ecology, Fieldwork, Global change, Landscape photography, Mountains, Nature photography, Plants, Science, Travel, Travel photography | Leave a comment

Concepcíon

Posted on February 2, 2019 by lembrechtsjonas

Brussels-Madrid, a midnight cross-over of the Atlantic Ocean and the whole of South America, and a one hour flight south from Santiago, and there we were: Concepcíon, close to the Pacific Ocean, in Central Chile.

There, on the shores of the Biobio river, we spend our first Chilean evening, meeting the local MIREN-people, making plans for fieldwork to come, eating delicious food, and washing away the tiredness of the travels.

Walking across the riverbed of the Biobio-river

With this post, I like to introduce you to an upcoming series of stories from our ongoing fieldtrip to South America. A fieldtrip that brought together French, Belgian, Chilean and Argentinean MIREN-people to tackle cool new questions on plant distributions along mountain roads. Stories will slowly trickle in, as fieldwork and bad internet might hold me back.

Next up: the Andes!