Documentation of “reference ecosystems” like the pristine landscape of the Huron Mts. is critical for understanding the ‘baseline’ behavior of ecological processes without the confusing effects of a history of intensive human management; without such studies, it is impossible to fully assess effects of long-term environmental changes. However, the value …
Researchers keep discovering new layers of biological diversity, so perhaps it should not be surprising to learn that there are hundreds (maybe thousands?) of species of poorly known fungi living inside the plants and lichens of the Huron Mountains. These endophytic fungi — fungi that live within the tissues of plants without causing …
The Manierre Award, offered annually by HMWF at its annual meeting, honors William and Anne Manierre, long-time supporters of the Foundation and accomplished naturalists themselves. The award recognizes a recent, peer-reviewed publication based on work sponsored by the Huron Mt. Wildlife Foundation. For 2015, the Award recognizes the work of …
The Summer 2015 HMWF newsletter is now available. It features a story about wolves in the upper midwest, with a focus on Dr. John Vucetich of Michigan Tech, who will be speaking at this year’s annual meeting of the Foundation. You can download a pdf version of the newsletter at …
[editorial note: This is our first ‘guest post’. It comes from Mario Muscarella, and is about the research he is conducting with his advisor, Dr. Jay Lennon, at Indiana University. I add one comment; description of bacterial diversity is difficult to place in the same framework used for other organisms, …
About a decade ago I realized that the large collection of reports in the HMWF files included some pretty thorough inventories of a wide range of taxonomic groups, and had the notion that these could be the foundation for an ‘ATBI’ effort — a cataloguing of all taxa of all
Researchers have long been attracted to Canyon Lake as a geomorphological oddity. Carved by glacial outwash floodwaters, its extreme depth relative to its width, and the protection from wind afforded by its bounding cliffs mean that winds can never provide enough energy to mix its waters all the way …
Cakile edentula — American sea rocket — is an annual or biennial plant of the mustard family, and a common colonist of beach dunes along both Atlantic and Pacific coastlines and, as variety lacustris, along most of the Great Lakes shorelines. So it would be nothing to get excited about in many areas. …
Also 26 butterflies and 18 fruit-flies. This is the tally from the first year of Dr. Thomas Werner’s surveys of order Lepidoptera (the moths and butterflies) and Family Drosophilidae (fruit-flies) in the order Diptera. Seven of the butterly species, 160 of the moths, and all of the fruit-flies are new records …
A new publication by Dr. Kerry Woods, Bennington College, uses long-term study plots at the Huron Mountains to gain unique insight into the carbon status of old-growth hemlock-northern hardwood forests. The combined living and dead biomass/carbon pools in the stands sampled are very large for eastern North America, but dynamics …
