#Scifund Round 3 is underway and each day I will highlight a new proposal from the Challenge to give you a more in-depth understanding of each participant and their research.
Today I present to you
Kristina Summers. Her project seeks to raise awareness of the importance of bogs and the role of the carnivorous pitcherplant in the ecosystem. If you don’t find flesh-eating plants awesome then you need to check out this project!
Tell us about yourself, where you are from, and where you see yourself going.
My name is Kristina Summers and I live in a small town called Statham, GA that literally has one traffic light. It is nice because it reminds me of how small the suburb of Marietta, GA was when I was growing up there, despite its massive size today. It is also great because despite the small town feel, it is really only 12 miles from Athens, GA where the University of Georgia is located along with UGA football, great music and some of the best ecologically minded citizens in the state. When I finish graduate school I hope to be able to stay around here and keep teaching and being a part of this wonderful community while still continuing to shape young minds through conservation ecology and outreach.
How did you get involved in your research project?
I first learned about pitcherplants while working for the Georgia Dept. of Natural Resources, Wildlife Resources Division. I was given the wonderful opportunity to visit the mountain bogs and be a part of the restoration team. When I went back to school it was only natural that I took up the banner to keep on protecting their inhabitants.
Why is your research important to you? Why should others fund it?
Pitcherplants represent the survivors of the plant world. They have adapted and evolved over time to exist in some of the worst soils on Earth and yet they thrive. I have always rooted for organisms that insist on existing despite the odds. This is a plant that knows to go dormant based on the length of daylight it receives, much like an animal in winter. It can shift its energy allocation from a trap leaf to a more photosynthetically productive phyllodial (non-trap) leaf in times of less prey availability. How cool is that? And to think that there are insects that spend their larval stages inside the pitcher traps that then make up a significant portion of small vertebrates diets once they become adults – making the pitcherplant an anchor species, and some would have the bogs disappear forever.
Do you have a favorite story that came from working on your research project?
When teaching a pre-k class about pitcherplants I selected volunteers to pretend to be bugs and fly around then to approach the plant. I told them that the bugs are attracted by the scent glands that put out a “yummy aroma” for them that says to “come and sit on the hairy ledge” which is the scientific term but all the 5-6 year old’s and even the teacher were cracking up as I said it.
Also, visiting the bogs to get samples, I took a wrong step and sank up to my waist in muck. I called ahead to the biologist but he didn’t hear me and kept going. I tried to grab a tree branch but am really short and couldn’t get to it. After 30 minutes of wriggling around and making no progress, my partner came back and said, “oh there you are. need a hand?” he then lifted me straight up out of the muck, minus my boots. oh well.
Why did you decide to particpate in the SciFund Challenge?
I love blogging and social media, have always found it to be a fascinating medium for disseminating messages and have used it successfully for conservation for a number of years so why not my research?
What was the most difficult aspect of building your SciFund Proposal? What was your favorite?
My most difficult aspect is always just getting everything done because I always have too much to do and not enough time in the day. I am always running around trying to tweak things at the last minute to make it perfect and then thinking, oh but I want to share this too, or that photo will look great here…but I have to teach a class in 10 minutes and my son has a soccer game and my daughter has dance and my oldest needs to be driven to marching band and my Scifund video still isn’t done and now the cat is chasing the dog and I have to drive to the gardens to take care of my research plants….because that’s how it goes at our house!
Tell us something random. Something funny. Something borrowed. Something blue.
The mountain bog ecosystem is considered by The Nature Conservancy to be one of the most endangered habitats in the Southeast. With the Mountain Purple Pitcherplant being an anchor species, it is the key to the bogs survival. Without the plant, you have no bog, and no bugs. If you have never spent time in one then you may not realize the beauty of a bog plant and so I would encourage you to take a look at my project site. And then ask how we could possibly let something so beautiful just disappear?
And to save you time from scrolling up, you can read about her project and contribute here. Thanks Kristina for sharing your science!
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