But the ants’ social behaviors — such as hauling their dead off to what entomologists call “bone yards” in isolated spots away from the nests — have prevented commercial development of this method. The fungus can’t spread if infected ants are continually separated from healthy ones.

A new University of Florida study shows, however, that there may be a way to make insect-killing fungi a more potent weapon against fire ants and other pests. Scientists with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences modified the fungus so that it produces a peptide that helps regulate the fire ants’ nervous system.

The modified fungus was five to eight times as effective in killing fire ants, but had no increased effect on an unrelated insect, the greater wax moth. The researchers were surprised to learn that the modified fungus had another benefit — it disrupted the ants’ undertaker-like behavior.

The study was published this month by the online journal PLoS One.

“Potentially, it’s important because if you can disrupt this behavior, you may be able to increase the efficacy of the fungus in the nest, because they won’t take the dead out and you can spread the infection throughout the nest better. In theory, you could use the same amount of fungus and it would be more effective,” said Nemat Keyhani, a UF associate professor of microbiology and cell science and the study’s lead author.

Keyhani also led a research team in a similar study of mosquitoes, publishing the findings in this month’s issue of Nature Biotechnology.

In that study, the scientists tested Beauveria bassiana against mosquitoes, modifying the fungus so that it produced another peptide, called TMOF (trypsin-modulating oostatic factor).

This hormone, discovered by a UF/IFAS entomologist, is produced by mosquitoes. It stops the insects from producing a crucial digestive enzyme called trypsin. Though TMOF is important for the normal digestive process, too much of it causes mosquitoes to starve, unable to take nutrients from food.

Keyhani said the goal of both studies was to show that a host molecule, such as a peptide or hormone that an insect uses for a normal physiological process, can be used against it, disrupting that process and making it more susceptible to microbial infections.

In the mosquito study, combining the fungus with TMOF reduced the survival time of the mosquitoes by 25 percent, reduced females’ trypsin activity by 50 percent, and resulted in female mosquitoes laying 40 percent fewer eggs.

“So we’ve now proven the concept in two different ways — one against mosquitoes and one against fire ants,” Keyhani said.

Roberto Pereira, an IFAS research associate scientist in urban entomology and a member of the fire ant research team, said the findings are promising, but more study will be needed to determine commercial viability.

“We would probably want to enhance mortality quite a bit more than we did,” he said. “But even a small change in efficacy of the pathogen in causing disease or its ability to spread can cause it to go from a weak pathogen to one that overwhelms the host population.”

The ability to show that the modified fungus can target a specific insect population is also important, he said.

Besides Keyhani and Pereira, the fire ant research team included Yanhua Fan of Southwest University in Chongqing, China; Engin Kilic, a postdoctoral student in microbiology and cell science at UF and George Casella, a UF distinguished professor in IFAS statistics.

In addition to Keyhani and Fan, the mosquito research team included former UF entomology professor Dov Borovsky and UF graduate student Chloe Hawkings and UF postdoctoral fellow Almudena Ortiz-Urquiza.

Published today in the online journal PLoS One, the study details changes in the salamander’s declining health and habitat, and could provide a baseline for how changing ecosystems are affecting the rapid decline of amphibians worldwide.

“Scientists and biologists view amphibians as kind of a ‘canary in the coal mine’ and their health is often used as a barometer for overall ecosystem health, including potential problems that may affect humans,” said study co-author Max Nickerson, herpetology curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus.

More than 2 feet long, the Ozark Hellbender is the one of largest salamander species in the United States. Its unusual biological characteristics include the ability to regenerate injured or missing body parts.

In the new study, lead author Cheryl Nickerson, a professor at Arizona State University, along with NASA and UF scientists, cultured and identified microorganisms from abnormal and injured tissue on the salamanders searching for pathogens that may be causing the lack of regeneration and population decline.

The researchers found several potentially dangerous pathogens, including Aeromonas hydrophila, a bacterium scientists believe is associated with disease and death in both amphibians and fish.

While many different pathogens were found in the injured tissue, no single organism was found to be responsible for the lack of regeneration. Researchers believe the occurrence of abnormalities and injury in the Ozark Hellbender may have many contributing factors, including disease and habitat degradation, and say further study is needed

“If you don’t understand an amphibian’s skin you don’t understand the amphibians,” Nickerson said.

Scientists have known about the remarkable powers of salamander regeneration for more than 200 years, but beginning in the 1980s, researchers noticed a sharp decline in the Ozark Hellbender population. They also found a specific population from the North Fork of Missouri’s White River was declining dramatically and losing the ability to regenerate.

“We were finding animals with no legs that were still alive with flesh wounds or bones sticking out of limbs,” Nickerson said.

“Looking at the microorganisms on their skin can help us understand why these animals aren’t regenerating at the rate we’re used to seeing, and may lead to conclusions about population declines,” he said.

In November, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service added the Ozark Hellbender to the federal endangered species list. Its species name is Cryptobranchus alleganiensis bishopi.

Stanley Trauth, curator of amphibians and reptiles in the department of biological sciences at Arkansas State University, said public awareness of the species is increasing, and Hellbenders have recently been successfully bred for the first time in captivity at the St. Louis Zoo.

“There has been a dramatic decrease in the population and there are a number of factors that contribute to that,” Trauth said. “But these types of studies will help provide more consistent results on the impact of microorganisms and animal health.”

“In the last 20 years we have been finding a tremendous number of injuries on these animals and those injuries are not healing,” Nickerson said. “Now the population is down to almost nothing and we are very worried about the species and the environmental changes around them.”

The Ozark Hellbender’s fossil record goes back 161 million years and it represents one of the most ancient lines of amphibian life.

“This is about as far, in phylogeny, as that type of regeneration goes, this is the most ancient group of salamanders that we know of,” Nickerson said. “They have been through a lot and we want to find out what these changes mean.”

“The animals in the river systems in that area, just like in Florida, where we have these huge amounts of spring water you have to worry about it,” Nickerson said. “That’s a big dome of fresh water and it has implications on human health as well.”

“Imagine making solar panels by a process that looks like printing newspaper roll to roll,” said Franky So, a UF professor in the department of materials science and engineering.

Industry has eyed the roll-to-roll manufacturing process for years as a means of producing solar cells that can be integrated into the exterior of buildings, automobiles and even personal accessories such as handbags and jackets. But, to date, the photovoltaic sheets cannot muster enough energy per square inch to make them attractive to manufacturers.

The UF team has crossed the critical threshold of 8 percent efficiency in laboratory prototype solar cells, a milestone with implications for future marketability, by using a specially treated zinc oxide polymer blend as the electron charge transporting material. The full report outlining the details of their latest laboratory success in solar cell technology is published in the Dec. 18 online version of Nature Photonics.

The researchers said the innovative process they used to apply the zinc oxide as a film was key to their success. They first mixed it with a polymer so it could be spread thinly across the device, and then removed the polymer by subjecting it to intense ultraviolet light.

John Reynolds, a UF professor of chemistry working on the project, said the cells are layered with different materials that function like an electron-transporting parfait, with each of the nano-thin layers working together synergistically to harvest the sun’s energy with the highest efficiency.

Reynolds’ chemistry research group developed an additional specialized polymer coating that overlays the zinc oxide polymer blend.

“That’s where the real action is,” he said. The polymer blend creates the charges, and the zinc oxide layer delivers electrons to the outer circuit more efficiently.”

Reynolds’ chemistry research team is aligned in an ongoing collaboration with So’s materials science team, which they call “The SoRey Group.”

The most recent fruit of their collaboration will now go to Risø National Laboratory in Denmark, where researchers will replicate the materials and processes developed by the SoRey Group and test them in the roll-to-roll manufacturing process.

“This sort of thing can only happen when you have interdisciplinary groups like ours working together,” said Reynolds.

So and Reynolds plan to continue their collaboration with Risø National Laboratory, and expand it to include researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology where Reynolds is now moving. Their work is funded by a grant from the Office of Naval Research.

Insects use camouflage to protect themselves by looking like inanimate or inedible objects, while mimicry involves one species evolving similar warning color patterns to another.

The study in the current issue of The Annals of the Entomological Society of America helps scientists better understand how organisms depend upon one another, an important factor in predicting how disturbance of natural habitats may lead to species extinctions and loss of biodiversity.

“Mimicry in general is one of the best and earliest-studied examples of natural selection, and it can help us learn where evolutionary adaptations come from,” said UF lepidopterist Keith Willmott, lead author of the study and an associate curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus.

Bright warning coloration has evolved in many insects with physical or chemical defenses and further research into how insects metabolize plant toxins for their own benefit has potential use in the medical field.

“It’s very interesting how caterpillars can detoxify a plant’s poisonous chemicals and resynthesize them for their own chemical defense or for pheromones,” said Florida Museum collection coordinator and study co-author Andrei Sourakov. “We can look at the caterpillars’ metabolic systems to understand how they deal with secondary plant compounds, the toxic plant substances used for centuries as tonics, spices, medicine and recreational drugs.”

Based on the number of eggs laid by a single female butterfly, scientists estimate about 99 percent of caterpillars die before reaching the pupal stage. Survival tactics include sharp spines, toxic chemicals and hairs accompanied by bright warning coloration.

The study focuses on two groups of Neotropical caterpillars: Danaini of the Caribbean Island of Hispaniola and Ithomiini of the upper Amazon in eastern Ecuador. Sourakov raised and observed danaine caterpillars, including the monarch butterfly and its relatives. These species apparently form Müllerian mimicry rings, in which toxic species adopt the same warning color patterns so a predator will more quickly learn which species to avoid.

In Ecuador, Willmott and study co-author Marianne Elias, from the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, found that 22 of 41 ithomiine caterpillars displayed some kind of warning coloration. Five exhibited a previously undocumented pattern with a bright yellow body and blue tips, and four were likely Batesian mimics, in which edible species adopt the coloration of an unpalatable model species for protection. These “freeloaders” only appear to have the defense mechanisms of the model species.

“They act almost like parasites, because the mimics are actually edible and therefore deceive predators without having to invest in costly resources to maintain toxicity,” Willmott said. “Such a system can only be stable when the mimics are relatively rare, otherwise predators will learn the trick and attack more individuals of both mimics and models, driving models to evolve novel color patterns to escape the predators.”

Mimicry may be relatively rare in caterpillars because it is more difficult for them to establish bright coloration, Willmott said. A brightly colored caterpillar has less chance of evading predators than a mobile adult butterfly.

“In adults, bright coloration may be favored by sexual selection for signaling to males and females,” Willmott said. “Bright colors may be disadvantageous since they attract predators, but advantageous for attracting mates. Once established, bright colors might then be modified by natural selection for mimicry, another possible reason why mimicry seems to evolve much more frequently in adults than in caterpillars.”

However, Sourakov believes mimicry is more common in caterpillars than scientists realize, but may receive less attention because larvae must be raised to adulthood to identify mimicry complexes, a process that takes weeks of lab work. Also, few collections of immature stages are maintained, and colors are not as well preserved in caterpillars.

“We know mimicry is an important ecological process for several species of animals, and I hope this study will give people incentive to further research immature stages of insects,” said Andre Victor Lucci Freitas, a professor in the Instituto de Biologia at Universidade Estadual de Campinas. “We need to remember in most insects, immature stages are the most abundant.”

In an article scheduled to be published Thursday in the journal Nature, a survey of 41 international experts led by University of Florida ecologist Edward Schuur shows models created to estimate global warming may have underestimated the magnitude of carbon emissions from permafrost over the next century. Its effect on climate change is projected to be 2.5 times greater than models predicted, partly because of the amount of methane released in permafrost, or frozen soil.

“We’re talking about carbon that’s in soil, just like in your garden where there’s compost containing carbon slowly breaking down, but in permafrost it’s almost stopped because the soil is frozen,” Schuur said. “As that soil warms up, that carbon can be broken down by bacteria and fungi, and as they metabolize, they are releasing carbon and methane, greenhouse gases that cause warmer temperatures.”

As a result of plant and animal remains decomposing for thousands of years, organic carbon in the permafrost zone is distributed across 11.7 million square miles of land, an amount that is more than three times larger than previously estimated. The new number is mainly based on evidence the carbon is stored much deeper as the result of observations, soil measurements and experiments.

“We know the models are not yet giving us the right answer — it’s going to take time and development to make those better, and that process is not finished yet,” Schuur said. “It’s an interesting exercise in watching how scientists, who are very cautious in their training, make hypotheses about what our future will look like. The numbers are significant, and they appear like they are plausible and they are large enough for significant concern, because if climate change goes 20 or 30 percent faster that we had predicted already, that’s a pretty big boost.”

The survey, which was completed following a National Science Foundation-funded Permafrost Carbon Network workshop about six months ago, proposed four warming scenarios until 2040, 2100 and 2300. Researchers were asked to predict the amount of permafrost likely to thaw, how much carbon would be released, and what amount would be methane, which has much more warming potential than carbon dioxide.

The occurrence of carbon in northern soils is natural and the chemical does not have an effect on climate if it remains underground, but when released as a greenhouse gas it can add to climate warming. However, humans could slow warming temperatures as the result of greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels, which are what speed up the process of permafrost thaw.

“Even though we’re talking about a place that is very far away and seems to be out of our control, we actually have influence over what happens based on the overall trajectory of warming. If we followed a lower trajectory of warming based on controlling emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, it has the effect of slowing the whole process down and keeping a lot more carbon in the ground,” Schuur said. “Just by addressing the source of emissions that are from humans, we have this potential to just keep everything closer to its current state, frozen in permafrost, rather than going into the atmosphere.”

The survey shows that by 2100, experts believe the amount of carbon released will be 1.7 to 5.2 times greater than previous models predict, under scenarios where Arctic temperatures rise 13.5 degrees Fahrenheit. Some predicted effects of global warming include sea level rise, loss of biodiversity as some organisms are unable to migrate as quickly as the climate shifts and more extreme weather events that could affect food supply and water resources.

“This new research shows that the unmanaged part of the biosphere has a major role in determining the future trajectory of climate change,” said Stanford University biology professor Christopher Field, who was not involved in the study. “The implication is sobering. Whatever target we set for atmospheric CO2, this new research means we will need to work harder to reach it. But of course, limiting the amount of climate change also decreases the climate damage from permafrost melting.”

When carbon is released from the ground as a result of thawing permafrost, there is no way of trapping the gases at the source, so action to slow its effect must be taken beforehand.

“If you think about fossil fuel and deforestation, those are things people are doing, so presumably if you had enough will, you could change your laws and adjust your society to slow some of that down,” Schuur said. “But when carbon starts being emitted from the permafrost, you can’t immediately say, ‘OK, we’ve had enough of this, let’s just stop doing it,’ because it’s a natural cycle emitting carbon whether you like it or not. Once we start pushing it, it’s going to be releasing under its own dynamic.”

However, by predicting the animals’ habitat movement using models employed to analyze human interactions on social networks such as Facebook, scientists with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences find the animals’ predicament could be better understood.

Conservationists can use this improved approach to better prioritize habitat restoration efforts for endangered species, said author Robert Fletcher, a UF wildlife ecology and conservation assistant professor.

The study appeared Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Models are often used to predict the movements of animals when data are difficult to collect due to resource and time constraints faced by researchers. The ability to move to different habitat locations, known as connectivity, is important to the long-term survival of a species, because different locations provide additional resources, shelter and mating opportunities.

The study showed that social network models can predict connectivity better than currently used models, which overestimated animal movement.

“These over predictions are problematic because we might falsely think that populations are viable when they may not be,” Fletcher said.

In the study, researchers compared records of actual movements by the cactus bug and the Everglades snail kite to movement predicted by models. One social network model in particular, known as sender-receiver, was remarkably accurate in predicting both animals’ movements, despite that one animal was a bird that could potentially travel more than 100 miles and the other was an insect that only moves in a range of several feet.

Social network models have been used to try to predict relationships among people in social media as well as in disciplines, such as ecology, where they can help researchers understand which species may interact with each other. This was the first time social network models have been applied to understand connectivity in conservation biology, Fletcher said.

Social network models can also be used to help manage pests, he said. One example is predicting where invasive species will move.
Study authors included doctoral students Miguel Acevedo and Brian Reichert, master’s student Kyle Pias and wildlife ecology and conservation courtesy professor Wiley Kitchens.

If global temperatures increase by only a few of degrees by 2100, as predicted by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, people around the world will be forced to migrate. But transplanting populations from one location to another is a complicated proposition that has left millions of people impoverished in recent years. The researchers say that a word of caution is in order and that governments should take care to understand the ramifications of forced migration.

A consortium of 12 scientists from around the world, including two UF researchers, gathered last year at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center to review 50 years of research related to population resettlement following natural disasters or the installation of infrastructure development projects such as dams and pipelines. The group determined that resettlement efforts in the past have left communities in ruin, and that policy makers need to use lessons from the past to protect people who are forced to relocate because of climate change.

“The effects of climate change are likely to be experienced by as many people as disasters,” UF anthropologist Anthony Oliver-Smith said. “More people than ever may be moving in response to intense storms, increased flooding and drought that makes living untenable in their current location.”

“Sometimes the problem is simply a lack of regard for the people ostensibly in the way of progress,” said Oliver-Smith, an emeritus professor who has researched issues surrounding forced migration for more than 30 years. But resettlements frequently fail because the complexity of the task is underestimated. “Transplanting a population and its culture from one location to another is a complex process — as complicated as brain surgery,” he said.

“It’s going to be a matter of planning ahead now,” said Burt Singer, a courtesy faculty member at the UF Emerging Pathogens Institute who worked with the research group. He too has studied issues related to population resettlement for decades.

Singer said that regulatory efforts promoted by the International Finance Corporation, the corporate lending arm of the World Bank, are helping to ensure the well-being of resettled communities in some cases. But as more people are relocated — especially very poor people with no resources — financing resettlement operations in the wake of a changing climate could become a real challenge.

Planning and paying for resettlement is only part of the challenge, Oliver-Smith said. “You need informed, capable decision makers to carry out these plans,” he said. A lack of training and information can derail the best-laid plans. He said the World Bank increasingly turns to anthropologists to help them evaluate projects and outcomes of resettlement.

“It is a moral imperative,” Oliver-Smith said. Also, a simple cost-benefit analysis shows that doing resettlement poorly adds to costs in the future. Wasted resources and the costs of malnutrition, declining health, infant and elder mortality, and the destruction of families and social networks should be included in the total cost of a failed resettlement, he said.

Oliver-Smith said the cautionary tales of past failures yield valuable lessons for future policy makers, namely because they point out many of the potential pitfalls than can beset resettlement projects. But they also underscore the fact that there is a heavy price paid by resettled people, even in the best-case scenarios.

In the coming years, he said, many projects such as hydroelectric dams and biofuel plantations will be proposed in the name of climate change, but moving people to accommodate these projects may not be the simple solution that policy makers sometimes assume.

A clear-eyed review of the true costs of forced migration could alert governments to the complexities and risks of resettlement.

“If brain surgeons had the sort of success rate that we have had with resettling populations, very few people would opt for brain surgery,” he said.

The findings could help maintain the health of Florida’s coral reefs, which bring in billions of dollars to the state annually and are important for tourism, fisheries, shoreline protection and pharmaceutical research.

“Coral reefs are a major attraction for tourists in Florida,” said Max Teplitski, a microbiologist and an associate professor at UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. “They support the economies of South Florida, and they’re also important for fisheries and, in general, healthy ecosystems.”

“Unfortunately, in the past 20 years, corals have been degrading due to global environmental changes and direct human impacts, like overfishing and other pressures,” he said. “And also, diseases have been wiping out stressed corals in South Florida.”

White pox is caused by Serratia marcescens, a bacterium that commonly occurs in feces of animals and is capable of attacking a variety of animals and plants.

To combat white pox, Teplitski and a team of researchers began studying the interactions between the pathogen that causes the malady and other microorganisms that live on corals.

Their findings are detailed in a study Teplitski co-authored in this month’s issue of The ISME Journal: Multidisciplinary Journal of Microbial Ecology.

Corals are ancient creatures that recruit microorganisms such as bacteria to protect themselves from disease. Their characteristic structure is built by animals known as polyps.

In the study, the researchers screened several hundred bacteria isolated from coral and non-coral polyps for the ability to help ward off white pox.

The researchers found four bacteria that stopped white pox disease progression under controlled laboratory conditions and, to some degree, protected the polyps from getting sick.

They also noted that polyps containing the bacteria survived white pox infection, whereas those without the bacteria died.

Based on these results, scientists may begin checking individual polyps for the presence of beneficial bacteria before introducing them into a reef system as part of coral reef restoration.

Kim Ritchie, senior scientist and manager for the marine microbiology program at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, said Florida’s coral reefs are some of the sickest in the world.

“They seem to be in the worst shape,” said Ritchie, a co-author of the study. “But the more we can learn about the balance of beneficial bacteria and pathogenic bacteria, the easier it will be to help the coral reefs in the Keys become healthier.”

The research was funded by sales of Protect Our Reefs specialty license plates, a statewide program administered by Mote Marine Laboratory Inc.

Study authors also include Ali Alagely, a former UF undergraduate student, and Cory Krediet, a doctoral student in the interdisciplinary ecology program at UF’s School of Natural Resources and Environment.

The improved forests will stem from a genetic technique the researchers have developed that can create new tree varieties in half the time it takes current breeding methods.

The technique, detailed in a study published online Wednesday by the journal New Phytologist, is expected to increase the security and competitiveness of the U.S. forestry industry.

The Southeast is a leading producer of the world’s pine, and in Florida alone, the forestry industry had an economic impact of more than $14 billion on the state’s economy in 2009 and provided more than 80,000 jobs. Pine is used for building materials, furniture and paper.

Before the development, creating a new pine variety took more than 13 years. Now, with the new technique, the estimated time is about six years. The savings to the forestry industry are expected to be substantial.

“Competitiveness is a critical element right now,” said Matias Kirst, an associate professor in UF’s school of forest resources and conservation and an author of the study.

“We are under very significant pressure from countries in the world where there’s perhaps less regulation, where there’s higher photosynthetic capacity and the trees grow more,” he said. “So we have to have the ability to breed more rapidly.”

The finding came when the researchers, who are members of UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, decided to bypass uncovering every bit of genetic code behind pine tree traits. Instead they used the parts of the genetic code they already knew to develop a trait prediction model.

The model allows the researchers to predict with great accuracy traits that will appear in a tree without having to first grow it in a field test, which can take about eight years.

Kirst said a large part of the technique’s value is in breeding trees that perform well in the face of climate change, including conditions such as higher temperatures and increased drought.

“Breeders want to be in a position where the genetic material that they use is adaptable to a broad range of conditions,” he said.

Gary Peter, a professor in UF’s school of forest resources and conservation and another study author, said the new method will also enable faster development of trees that can be used for bioenergy, or energy produced from renewable resources.

“If we can modify traits much faster, we can create more specialized trees that can be grown for different products than just pulp and paper and solid wood,” Peter said. “We can tailor them for energy conversion.”

The new technique will also allow for the speedier development of trees with improved traits such as better wood quality and disease and pest resistance.

The study’s authors also include lead author Márcio Resende Jr., a doctoral student in UF’s genetics and genomics program; Patricio Munoz, a doctoral student in UF’s plant molecular and cellular biology program; Juan Acosta, a doctoral student in UF’s school of forest resources and conservation; John Davis, a professor and associate director of UF’s school of forest resources and conservation; Dario Grattapaglia, a genetics and biotechnology resources researcher with Embrapa in Brazil; and Marcos Resende, with the department of forest engineering at the Universidade Federal de Viçosa in Brazil.

The bacteria were isolated from arsenic-contaminated soil surrounding the Chinese brake fern, a plant known for its ability to remove arsenic from the environment.

The carcinogen contaminates soils around the world and is deadly to most organisms.

Arsenic levels above state-set minimum standards were reported in residential areas in Miami and Gainesville, according to a 2003 study co-authored by Lena Ma, a UF soil and water science professor.

The new findings, published in this month’s issue of Bioresource Technology, could lead to improved phytoremediation — the process of using plants to remove environmental contaminants — in which the bacteria are added around the roots of the Chinese brake fern to increase arsenic absorption.

In the study, the bacteria broke arsenic down into a more easily absorbed form and increased the fern’s arsenic uptake ability by more than 900 percent.

The bacteria also caused the plant to grow bigger, with a nearly 100 percent increase in root size.

“I really didn’t expect that the plant would grow better,” said Ma, an author of the study. “But the arsenic-resistant bacteria increased plant biomass.”

In 2001, Ma was the first to report the fern’s extraordinary arsenic accumulation abilities.

Wanting to further increase the plant’s arsenic absorption capabilities, Ma, fellow UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences member Bala Rathinasabapathi and soil and water science doctoral candidate Piyasa Ghosh, began examining bacteria living in the soil around the plant. Ghosh is the study’s lead author.

“We thought that there could be bacteria associated with the fern that could be useful in one way or another,” said Rathinasabapathi, a UF horticultural sciences associate professor.

The researchers collected soil near the fern and the fern’s root zone from different places in Florida contaminated with arsenic.

After the scientists isolated bacteria from the soil, they added it to the fern’s growing environment in the laboratory where it broke arsenic down into a more available form readily absorbed by the fern. In addition to the increase in arsenic absorption, they also noted a gain in the uptake of the nutrient phosphorus by the fern, which led to better growth.

Rathinasabapathi said more studies are needed to explore whether the bacteria can be widely used in agriculture.

The fern is licensed to and sold by a company based in Manhattan, Kan.

From 1863 through 2010, 137 non-native amphibian and reptile species were introduced to Florida, with about 25 percent of those traced to one animal importer. The findings appear online today in Zootaxa.

“Most people in Florida don’t realize when they see an animal if it’s native or non-native and unfortunately, quite a few of them don’t belong here and can cause harm,” said lead author Kenneth Krysko, herpetology collection manager at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus. “No other area in the world has a problem like we do, and today’s laws simply cannot be enforced to stop current trends.”

Florida law prohibits the release of non-native species without a state permit, but offenders cannot be prosecuted unless they are caught in the act. To date, no one in Florida has been prosecuted for the establishment of a non-indigenous animal. Researchers urge lawmakers to create enforceable policies before more species reproduce and become established. The study names 56 established species: 43 lizards, five snakes, four turtles, three frogs and a caiman, a close relative of the American alligator.

“The invasion of lizards is pretty drastic considering we only have 16 native species,” Krysko said. “Lizards can cause just as much damage as a python. They are quicker than snakes, can travel far, and are always moving around looking for the next meal.”

Defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as organisms “whose introduction causes or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health,” invasive species are a growing concern for residents and policymakers. Only three species were intercepted before reaching the wild and researchers documented 137 introductions. The study also shows no established, non-native amphibian or reptile species has been eradicated.

Floridians have experienced some of the damage these animals can cause, from iguanas that destroy cement walls to Burmese pythons released in the Everglades that eat protected species. While the impact of many of the introduced species has not been determined, the study provides new information about how, why and when they entered the state.

The first introduction in 1863 was of the greenhouse frog, native to the West Indies. One of the most easily recognized species is the brown anole, the first introduced lizard, which reached Florida from Cuba via cargo ships in 1887. Until about 1940, nearly all non-native species arrived through this accidental cargo pathway, but the boom in popularity of exotic terrarium animals in the 1970s and 1980s led to the pet trade being accountable for 84 percent of the introductions, Krysko said.

“It’s like some mad scientist has thrown these species together from all around the world and said, ‘hey let’s put them all together and see what happens,’ ” Krysko said. “It could take decades before we actually know the long-term effects these species will have.”

Other pathways include biological control, in which an animal is intentionally released to control a pest species, and accidental introduction through the zoo or plant trade. The study will serve as a baseline for establishing effective policies for control or eradication, said Fred Kraus, a vertebrate biologist at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu who helped establish policies for invasive amphibians and reptiles in Hawaii.

“This paper by Kenney and company I think is a good example of the approach that needs to be taken, providing the detail and being rather cautious in making immediate claims that things are established until there is evidence for it,” Kraus said. “There is a lot more work going on now, but for years it was just ignored. For years, climate change was ignored, too. You know, humans just tend to ignore bad news until you can’t ignore it anymore.”

One of the greatest obstacles pet owners face is how to feed and house an exotic animal that has become too large or difficult to handle, Krysko said.

“The biggest example is the Burmese python,” Krysko said. “It’s a large constrictor and has definitely shown impact on native species, some you just can’t even find anymore.”

The study uses fieldwork data from 12 co-authors throughout the state and research primarily using specimens in the Florida Museum of Natural History collections.

“This is a global problem and to think Florida is an exception to the rule is silly,” Krysko said. “The Fish and Wildlife Commission can’t do it alone – they need help and we have to have partners in this with every agency and the general public. Everyone has to be on board; it’s a very serious issue.”

The reefs, which provide habitat for popular sport fish and other marine life, pulled more than $253 million into the region during one year, the study found. Though it costs nothing more than a saltwater fishing license to use the submerged structures as a fishing spot, anglers spend money on food, lodging, fuel, tackle and other necessities.

The UF and Florida Sea Grant study looked at money generated by artificial reefs in Pinellas, Hillsborough, Manatee, Sarasota, Charlotte and Lee counties in 2009. Researchers found that $136 million came from residents, while $117 million was spent by visitors.

Bob Swett, the UF associate professor and Florida Sea Grant extension specialist who led the study, said he was struck most by the contrast between the income generated and the small amount counties invest in the reefs — ranging from $20,000 to $60,000 a year for each county, with some years requiring little to no spending. The reefs also enjoy private support, such as local marine contractors who donate materials and in-kind labor. “That shows me that there’s a lot of bang for the buck, if you will, in terms of what they get out of the artificial reef programs,” said Swett, also a member of UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

Chris Neal, who works for the Scuba Quest dive shop chain’s Sarasota location, said his company frequently takes groups of divers out to artificial reefs because the man-made structures allow divers to see such a wide variety of fish and wildlife.“You can see all kinds of fish – flounder, hogfish, snapper and grouper,” he said.

Besides asking residents about their reef-related spending, the UF researchers also asked boaters who use reefs and those who do not their opinions about spending public money to build and maintain the structures, which are typically underwater piles of large, hollow concrete blocks where fish can hide.

While users were more likely to support such spending (county responses ranged from 83 percent to 95 percent, in favor), Swett said he was also impressed by non-reef users’ enthusiasm. Their support for spending public money on reefs ranged from 61 percent to 71 percent.

Artificial reefs are used for a number of activities, among them: enhancing recreational and charter fishing and diving, boosting reef fish populations and aiding scientific research.

Florida’s artificial reef program, created in 1982, includes more than 2,500 documented artificial reefs in the state’s coastal waters. About one-third of them were the subject of the recent economic study.

Other survey highlights: on average, more than 5,600 southwest Florida residents use artificial reefs every day; for-hire fishing enterprises, including fishing guides, charter boats and party boats, accounted for nearly $90 million in spending, and artificial reefs support more than 2,500 full- and part-time jobs.

The researchers used a combination of mail, telephone and email to collect survey responses.

The study was funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the West Coast Inland Navigation District and the participating counties. Besides Swett, the research team included Chuck Adams, a marine economics professor; Sherry Larkin, associate professor in resource economics, extension scientist Alan Hodges and postdoctoral associate Thomas J. Stevens.

The full report, “Economic Impacts of Artificial Reefs for Six Southwest Florida Counties,” is available at www.flseagrant.org.

Now a University of Florida geographer and his colleagues applied Geographic Information Systems, known as GIS — as well as software previously used to examine human illness — to show where clusters of diseased coral exist. Their findings, published this month in the journal PLoS One, may help scientists derive better hypotheses to determine what contributes to coral disintegration.

“What you’ll find is that spatial techniques have been used relatively little in the coral research community,” said paper co-author Jason Blackburn, a UF professor of geography and member of UF’s Emerging Pathogens Institute. “With these methods, we gain a better understanding of the disease’s distribution across the reef.”

Microbiologists and toxicologists often run laboratory tests on small samples of Acropora species of coral to determine the factors that contribute to white-band disease, known as WBD. It’s visually identified as a white band moving from the base of the coral up, killing the coral tissue as it goes, leaving only the exposed coral skeleton behind.

Laboratory results spur a range of theories of causation — anything from opportunistic pathogens to specific bacterial infections. Other scientists suggest that WBD is not the result of an outside agent, such as bacteria, but rather a stress response from the coral in reaction to changes in the marine environment, such as ocean pollution and rising ocean temperatures due to climate change.

Yet the cause remains unclear. The goal of this current study was to use GIS and spatial analysis to search for patterns in a WBD outbreak that might point to a mode of transmission or cause, Blackburn said.

“What we wanted to test is how much data scientists should gather to get the full picture of disease,” he said. “What we found was that colony-level sampling, where individual Acropora colonies are counted and checked for disease, can show a far different picture of white-band disease than where only presence/absence of coral and disease are mapped.”

The researchers used data gathered in 2004 from scientists stationed at Buck Island National Monument in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Rather than determining only whether coral was affected by WBD, samplers at the station counted the individual number of healthy and non-healthy coral colonies. University researchers were then able to use this information in the Disease Mapping and Analysis Program, known as DMAP. The free software, designed by the University of Iowa initially to study Sudden-Infant Death Syndrome, was used to create maps of WBD prevalence and to locate areas with significant disease clustering.

“While the focus of our study was on a specific white-band disease outbreak, our methods could be used to determine if there’s a spatial component to just about any type of situation that might be present in an underlying population,” said Jennifer Lentz, a Louisiana State University graduate student who is lead author on the paper. “For example, you could use these same techniques to determine whether people with cancer are clustered in a given geographical area, and if so is there something about those locations that might be contributing to the increased prevalence of cancer.”

The researchers determined that 3 percent of the Acropora coral around Buck Island had WBD. They also found the locations of significant disease clusters, information scientists can then use to narrow where they should take samples for further laboratory tests. This is the first of several studies established by the researchers exploring which types of spatial analysis are the most appropriate for various types of coral data from the Caribbean.

For thousands of years, Acropora was the predominant coral in the Caribbean, but more than three decades of disease have destroyed the species ability to survive, forcing marine life out of their coral habitats, which exposes them to attack by predators.

“When these structures are gone, certain fish species have nowhere to go,” said Lentz. “Whole marine communities start to collapse.”

In a study published in the July 28 issue of the journal Nature, UF ecologist Michelle Mack and a team of scientists including fellow UF ecologist Ted Schuur quantified the amount of soil-bound carbon released into the atmosphere in the 2007 Anaktuvuk River fire, which covered more than 400 square miles on the North Slope of Alaska’s Brooks Range. The 2.1 million metric tons of carbon released in the fire — roughly twice the amount of greenhouse gases put out by the city of Miami in a year — is significant enough to suggest that Arctic fires could impact the global climate, said Mack, an associate professor of ecosystem ecology in UF’s department of biology.

“The 2007 fire was the canary in the coal mine,” Mack said. “In this wilderness, hundreds of miles away from the nearest city or source of pollution, we’re seeing the effects of a warming atmosphere. It’s a wakeup call that the Arctic carbon cycle could change rapidly, and we need to know what the consequences will be.”

Smoke from the fire pumped greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but that’s just one part of a tundra fire’s potential impact. The fire also consumed up to 30 percent of the insulating layer of organic matter that protects the permafrost beneath the tundra’s shrub- and moss-covered landscape.

In a pine forest, fire would burn up leaf litter on the ground, but not the soil beneath. Because the Arctic tundra has a carbon-rich, peaty soil, however, the ground itself is combustible, and when the fire recedes, some of the soil is gone. In a double whammy, the vulnerable permafrost is not only more exposed, but also covered by blackened ground, which absorbs more of the sun’s heat and could accelerate thawing.

“When the permafrost warms, microbes will begin to decompose that organic matter and could release even more carbon that’s been stored in the permafrost for hundreds or thousands of years into the atmosphere,” Mack said. “If that huge stock of carbon is released, it could increase atmospheric carbon dioxide drastically.”

The study shows how isolated fires can have a widespread impact, said University of Alaska biology professor Terry Chapin. “When you think about the massive carbon stocks and massive area of tundra throughout the world, and its increasing vulnerability to fire as climate warms, it suggests that fire may become the dominant factor that governs the future carbon balance of this biome,” Chapin said. “The paper by Michelle and her colleagues raises this possibility for the first time. It presents a very different perspective on the way in which climate change may affect this biome in the future.”

Using radiocarbon dating, co-author Schuur and researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the Alaska Fire Service and Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, found that carbon up to 50 years old had been burned in the 2007 fire.

Mack also developed a new method that can now be used by other tundra researchers to measure soil loss. By comparing the tussocks of sedge plants, which resprout after a fire, Mack was able to quantify soil heights and densities before and after the burn.

Mack hopes her findings will open a dialogue about how tundra fires are managed. Because the Anaktuvuk River fire was in a wilderness area, it was not suppressed or contained. With better data on the long-term impact of tundra fire on global climate warming, Mack says, putting out these fires might become more of a priority.

“This fire was a big wakeup call, and it can happen again, not just in Alaska but in other parts of the Arctic, like Canada and Russia,” Mack said. “Suppressing a fire in the wilderness is costly, but what if the fire causes the permafrost to melt? We need to have that discussion.”

Burgess and other UF scientists conducted the documentary research allowing the National Marine Fisheries Service to list the largetooth sawfish as endangered July 12. He is scheduled as a keynote speaker to discuss sawfish populations during the 2011 International Symposium on Sharks in Dakar, Senegal, Monday through Wednesday.

“It’s a fairly desperate situation,” said Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus. “Anything that swims is eligible to be eaten — you have poor countries reaping their resources because they have no choice.”

Biologists from countries including France, Portugal and the U.S. have participated in workshops in West Africa since 2004 with the objective of educating African biologists about shark conservation strategies. This year’s meeting will include biodiversity reports from participating West African nations.

Burgess’ seminar will focus on identifying sawfish populations, which have dwindled to near-extinction in the last 100 years due to habitat loss and over-fishing. The smalltooth sawfish was the first marine fish listed under the Endangered Species Act in 2003.

“The sawfishes are the two most endangered of the elasmobranchs — the sharks, skates and rays — and the irony is, they are so large, yet they have disappeared under our noses,” Burgess said. “We hope to bring awareness to our colleagues on the eastern side of the Atlantic, where there is still a remnant population.”

Participants include biologists from Cape Verde, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Mauritania Senegal and Sierra Leone. Burgess said he hopes the conference will help international researchers better understand the resources and deficiencies of their fisheries. Funded mainly by Fondation Internationale pour le Banc d’Arguin, the biologists will also participate in workshops about identifying species in their areas and utilizing current fisheries technologies.

Burgess’ seminar on sawfish conservation, “We Hardly Knew Ye: The Decline of Atlantic Sawfishes,” will include the work of the Sawfish Implementation Team, a collaborative group of federal and other specialists to promote the recovery of the fish. The sawfish can grow to 25 feet, and its saw-like rostrum is easily caught in fishermen’s nets.

“Hopefully this presentation will bring the plight of sawfishes to the forefront of regional biologists and raise some awareness,” Burgess said. “Maybe they can do something to save the few left in their area.”

For many native societies worldwide, sawfish are culturally important and “considered symbols of strength, spirituality, and admiration,” according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. In Senegal, the sawfish symbol is printed on paper money.

“There’s more sawfish on monetary bills than there are in the water right now,” Burgess said.

Mika Diop, a West African fisheries biologist who helped initiate the workshops in 2004, said this conference aims to highlight the achievements of the Sub-Regional Plan of Action for the conservation and sustainable management of shark populations in West Africa. “Another goal is to encourage reflection on the next steps emanating from this project,” he said.

Original workshop collaborators also include Burgess, Bernard Séret of the France Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle and Rui Coelho of Universidade do Algarve in Portugal. While researchers aim to help residents manage fish resources, they also understand fish are a primary food source for West African populations.

“I can’t in good faith tell these folks, ‘Don’t catch any sharks,’ if the sharks are the only thing they can very well eat,” Burgess said. “Unfortunately, the situation there is well beyond what biologists can do.”