CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – It’s a cool spring morning as I stare at the patchwork of colorful leaves and blossoms on the trees outside my home office. The thought of another Earth Day has me pondering all the research conducted at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign that has direct ecological implications. My colleagues and I have written about hundreds of these studies, and hundreds more are published every year.
Entomology professor Esther Ngumbi, pictured here with undergraduate student Erinn Dady, studies how soil microbes influence plant growth, health and resistance to stress.
Photos by Fred Zwicky
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Illinois Natural History Survey wildlife ecologist Max Allen studies big cats and other carnivorous mammals.
Photo courtesy Max Allen
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Perhaps this is true of any land-grant university. After all, the university is rooted in agriculture; it’s to be expected that our scientists focus on agriculture and its effects on the environment. We also are embedded in what was once an extensive Midwestern prairie, so prairie plants, animals and insects are a natural fit for us. I am biased, but I think the university’s leadership in so many areas of environmental research is exceptional. Here’s why:
Illinois is an international leader in photosynthesis research and has been for decades. Our scientists have hacked and modeled and manipulated the photosynthetic process on computers and in plants to achieve sustainable yield increases in field crops. These advances will help feed the world while minimizing agriculture’s ecological impact.
In research led by Stephen P. Long, a professor of plant biology and of crop sciences, a computer model predicted that boosting levels of three photosynthetic proteins in plants would increase the amount of sunlight the plants converted to biomass. Laboratory experiments in tobacco plants showed that the predictions were correct.
Graphic by Julie McMahon/Photo by L. Brian Stauffer
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Graduate student Lucas Buccafusca looks for ways to improve the efficiency of wind farms.
Photo by Fred Zwicky
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Our engineers, too, are advancing the science of environmental preservation. For example, they were the first to design new materials that could repair themselves, opening up a new avenue of research into “self-healing” materials that will last longer, minimizing waste. Illinois scientists are designing materials that have antimicrobial properties or repel water or biodegrade more readily than existing materials. They are striving to turn waste products into energy-rich resources. They’re improving the efficiency of batteries and other energy-storage and energy-generating technologies. They’re tracking industrial pollution and byproducts into the landscape, while looking for more ecologically benign alternatives.
Illinois scientists also are making major contributions to ecological research and preservation.
Entomology professor Alexandra Harmon-Threatt and undergraduate student Sabine Miller prepare for an evening of work in a prairie the professor created to study ground-nesting bees.
Photo by Fred Zwicky
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Researchers barcoded and tracked thousands of individual honey bees for a study linking honey bee gene regulation and behavior.
Photo by Beryl Jones
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For example, the university is a leader in honey bee research. Our scientists directed the sequencing of the honey bee genome and used it to dissect the honey bee’s social structure to better understand the relationship between genes, gene regulation and behavior. The genome also helped tease out some of the causes of colony collapse disorder, which threatens bee survival.
In research led by veterinary clinical medicine professor Matthew Allender, scientists use a nebulizer to deliver an antifungal agent into the bodies of snakes, like this timber rattler, that are afflicted with snake fungal disease.
Photo by L. Brian Stauffer
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Other researchers at Illinois are delving into the brains, behavior, health and habits of organisms like fish, snakes, turtles, mussels, ants, wild bees, birds, carnivorous predators and scavengers. They are building prairies and sampling forests, grasslands and wetlands across Illinois and beyond to better understand the interplay of landscapes, insects, animals and plants. Their work often focuses on the role of climate change in altering these relationships.
Illinois Natural History Survey veterinary epidemiologist Nohra Mateus-Pinilla and her colleagues study how chronic wasting disease afflicts white-tailed deer in Illinois.
Photos by L. Brian Stauffer
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Illinois scientists are tracking diseases and disease vectors like ticks across the landscape, monitoring chronic wasting disease in deer, and heartland virus, Lyme disease and other dangerous pathogens in ticks and mammals.
Illinois Sustainable Technology Center researcher John Scott and his colleagues are among the first to explore microplastic contamination in groundwater systems.
Photo by Fred Zwicky
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They are cataloguing and studying the metabolic needs of beneficial and potentially harmful fungi. They are learning how fungi and other microbes in the soil affect plant growth and health. They are tracking how forest fires alter the landscape, how hunting affects ecological health and how pharmaceutical products and microplastics end up in streams and rivers.
Carol Augspurger surveyed an old-growth forest in Illinois for 25 years. She and her colleagues discovered that some flowering plants on the forest floor were shifting the timing of their emergence, flowering and decline, likely as a result of climate change.
Photo by Steve Buck
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One study, in particular, highlights the special work that emerges from Illinois ecologists. Carol Augspurger, a professor emerita of plant biology at Illinois, spent 25 years visiting the same old-growth forest to track the changes in plant life there over time. With her colleagues at the Illinois Natural History Survey, Augspurger documented gradual shifts in the timing of plant emergence, flowering and decline – likely in response to climate change – that would not have been perceptible without such a steadfast commitment.
Much of this research offers insights that will help land managers, developers, scientists and citizens to preserve and protect what remains of the state’s ecological heritage. It’s worth considering on this Earth Day.
Carol Augspurger, a professor emerita of plant biology at the U. of I., explores Harvard Forest with John O’Keefe, the museum coordinator emeritus of Harvard Forest.
Photo courtesy Andrew Richardson Laboratory, Yale University
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