Life, death, and disease—in C

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I drew this to illustrate Forum paper for the scientific journal Oikos. Here is a summary of the study, “Dead or alive: carbon as currency to integrate disease and ecosystem ecology theory” (by Seabloom et al.):

Disease and ecosystem ecology are treated as separate disciplines, but we know they're intertwined—so how can we study them together? Think in terms of carbon, suggests this Forum paper. Most studies of disease stop tracking organisms after they die, ignoring their ongoing role in the ecosystem. By shifting to units of carbon rather than individuals, we can keep track of dead hosts as well as living ones (not to mention partially infected hosts that shed dead tissue).

The authors present four models focusing on plant and phytoplankton pathogens to explore this coupling of disease and ecosystem perspectives. They show that disease spread is mediated by the decomposition rates of dead hosts, while pathogens influence carbon cycling between live and dead biomass. Their modeling also predicts that disease is more devastating to ecosystems with fast carbon turnover, like lakes and oceans, relative to slow-turnover ecosystems like boreal forests—just a few examples of insights gained by unifying the two fields of study.

Bird island

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I painted this tern from a wooden blind on Eastern Egg Rock, where puffins are the most famous (but not the only) birds. That was in June, during my week as an Audubon instructor.

These three sketches were from a subsequent trip to the rock in July with members of the Wabanaki community.

Top right: eider. Right: tern on tent. Above: tern on outhouse, with fish. (Incidentally, the outhouse itself is painted to look like a fish.)

Stone and Sea (and sketches for sale)

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This past winter, aka summer in the southern hemisphere, I returned to New Zealand (five years after my seabird adventures there) for a four-month project called Toka Tāiko.

Sandy Bay Dunes, 6x6" Watercolor

Toka means “rock” or “boulder” in te reo Māori, and this refers to one purpose of my trip: teaching sketching to a roving band of geology students from Carleton College. Tāiko is a word for seabird. Another purpose of the trip was to help seabird scientists with seabird research on seabird islands, picking up the threads from my project five years ago.

Between these two enterprises I covered a decent amount of ground (and water) from the Tongariro Alpine Crossing to the Southern Alps to the Mercury Islands, and was fortunate to steer clear of Cyclone Gabrielle along the way. Meanwhile, I did a whole lot of sketching. Which brings me to this news:

Original artwork for sale

I’m making a bunch of the original sketches from this trip available for sale. Check out available artwork here and use the “Inquire” button alongside any piece to ask questions or let me know of your interest. (For prints, visit here.)

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The Humpty-Dumpty Effect

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Below is the summary I wrote to go along with this illustration of a scientific paper, titled An eco-evolutionary perspective on the humpty-dumpty effect and community restoration:

Why is it so hard to fix broken ecosystems? This Forum paper seeks to improve our idea of the “humpty-dumpty effect” that is often invoked to explain restoration failure. Reassembling an ecosystem is more complicated than putting puzzle pieces back together when the "pieces" have changed in size (population size) or shape (species traits), according to the authors of the study. Using this puzzle-piece concept, the authors evaluate 271 efforts to restore fragmented ecosystems. They describe examples where restoration failure seems to have resulted from changes in size, shape, or both. Their paper concludes with a checklist of five recommendations as a starting point to help future restoration efforts “more successfully put the ecological community pieces together again.”

More of my ecological illustrations and summaries: https://www.oikosjournal.org/forum.

Matinicus Rock

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A few sketches from a few days on a seabird island 23 miles offshore from Rockland, Maine, with Audubon’s Seabird Institute. Featuring: Arctic terns, Atlantic puffins, black guillemots, razorbills, seals, bindweed flowers, bird blinds, granite, a lighthouse, scientist Gemma Clucas, John Drury’s lapstrake dory, and scenes from the Vinalhaven–Rockland ferry.