Celebrate Autumn in the Arboretum

As we turn the corner from summer to fall, several public programs will feature "slow" subjects, such as meditation and turtles (no, not in the same program!).

Monticello vegetable gardener Pat Brodowski will present "Gardening with Thomas Jefferson" Oct. 17.

Two evening programs by Shell Fischer will address guided walking meditation (September 25) and mindfulness meditation (October 2). We will end the season with one of our always popular full moon walks (November 18). In these, we try to walk slowly and quietly through the dusk and dark in hopes of seeing, hearing, and smelling as much as possible. The bats stole the show on our August full moon walk; in November, I'm hoping owls will make an appearance.

Each fall we co-host a public program with Shenandoah University's Department of Environmental Studies. This November we feature Thomas Akre from the Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation. The title of his talk is "Wood Turtles in Virginia: Conserving a Slow-Moving Species in a Rapidly Changing Landscape," another in our "slow" series.

Okay, so not all fall programs fit this mold. Marion Lobstein will offer a lively, two-part workshop on the Flora of Virginia (September 27 and October 4), and we look forward to an informative, illustrated program on bats by bat rehabilitator Bonnie Miles (October 23).

We will feature the bounty of the season in a special presentation co-

hosted by the Winchester-Clarke Garden Club. Pat Brodowski, Monticello vegetable gardener, will give an illustrated program on vegetables grown by Thomas Jefferson, techniques used then and now at Monticello, and more; she will bring samples, tools, and plenty of gardening tips.

Discover the Arboretum's Conifer Trail

While you are invited to tour our 1,200 conifer trees, made up of 200 conifer species and varieties, you might not have quite enough time before sunset, even in summer. So we have trimmed the list to 23 trees that represent the diversity of conifers in our collection and have stories to tell regarding ecology and human culture. 

Improved and expanded teacher training may be one of the changes necessary to move more students into the STEM fields, and NSF's Research Experience for Teachers (RET) may be an important tool for providing unique training opportunities for middle and high school teachers. Blandy faculty members Kyle Haynes and T'ai Roulston worked with Charlottesville High School special education teacher Lewis Bauer to develop a successful RET proposal that allowed Lewis to spend the summer at Blandy working on bumblebees. Lewis works with students who are struggling in school, and these students often have fewer opportunities to engage in inquiry-based learning.  Lewis's goal was to translate his research experience at Blandy into a project-based course for these students.

Lewis isn't a newcomer to the Blandy summer research community. His wife, Rosemary Malfi, is working on her Ph.D. with T'ai Roulston and has spent the past four summers studying bumblebees at Blandy. Her dissertation examines factors affecting colony success and population size in bumblebees and is motivated, in part, by widespread declines in many species of these native pollinators. Lewis has spent much of the past few summers at Blandy working as Rosemary's loving, supportive, but unpaid field and laboratory technician.

Radio frequency ID tags attached to the backs of bumblebees are visible in this photo taken inside a hive.

Most of the tagged bees spent their time foraging for pollen and nectar. Both of these resources are essential for the survival of the hive and the eventual production of new queens at the end of the season. Time away from the hive can be dangerous, however. One of the significant natural enemies of bumblebees is the thick-headed fly (family Conopidae). Female flies actively hunt for foraging bumblebees, and when they find one, they attack and quickly insert an egg into the body cavity of the live bee. Over the next 10 days, the egg hatches and a larval fly grows inside the bee's abdomen, eating its host from the inside. Staige Davis, a Blandy Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) student in 2012, discovered that these parasitized bees dig their own graves toward the end of their lives, and the immature fly pupates inside the corpse underground. The fly emerges as an adult the next summer to start the life cycle all over again.

Lewis and Clara discovered from their RFID data that in mid June a bumblebee had a 50% chance of being parasitized by a fly after 30 hours of flight time. By early July, however, the risk increased substantially, with a 50% chance of being parasitized after only 17 hours. They calculated that an unparasitized bumblebee can collect enough pollen and nectar to produce about 10 new bees. Even under the best circumstances, a parasitized bee can gather enough resources for only about four larvae, and the earlier they are parasitized, the lower that number drops. The discovery suggested that the flies may play a large role in determining whether a hive can survive long enough and get large enough to produce queens at the end of the season.

Although most of our students have returned to their colleges and universities, Lewis's project is now being carried with him to Charlottesville High School. There, he is working with science and special education faculty in a portfolio-based ecology class for his students. The inquiry-based learning approach featured in this course will provide hands-on, authentic ways for his students to meet and exceed the Virginia Standards of Learning. Over the course of the year, students will learn about data collection and analysis: They will observe a live bumblebee colony in the classroom and come up with their own conclusions about the colony growth cycle. Lewis is also bringing preserved bee specimens for the students to dissect and examine for the presence of fly larvae inside. In the spring, he will bring a group of students to Blandy for a field trip to observe bees in the field, and to meet our graduate students and faculty and learn from their ongoing projects.

Lewis's experience at Blandy this summer and the discoveries his students will make during the coming academic year may be just what they need to rekindle their curiosity. The REU students at Blandy have frequently told us what a life-changing experience their summer here has been. Lewis is hoping to bring the same type of excitement to his high school students.
 

Early in the summer parts of Virginia were visited by Brood II of the 17-year periodical cicada (the genus Magicicada). These incredible insects are one of the great curiosities of the natural world. The offspring of Brood II will not emerge until the year 2030, but other periodical cicada Broods -- V (2016), IX (2020), and the biggest of them all, X (2021) -- will make their scheduled appearances in the Commonwealth before then.