Ray Wiggers' March 2006 Newsletter

Dear Friends,

I dedicate this issue to two sets (if not sorts) of people. First, to those old friends and new acquaintances who've demonstrated their support for the Natural History Exploration Guild by becoming members. Then, to the my new newsletter subscribers -- and there really are a lot of you who've signed up since the previous issue of this newsletter was published. I had the pleasure of meeting many of you at the geology and plant-ecology lectures I've recently given in Rockford, Racine, and the Chicagoland suburbs.

If you haven't taken a moment to visit the Guild's website, please do so. The ranks of this innovative, member-supported organization now include educators and homemakers, business-people and retired folks, and individuals in such professions as medicine, the law, Web design, scientific research, journalism, administration, and horticulture. It's a pleasure for me, as the Guild's director and founder, to be able to interact with persons from so many backgrounds. It's also a good reason for you to join. You'll get to meet and interact with individuals who, as likeminded as they are about continuing their education, come from diverse backgrounds and offer differing perspectives.

Having said that, let me make quick mention of the 2006 Guild events schedule. It was launched with a winter-tree-identification class at McCormick Ravine, the best-preserved wooded ravine on the western bluff of Lake Michigan. The participants included Guild members, other interested adults, and my current and former Lake Forest College botany students. The weather cooperated, the participants were enthusiastic -- in short, it was great fun. Then, just a few days ago, I led an Oasis Program daytrip featuring visits to the great orchid growers of the Chicago region. In greenhouses with climates more like Sumatra in July than northern Illinois in March, my tour group and I wended our way down aisles in a sea of cultivated orchids -- acres of them, literally, and many of them in bloom. All that active growth seemed to presage the reawakening of life outdoors. So we're off to an encouraging start to an ambitious and varied 2006 schedule that features everything from a spring-wildflower walk to canyon treks and a canoe trip down the fabled Illinois and Michigan Canal.

PART I. NONLINEAR SERMONS & SOLILOQUIES

A. Spotlight on Geologic Time: The Ordovician Period

Eon: Phanerozoic

Era: Paleozoic

Period: Ordovician

Years before Present: 495 million to 443 million

My descriptions of geologic time in previous issues focused primarily on the earliest chapters of the Earth's history -- the Hadean and Archean Eons. By way of contrast, let's turn here to a much shorter and much more recent slice of prehistory -- the Ordovician Period. You may think, on noting the dates listed above, that it, too, was a very long time ago. Perhaps. But to the geologist weaned on the roll call of the ages, it's nothing all that venerable. After all, by the time this particular period dawned, nine-tenths of all geologic time to date had already come and gone.

The term "Ordovician" -- pronounce it or-doe-VISH-un -- actually refers to an ancient Welsh tribe. The connection between paleo-Welshmen and a time long before any human beings existed may seem tenuous, but actually there's a logical tie-in. The early-nineteenth-century British geologists who first delineated this period based their dating on rock layers they'd studied in -- you guessed it -- Wales. (The names of the two periods adjoining the Ordovician refer to that Celtic region and culture, as well -- but more on that in later issues.)

PART II. REVIEWS IN THE REALM OF NATURAL HISTORY

A. Books: Microbiology (Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due)

My own interest in Winogradsky columns, so amply demonstrated directly above, stems from my reading Betsey Dexter Dyer's surprisingly engaging and intellectually transformative Field Guide to Bacteria (Cornell University Press softcover, ISBN 0801488540). This fact-rich but essentially nontechnical guide, recommended to me by Guild member Kendall Winter, is simply the most inspiring book I've read in the past six months. While her grasp of geology needs a little tightening, Professor Dyer, who teaches biology at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, has amply succeeded in describing the habitats and macroscopic "field marks" of a wide range of bacteria -- the vast majority of which, incidentally, are not humankind's disease-producing foes but its crucial allies. I believe this book is nothing less than a breakthrough in nature studies: an immensely important portion of living world, once mostly confined to the realm of the microscope and laboratory, is now revealed to the naked eye, outdoors. If you're ready for a radically new vision of nature, buy this book -- no author more thoroughly deserves her royalties -- and read it attentively.

B. Books: Cultural Geography (Lamentations on the Rise of the American Clonescape)

What we've done to this continent's landscape is outrageous and even criminal, but apparently very few of us really care. Those few who still do will resonate to much that social critic James Howard Kunstler has to say in The Geography of Nowhere (Touchstone paperback, ISBN 0671888250). In his analysis of the impact of the rampant and uninspired commercialization of city and suburban neighborhoods, the author focuses primarily on the devolution of architecture, the evil influence of our automobiles, and the perniciousness of megacorporate capitalism. What he doesn't do adequately is place his arguments in the context of the larger natural world. Nor does he discuss how a better understanding of native ecosystems can lead us to saner forms of town planning. And he seems to skirt the issue of the root cause of landscape degradation -- the skyrocketing human population. Still, Kunstler's engaging and thought-provoking jeremiad is a good starting point for those unblinded souls who wish to grapple more consciously with why we've allowed the local charms of America's many landscapes to be transmogrified into a single, hyperhomogenized hell.

B. Planet in a Bottle

Last December, after spending many years exploring a multitude of ecosystems, I discovered that I could make one of my own, and keep it on the windowsill next to me.

Before I explain what I mean, let's agree on what an ecosystem really is. My thumbworn Tenth-Edition Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary defines it as "the complex of a community of organisms and its environment functioning as an ecological unit in nature." In this description there's no implied downward limit of size. That's good for me, because the ecosystem I'm looking at right now is about eight inches tall and has a volume of about one pint. More precisely, it all fits within the confines of one recycled dry-roasted-peanuts jar.

In effect, what I've made is what biologists call a Winogradsky column. Named after its inventor, the great and admirably long-lived Russian biologist Sergius Winogradsky (1856-1953), this simple but elegant demonstration of bacterial diversity and mutualism consists of a relatively tall and narrow container filled with wetland soil, water, and a few other ingredients that provide calcium, sulfur, phosphorus and cellulose. Incidentally, as overtly elegant and stylish as my converted peanut jar is (see the photo directly below), many other types of capped containers work, too. I've experimented, both in the lab and in my rather labbish home, with mayonnaise jars, graduated cylinders, and even plastic mustard dispensers. The main requirement for all is that their surfaces are transparent, unobscured with labels, and not tinted. After all, you want a clear view of the ecosystem as it develops.

A few days to a few weeks after you've assembled your column, it will to show the first signs of life. Bubbles, signalling the release of carbon dioxide, methane, or hydrogen sulfide gases, will rise from the oxygen-poor depths of the column. Then you'll notice the gradual growth of colored zones at different heights in the column. These can vary in number and color, but here's a good example of how a typical column looks after about two months (the colors cited below may be quite vivid or rather subtle, depending on the brightness and resolution of your monitor):

It's true that I share the common human failing of taking too many good things for granted. But now and then I actually stop and realize how fortunate I am to be asked to offer such widely varying educational experiences -- a geology talk one week, a native-tree class the next, and an orchid tour a bit later on -- and so on, through various precincts of the Earth and life sciences. While this approach flies in the face of our society's rather slavish deference to Johnny-One-Note superspecialists, I can't imagine being any other way or doing anything else. I have trouble building fences around my enthusiasms.

I encourage you to test-drive this attitude yourself. Whether you decide to participate in up-coming Guild events or some other educational activities, stretch yourself a bit. Reach out to new worlds of understanding. If you're already fascinated by spring wildflowers, follow that interest, certainly, but also be a little daring and sign up for a fossil-collecting trip. If you're a passionate fossil collector, take a geology class to learn more about the context in which ancient organisms lived. If you enjoy gardening with Old World perennials, take some time to discover the magnificence of our native spring flora. The chances are you'll find remarkable connections between what you already know and other subjects that are new to you.

And, if you're feeling the need to see things in a broader perspective -- if you want to see nature the way nature sees itself -- sign up for one of the Guild's "Nature's Classroom" one-day courses that offers an integrative approach to understanding how plants, animals, microbes, rocks, soils, water, and the atmosphere all interact with one another.

The old cliche about spring being the time for new love pertains here. Commit yourself to falling for some fresh aspect of the natural world. That's one species of love that will never let you down. And if you have any questions about the wide spectrum of Guild tours, courses, and lectures offered in the next few months, please let me know at raywiggers@nheg.org.

An entire book -- if not a whole series of books -- could be written about the Ordovician, as it's revealed in the enduring record of rocks and fossils. So let's stick with the basics. They're dramatic enough. To begin with, the Earth's surface had a remarkably different aspect than it does now: much of what then passed for North America, and indeed the majority of the other continents, lay south of the equator. To get a good sense of this earler version of geographical reality, refer to this page of Christopher Scotese's fascinating Paleomap website.

Were you able to visit a part of an Ordovician continent that still stood above sea level, you'd be struck by the starkly empty landscape. The Earth's rocky surface, unprotected by a mantle of dense vegetation, was much more easily eroded than it is today. The macroscopic landbased life we now take for granted -- trees and upright-growing herbs, mushrooms, invertebrate and vertebrate animals -- had yet to appear in this challenging, dessicating, light-flooded environment.

However, a big change was underway. The earliest plants, similar to the flat, rootless, and stemless liverworts that still live on damp cliff faces today -- had apprently evolved from their green-alga ancestors and were colonizing shorelines and other damp, low spots. This was the unheralded beginning of one of Earth's greatest revolutions -- the rise and dominance of land plants. But in the Ordovician, that kingdom's humblest forebears, like the terrestrial bacteria and algae that preceded them, must have had only the subtlest impact on their surroundings.

The lonely aspect of its land nothwithstanding, the Ordovician was swarming with life -- in the seas. This time witnessed a remarkable expansion and diversification of marine life. In the preceding period, the Cambrian, paleontologists have found evidence of not quite 500 genera of ocean-dwelling animals; by the late Ordovician, there were more than three times that number. But, as usual in Earth history, superabundance was ultimately followed by a ruthless winnowing: at end of the period there came a mass extinction, apparently occuring in two distinct phases, that was triggered by a severe drop in temperatures and the buildup of an icesheet centered on the supercontinent of Gondwana. (The Scotese Orodovician map shows this great southern landmass at a point before the ice age began.) What caused this severe cooling of the Earth's climate is still the stuff of debate, but in any case it's a sobering reminder that our planet reserves the right to make relatively sudden and absolutely violent changes -- whatever the cost to the Earth's current cargo of living creatures.

One of the best places in the world to see traces of the vanished Ordovician world is in the American Midwest. This region, often maligned by East- and West-Coasters as having little scenery or geologic import, in fact offers both in wholesale quantities for those not too entranced by their own preconceptions. In northernwestern Illinois and southwestern Wisconsin, for instance, an afternoon's drive in the country reveals all sorts of roadcuts and other outcrops of layered rock: rounded, turretlike masses of soft St. Peter Sandstone, sturdier-looking faces of the magnesium-rich carbonate rock called dolostone. In this region, most of this the limestone look-alike belongs to what geologists call the Platteville and Galena Groups.

Both these Ordovician rock types, sandstone and dolostone, have played important roles in human affairs. The famous St. Peter provides high-quality silica sand used in glassmaking and other industrial applications; the Galena and Platteville have been one of North America's most important sources of lead and zinc ores. If you'd like to learn more about the geological, ecological, and economic implications of these rocks and the period they respresent, you're in luck. The following Spring 2006 Guild events feature an insider's view of the Ordovician Period:

- Geology of Winnebago County, Illinois

- Weekend Trip to Northern Iowa and Southern Minnesota

- Starved Rock State Park Mini-Trek

- Matthiessen State Park Mini-Trek

A description of the one-day Winnebago County class is given on my Courses Page; additional information on the other three can be found on my Tours Page.

The captions above give you the cast of characters in this surprisingly complex community. But that's only the beginning of the story. This Lilliputian ecosystem would fall apart quickly -- dooming its billions of microscopic citizens to an untimely end -- if the bacteria weren't already beautifully adapted to helping each other out. In effect, each type of bacterium thrives on and thus recycles the waste products of others. The result: if given one basic ingredient (a moderate amount of light for the photosynthesizers in the community) Winogradsky columns form stable ecosystems that have the potential to live in balance with their inner resources for decades on end. A column made by a gradeschooler as a science project may still adorn his kitchen window when, sixty years later, he retires as a senior member of a human community considerably less harmonious and self-supporting than the one that has been in that peanut jar all those years.

That's the gist of this essay. But I still have to justify this section's title. Why do I call the Winogradsky column a "planet in a bottle?" Because it represents a fair approximation of the only ecosystem that existed on Earth from about 3.8 to 2.0 billion years ago. In other words, from a biological standpoint, it's a good facsimile of our planet for the first half of its entire history. In that plantless, animal-free time, bacteria were the highest form of life. They filled a multitude of niches and, by virtue of their own evolutionary inventiveness, set the stage for the advent of the more complex organisms we see today. They may share that stage with us multicellular types today -- but never forget who's really in charge.

(As a postscript, here's one bit of bio-trivia that can help to keep your eukaryotic hubris in check. Your body is composed of approximately ten trillion cells. That's a staggering number -- until you realize that on and in your body reside about one hundred trillion bacteria -- and that's the conservative census, just after you've showered and brushed your teeth. Your own cells are outnumbered, by a whole order of magnitude, by a horde of freeloaders that delight in colonizing your skin, mouth, sinuses, and intestines. You may think you're a highly purposeful and self-willed individual, but the numbers suggest a different interpretation. Your primary role may just be this: to be a giant, well-stocked mobile home, a sort of flesh-and-bone Winnebago, that takes your true masters exactly where they want to go. Happy motoring!)

And here is an example of Coprinus comatus doing what is does best. This specimen was collected the preceding October. Shaggy-mane mushrooms literally dissolve at maturity into black, sticky goo. For this reason, this genus of mushrooms is also known as the "inky caps." Coprinus atramentarius, a close relative of the species shown here, is also found in the Midwest. While it too is edible, don't ever wash it down with alcohol. If you do, you're likely to experience "flushing of the face and neck, tingling of fingers and toes, headache, and sometimes nausea," according to eminent mycologist Gary Lincoff. This disagreeable biochemical interaction has earned C. atramentarius the nickname "Tippler's Bane."

(And this obligatory note: NEVER eat any wild or houseplant mushroom, even if it closely resembles the one shown here, unless it has been positively identified by a certified, card-carrying, scientifically trained mushroom expert. And I mean it!)