PELLSTON, Mich. — The University of Michigan Biological Station's season of discovery was full of students doing research in a community of scientists from around the world, as well as enlightening visits from distinguished guest speakers and loads of laughter during fun games and high-energy dancing.

Scroll through community highlights from the end of June through the 2024 summer term, which was July 2 through Aug. 1 at the research and teaching campus in northern Michigan.

Founded in 1909, the U-M Biological Station is one of the nation’s largest and longest continuously operating field research stations.

Laboratories and cabins are tucked into more than 11,000 acres along Douglas Lake to support long-term climate research and education.

The spring term photo gallery (May-June 2024) is available here. 

“Sand dunes are being loved to death,” said Dr. Kerri Crawford, an associate professor of biology and biochemistry at the University of Houston, during the UMBS Bennett Lecture in Mycology and Plant Biology on Wednesday, June 26. The slide features carbon-dating work showing the ages of sand dune ridges at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore along Lake Michigan. The closer to shore, the younger the dunes, she explained.
Crawford discussed how humans are reshaping the natural world and her work on how to predict and mitigate the consequences. Her talk explored climate change in one of the world's most endangered ecosystems — Gulf Coast prairies — and biodiversity loss in Lake Michigan sand dunes. Using simulations with different water conditions, she talked about results showing erosion of diversity and community unpredictability as it got wetter.
When it comes to restoration planning, Crawford’s work found lots of evidence that genetic diversity within Ammophila, a species of beachgrass, is important and should be considered. Her research focuses on understanding the consequences of global changes for ecological communities with a particular emphasis on the role plant-microbe interactions play in structuring plant communities.
A UMBS staff member’s 6-year-old son helped get Dr. Francie Cuthbert in the air on a seaplane. She is the legendary waterbird researcher from the University of Minnesota known for her 30+ years of work saving Great Lakes Piping Plovers from the brink of extinction. On Wednesday, June 26, Cuthbert checked common tern sites to see if those species of concern are active as part of a study for Michigan DNR and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Cuthbert flew to the St. Mary’s River, followed the Lake Michigan shore to Escanaba then to Beaver Island and back to Douglas Lake in Pellston.
When Cuthbert's journey was done, the pilot generously allowed children of a UMBS researcher on campus to experience the excitement of being in the cockpit of the plane.
Emma Dawson-Glass, a Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan, spotted this porcupine by the UMBS community garden on Sunday, June 30.
From left, UMBS students Emma Kill (U-M ‘26) and Makeda Dandridge (U-M ‘26) smile on Tuesday, July 2, as they move into their cabin where they will live for the summer term.
Mikayla Misiak bids farewell to her father Michael Misiak, who drove her up to UMBS from Au Gres, Michigan, on Tuesday, July 2.
Cameron Kaufman, Will Newman and Skyler Umney read signatures and notes from past UMBS students on the walls of their cabin on move-in day for the summer term.
Dr. Amanda Koltz, an assistant professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Texas at Austin, holds a mouse — one of the most abundant mammal species in North America and “very important players within the forest ecosystem” — on Tuesday, July 2, in the Burn Plots at UMBS. Her parasite removal experiment in white-footed mice in Michigan is funded by a UMBS grant through the Stockard Fellowship, which is supported by donors. “Most free-living animals are infected with gastrointestinal parasites like gut worms,” Koltz said. “If parasites influence what mice eat, how they behave, or their reproductive status, then that could have cascading effects on the ecosystem. We’re trying to understand the role of parasites within these ecosystems.”
Koltz, left, started the new research project in collaboration with the UMBS Field Mammalogy class led by course instructor Dr. Jessica Light, right, a professor at Texas A&M University, pictured examining a mouse’s body condition on July 2 before setting it free. Additional collaborators include Dr. Aimée Classen, director of UMBS and a professor in the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and Dr. Vanessa Ezenwa, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University. Last year Ezenwa visited UMBS to give the Pettingill Lecture in Natural History about her work uncovering the long-term evolutionary interaction playing out between worms and TB in buffalo in South Africa.
Koltz’s team also is collecting fecal samples, like this one on July 2, to send to a lab for analysis. “We get a lot of mouse poop and we use that to understand their microbiome, the organisms in their gut,” Koltz said. “We’re trying to use those fecal samples to get at their diet, so what they’ve been eating. We’re looking at stress levels in the mice. And then next year we’ll also be looking at exploratory behavior and anxiety.”
Resident Biologist Adam Schubel cleans water gear at the aquatic invasive species cleaning station on Tuesday, July 2. UMBS installed the cleaning station by the maintenance garage to make it easier for scientists and students at the research and teaching campus to remove aquatic invasive species from their equipment after returning from their field work in rivers, lakes and wetlands across northern Michigan.
Students in the Field Studies of Freshwater Fishes course at UMBS work using a net in the west branch of the Maple River.
A decades-long researcher at UMBS, Dr. Reinhard Lakes-Harlan is a professor from the University of Giessen in Germany. On Wednesday, July 3, he held a loudspeaker in a forest at the Biological Station in northern Michigan to attract cicadas with pre-recorded sounds like a male cicada’s calling song intended for a female. Lakes-Harlan studies a three-species system: the interaction between the cicada Okanagana rimosa (which is here every year, he said), a parasitic fly and a fungus.
Lakes-Harlan uses a SoundCam on July 3 to see where the singing cicadas are located at the top of nearby trees. The device depicts the location and intensity of sounds in a video image, indicated by the colored areas. In his research on the acoustic behavior and population dynamics of the cicada, Lakes-Harlan found that the parasitic fly, which has an “ear” for the male cicada’s calling song, kills about 80% of the males in the early season. When the parasitic flies are gone for the year, as they are now, a fungus called Massospora levispora interferes and changes the behavior of both male and female cicadas.
Lakes-Harlan said this female cicada died after a fungus infection last week in the Grayling area — “you can see the fungus replaced all of the abdomen.” With a fungus infection, the male cicada changes its role entirely. It does not produce a calling song but flies to other calling males “probably to spread the spores for the fungus” to be able to infect more cicadas the next year. And Lakes-Harlan found that a fungus infection alters the nervous system of the female cicada so they are attracted to any random noise source, not just the male cicada’s calling song.
Dr. Chris Gough, a UMBS researcher and professor of biology at Virginia Commonwealth University, wore a rock star wig and carried a loudspeaker to provide music for the Fourth of July parade at the University of Michigan Biological Station.
Gough rode along with children who spend the field season on campus. They festively decorated their bikes, helmets and faces for the annual parade.
The children's families as well as UMBS students and staff cheered along the parade route.
The UMBS campus community paired up to compete in the water balloon toss. Teams started close together. On the right wearing butterfly wings, 8-year-old Hazel Freeman successfully threw a water balloon to her mom Avril Wiers, who leads the children's nature day camp.
Hazel closed her eyes to prepare for a splash.
UMBS student Makeda Dandridge made it to the final round of the water balloon competition.
UMBS Director Aimée Classen, right, leads her team in a game of tug-of-war during the Fourth of July picnic.
Isabel Gil, the UMBS science communications intern this field season who will be a senior at U-M in the fall, hung on to the rope and yelled "Pull!" as she started to slide toward the center line.
Dr. Noelia Barrios-Garcia, right, who teaches one of the General Ecology Lab courses at UMBS, took a canoe trip on Douglas Lake with her daughter on Tuesday, July 9.
From left, Spencer Johnson, Ben Carlson, Ruby Miller and Isha Saini search for organisms living on the forest floor on July 5. As part of a group project for their Ecology Lab course, these UMBS students aimed to calculate species density under fallen trees along different transects.
At far right, Kelsey Keenan holds a salamander that her group found beneath a log on July 5. From left, Veronika Tsymbal, Sam Skinner and Maria Millado look on.
In a team effort, Sam Skinner overturned a log and Kelsey Keenan observed the underlying organisms. For their group project in the Ecology Lab course, this team of UMBS students evaluated if the distance from Douglas Lake impacted the quantity of invertebrates found beneath logs along a transect line.
The interior renovation of the dormitory lounge began on Monday, July 8. It’s one of several projects to revitalize community spaces and enhance the on-campus living and learning experience. Those spaces are being reimagined to be brighter and more welcoming and have the flexibility to be reconfigured to serve large groups as well as small study and research nooks.
On Sunday, July 7, Artist in Residence Dr. Madeleine Wattenberg hosted her first poetry workshop of the month at UMBS. She kicked off the session by asking all participants to finish the prompt, “Poetry is like…”
From left, Carma Johnson, Becca Meyer-Rasmussen and Sophie Dougherty all respond to poetry prompts designed to engage all five senses and celebrate the nonhuman life and world around them.
Children in the Nature Day Camp watched a seaplane arrive and take off on Wednesday, July 10, to transport members of the Great Lakes Piping Plover team, which are stationed at UMBS each summer to help save the iconic shorebirds.
Indigenous languages and grammatical gender were the focus of the talk on July 10 in the 2024 UMBS Summer Lecture Series featuring Dr. Cherry Meyer, an assistant professor in the Departments of American Culture and Linguistics at the University of Michigan. Meyer is a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of the Chippewa Indians and a linguist working with the Ojibwe language. Meyer also is part of the core faculty in the U-M Program in Native American Studies.
During her talk in Pellston, Meyer explained that there are many varieties of Ojibwe spoken around the Great Lakes region. One of the most noticeable differences is the presence or absence of syncope, a process of deleting certain unstressed vowels: “Words sound faster, with more consonants clustered together.”
Meyer told the crowd of nearly 100 people in Gates Lecture Hall that analogical extensions give animacy gender to nouns that aren’t actually animate items. The language records the similarities and connections of items, living and nonliving: “Rather than reveal the depths of the Ojibwe spiritual cosmos and a secret knowledge of life or power found in some seemingly inanimate items, this taxonomy highlights the importance of certain basic shapes and other ways of being found in nature that are useful in the manufacturing process.”
After the talk, Meyer, right, talked with UMBS student Mikayla Misiak.
Teaching assistant Marlana Peek welcomes the Ecology Lecture class to Mud Lake Bog on July 10. She began with an introduction to bog ecosystems before splitting students into groups to survey sundew plants.
One group of students in the Ecology Lecture class treks across the bog to a randomly chosen plot in order to survey sundews within their quadrat, or frame used to isolate an area.
Professor Mariano Rodriguez-Cabal, left, oversees his students conducting a species count of sundew plants within their quadrat.
From left, UMBS students Veronika Tsymbal and Emma Bassett count sundews at Mud Lake Bog.
A thunderstorm moved across Douglas Lake on Monday, July 15, giving the University of Michigan Biological Station campus community a loud and lightning-filled night.
During the Student Researcher Poster Session in the Teaching Tent along Douglas Lake on Monday, July 15, UMBS Field Technician and UMBS Alumna Kendall Ash presented some of the work she has helped researchers facilitate at the U-M Biological Station during the 2024 field season.
More than 50 people in the UMBS community attended the Student Researcher Poster Session to look at hand-drawn posters explaining research methodology and talk directly with student researchers.
The Student Researcher Poster Session on July 15 was an opportunity for graduate and undergraduate students to share their research and learn what others are doing in the UMBS community.
Posters included creative illustrations of student research at UMBS during the 2024 field season. Pictured, a poster made by MacKenzie Michaels with Team Typha out of Loyola University Chicago.
UMBS students put on a Head of the Douglas race using canoes along the shoreline.
Winners of the 2024 Head of the Douglas. “I love the student-spun ‘new’ traditions,” said UMBS Director Aimée Classen, not pictured.
As part of the Agroecology class, UMBS student Ashley Vallance harvested squash on July 17 at Ziibimijiwang Farm, which emphasizes sustainable farming practices that align with Anishnaabek traditional ecological knowledge.
Carma Johnson harvested and bundled green onions as part of field work for the UMBS Agroecology class at Ziibimijiwang Farm, located in Carp Lake and owned by the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians.
Dr. Nate Haan, left, instructor of the UMBS Agroecology course and assistant professor at the University of Kentucky, weeded a cornfield with students in his class at Ziibimijiwang Farm.
UMBS student Ani Alpert held squash that they harvested at Ziibimijiwang Farm.
“It’s difficult to describe diversity in people because we’re so closely related,” said Dr. Gideon Bradburd, assistant professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan, during his talk at the Pellston campus about ancestry, genetics and geography on July 17 as part of the 2024 UMBS Summer Lecture Series.
Bradburd discussed why personal ancestry mapping is problematic — “not quite a lie, but pretty close” — largely because of genealogical blowup and the lack of temporal scale. During his UMBS seminar, Bradburd said genetic ancestry does not equate with pedigree ancestry.
In Gates Lecture Hall on July 17, Bradburd said relatedness is dictated by geography; genetic diversity is usually a geographic continuum, rather than clustered discreetly; and genetic ancestry is a quantity that depends on space and time. At the University of Michigan, Bradburd studies the geography of evolution: reconstructing how and where evolutionary events happened, as well as studying how evolutionary processes are affected by geography. He and his lab develop computational and statistical methods for learning about the fundamental forces generating and maintaining those spatial patterns of genetic variation.
Microbiology lab partners Emma Kill, left, and Anniya Maysun perform a gram staining technique on July 18 to determine characteristics of bacteria samples taken from various spots around UMBS campus.
Microbiology student Peter Hagan prepares his growth curve plate to determine which pH and media his microbe samples grow best in.
Dr. Aimée Classen, director of UMBS, introduced a guest speaker at the Headlands International Dark Sky Park in Mackinaw City along Lake Michigan on Monday, July 15.
The University of Michigan Biological Station co-hosted the event at the Headlands for the second year in a row to examine the science behind space weather, geomagnetic storms and the Northern Lights.
Approximately 100 people attended the UMBS event July 15 at the Headlands featuring Ross Ellet, an Emmy-award winning meteorologist, aurora chaser and nature photographer. He said the sunspot cycle goes 11 years. As the sunspot count increases, the odds for geomagnetic storms increase.
Ellet told visitors that solar activity is at peak right now and more active displays will occur under the aurora oval and northern Michigan. The most active period is now through 2028.
Ellet, left, also gave tips on how to best photograph the aurora borealis whether you’re using an iPhone (set a long exposure and place on a stationary object) or a professional camera (use a tripod, fast lens and a remote release shutter).
A raccoon hung around at Indian Point, curious about proceedings in the Forest Ecosystems course.
Ben Woodmansee, a student in the UMBS Forest Ecosystems course, measures a hemlock at Wilderness State Park.
Will Newman helps core a red pine on the UMBS campus as part of the Forest Ecosystems course.
The Field Mammalogy course at the University of Michigan Biological Station captured the majesty of northern Michigan wildlife on video. The black bear meandered in front of a trail cam July 17.
While taking a break from field work along Grass Bay in Cheboygan on July 13, Dr. Noelia Barrios-Garcia, right, takes a selfie with UMBS students in her General Ecology Lab course who took a dip in Lake Huron.
On July 4, GLACE students in the Learning from the Landscape course taught by Eva Roos visited Waugoshance Point. Here, in Wilderness State Park, the class learned about the ecologically unique communities found on a limestone cobble shore. GLACE stands for Great Lakes Arts, Cultures and Environments. It’s an environmental humanities program offered by the U-M English Department.
Students in the Learning from the Landscape course visited Grass Bay Preserve in Cheboygan County on July 5. Here, teaching assistant Zoi Crampton taught the GLACE class about bracken fern.
On July 23, students in Dr. Lauren Gwin’s GLACE course, titled the Art of Observation, joined together to discuss and annotate passages from Diane Wilson’s novel, “The Seed Keeper.”
Dr. Lauren Gwin led a GLACE class discussion on July 23. In her course the Art of Observation, students explore the ways in which stories and narrative influence our understanding of what it means to learn from or know the world around us.
On July 24, Dr. Matt McCary, an assistant professor of biosciences at Rice University, gave the 2024 Pettingill Endowed Lecture in Natural History. McCary’s research focuses on the relationship between soil biodiversity and ecosystem functioning within the context of global change.
During his talk in Pellston, McCary described his experience conducting research near the shores of Lake Mývatn in Iceland, where he investigated how flying adult midges, a type of small fly, impact terrestrial food webs in subarctic grasslands.
McCary explained that his research findings highlight the importance of decomposing insects in heathland soils. He says their decomposing bodies are an important ecological process that can make plant material break down faster while allowing more grass to grow.
After the talk, McCary talked with UMBS student Linda Morfa Limonte, right.
The interior renovation of the dormitory lounge was completed on July 23. It’s one of several projects to revitalize community spaces and enhance the on-campus living and learning experience.
Community spaces, including the dormitory lounge, pictured, are designed to be brighter and more welcoming and have the flexibility to be reconfigured to serve large groups as well as small study and research nooks.
The interior renovation of the Alumni Room on the second floor of Gates Lecture Hall also was finished in July.
Similar to the dormitory lunge, the Alumni Room, pictured, features small study and research nooks. “Thanks to our generous donors, we are able to respond to what students and researchers have asked for and, at the same time, prepare transitional, flexible spaces that we’ll need when we take the field station to year-round operations,” said Dr. Aimée Classen, director of the U-M Biological Station. Interior design projects will continue into the fall, including the dining hall and updated artwork to honor UMBS history and alumni.
The annual square dance at the U-M Biological Station is a cherished tradition dating back at least 50 years. On Saturday, July 27, local caller Cynthia Donahey led dancers through traditional steps for an evening of fun for all.
Students danced along to a live band featuring John Richey and Maureen Scott on fiddles, Dale Scott playing guitar and harmonica and Ron Fowler strumming a five-string banjo. They played a selection of high-energy, old-time fiddle tunes with some Irish reels and hornpipes and a couple of waltzes.
UMBS Square Dance along Douglas Lake on Saturday, July 27
UMBS Square Dance along Douglas Lake on Saturday, July 27
UMBS Square Dance along Douglas Lake on Saturday, July 27
UMBS Square Dance along Douglas Lake on Saturday, July 27
Dr. Paul Moore, right, an aquatic ecology researcher and instructor at UMBS, shared a crayfish with a guest who visited the field station with his grandparents on July 21 for the Open House.
Dr. Jessica Light, right, a professor at Texas A&M University and instructor of the UMBS Field Mammalogy course, talks with visitors about the field station's specimen collection during the Open House July 21.
UMBS Director Aimée Classen, right, meets with visitors during the Open House before leading them on a tour of the research and teaching campus.
Dr. Vincent Denef, right, instructor of the Microbiology course at UMBS and an associate professor in the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, guides Open House guests through using microscopes to analyze microbe samples.
While leading a tour of campus during the Open House, Karie Slavik, associate director of UMBS, stopped her group at the Piping Plover Captive Rearing Center to learn about the inspiring team effort to rescue an iconic, endangered Great Lakes shorebird species.
On July 15, Ph.D. student Carolyn Graham talked with students in the Insights from Trees course about the methods they’d be using throughout their research project. As part of the course and under the guidance of Professor Marjorie Weber, students aim to co-author a paper evaluating the abundance of mites on foliage from woody plant species.
From left, Nia Paton and Gabi Leon press their ears to the trunk of a bigtooth aspen. Some say that the sound of the leaves in the wind sounds like the ocean. Throughout the Insights from Trees course, students have been familiarizing themselves with different individual trees on campus. On July 10, students introduced their peers to their acquainted trees.
Students in the Insights from Trees course spent July 16 collecting data in UMBS woods, looking for mites on the foliage of woody plants.
Dr. Aimée Classen, director of UMBS, gave a presentation on July 27 at Pellston High School during the annual meeting of the Douglas Lake Improvement Association (DLIA), a nonprofit organization made up of property owners on the lake.
Classen gave an update to the DLIA members and UMBS neighbors about research and educational programming on campus as well as goals to go year-round and carbon neutral.
As part of the 2024 Summer Lecture Series, Dr. Noah Whiteman, a professor of integrative biology and molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of the Essig Museum of Entomology, gave the Hann Endowed Lecture in Ornithology on July 31.
Dr. Whiteman’s lab studies the genetic basis of co-evolution between species. The evolutionary biologist also is the author of the book “Most Delicious Poison: The Story of Nature's Toxins — from Spices to Vices."
In his talk, Whiteman talked about his time at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Colorado and his project there focusing on interactions between hummingbirds and their nectar plants. He also praised biological stations, calling the intergenerational data they produce “so important to the protection of biodiversity and the training of future scientists.”
From right, UMBS teaching assistant Andy Carriero, and students Ben Carlson, Finn Swaty and Katelyn Jasmin ask Whiteman questions following his talk.
Students give a presentation on Thursday, Aug. 1, during Ecopalooza, the celebratory showcase of learning in summer term courses over the past four weeks.
During Ecopalooza, students in the Field Studies of Freshwater Fishes course at UMBS gave a presentation on the classification of fishes they caught and photographed in rivers and lakes in northern Michigan during the summer term.
Students in the Microbiology course at UMBS said good-bye during Ecopalooza before departing campus.
Poster presentation given by students at Ecopalooza on Aug. 1.
Students in the Field Mammalogy course show specimens at Ecopalooza to members of the UMBS community to discuss what they learned during the summer term.
The Northern Lights put on a show at the University of Michigan Biological Station along Douglas Lake in northern Michigan between 10:30 and 11 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2024.