Author: vermontnews

A scientist at the University of Vermont and four of his undergraduate students have discovered 15 new species of “smiley-faced” spiders—and named them after, among others, David Attenborough, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

You won’t find them in Washington, DC, Hollywood, or Vermont—but on Caribbean islands and other southern spots you might now get a glimpse of Spintharus davidattenboroughi, S. barackobamai, S. michelleobamaae, and S. berniesandersi as well as S. davidbowiei and S. leonardodicaprioi.

“This was an undergraduate research project,” says Ingi Agnarsson, a spider expert and professor of biology at UVM who led the new study. “In naming these spiders, the students and I wanted to honor people who stood up for both human rights and warned about climate change—leaders and artists who promoted sensible approaches for a better world.”

The study was published September 26 in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

Why Bernie?

Until now, the beautiful yellow “smiley-faced spiders” in the genus Spintharus —named for a smiley face pattern on their abdomens—has been thought to have one widespread species “from northern North America down to northern Brazil,” Agnarsson says.

However, when a research team from the Caribbean Biogeography Project (“CarBio”)—spearheaded by Agnarsson in UVM’s Biology Department and Greta Binford at Lewis & Clark College—examined spiders from Jamaica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, the Lesser Antilles, Florida, South Carolina, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Colombia—they discovered that one widespread species was actually many endemic species. Using CarBio genetic work, and the Vermont students’ painstaking photography and lab work, the team—with support from the National Science Foundation—was able to identify and formally describe fifteen new species. “And if we keep looking, we’re sure there are more,” Agnarsson said.

Each student who helped describe the spiders also got to name a few of them—and some were named for beloved family members, “but we all named the Bernie Sanders spider,” says Lily Sargeant, one of the students who worked on the project, and who graduated from UVM last year. “We all have tremendous respect for Bernie. He presents a feeling of hope.”

“That spider species will be named after Bernie forever,” says Ben Chomitz, another of the student researchers.

“Our time on this earth is limited,” says Lily Sargeant. “But I think that ideas are not that way. It is my hope that through naming that spider after Bernie we can remember the ideas that he has at this pivotal point in the life of our nation.”

For student Chloe Van Patten, her naming process goes back to what she calls a high school “obsession” with actor Leonardo DiCaprio. “I’m over my crush, but now that he’s involved in environmental issues, I love him even more. So I named a spider after him hoping that if he read our study,” says the recent UVM graduate, “he might go out to dinner with me and talk about climate change.”

Conservation concerns

The Caribbean region has long been known to scientists as a major global hotspot for biological diversity. The leading spider expert on the Spintharus genus in earlier decades, Herbert W. Levi (1921-2014), had concluded that differences he observed in these spiders across a wide swath of geography represented variation within one species. But newer molecular techniques deployed by the project’s leaders, Agnarsson and Binford, show otherwise. “These are cryptic species,” Agnarsson says. “As Dr. Levi’s work clearly showed, they’re hard to tell apart by looking at them.” But the DNA data are clear: these spiders have not been interbreeding—exchanging genes—for millions of years.

“Thoughts about conservation change dramatically when you go from having a common, widespread species to an endemic on, say, Jamaica that has very specific conservation needs,” Agnarsson says.

“All the sudden we have fifteen-fold increase in diversity in this particular group—just because we did a detailed study,” says Agnarsson. “That tells us something about biodiversity in general. The more we look, the more we discover.” Conservation biology, the team notes, fundamentally depends on good taxonomy, since preserving one widespread species is a radically different task than protecting the precise habitat of a genetically isolated, local species.

The Vermont students saw their lab work in a broad cultural light. “I’m a second-generation American and I’m black,” says Lily Sargeant. “It is through a diversity of perspectives that we achieve innovation in science and I appreciate how much the Obamas value diversity.”

“Here’s the thing,” says UVM biologist Ingi Agnarsson, “we need to understand and protect biodiversity in its many forms, and we felt compelled to recognize leaders that understand this.”

Source: UVM News

With an array of objects that are provocative, eclectic, beautiful, and, at their essence, sacred, the “Spirited Things” exhibition opening at the Fleming Museum this week is the product of years of work and collaborative vision among Marsh-Professor-at-Large J. Lorand Matory, Fleming staff, and students in religion professor Vicki Brennan’s classes.

The pieces on display are largely from Matory’s “Sacred Arts of the Black Atlantic Collection,” assembled across decades, inspired by both his religious faith and scholarly focus. Matory, Lawrence Richardson Professor of Cultural Anthropology and African and African American Studies at Duke University, connected with UVM via the Marsh program in 2013. 

The new exhibition includes sacred objects from the Yoruba religion of West Africa, as well as Haitian Vodou, Cuban Santeria, Brazilian Candomble, and Caribbean Spiritism, faiths that emerged from the practices of enslaved Africans who blended their ancestral cultures with that of their captors.

“The items in the collection have been selected for their beauty, their iconographic accuracy, and their ritual power,” Matory says. “I have loved them and cared for them for nearly four decades.  However, spirited things like these are not usually given a place in a museum of fine arts. So, I feel rapturous that my colleagues in the world-class Fleming Museum not only embraced the provocation posed by an under-appreciated aesthetic but also felt the same exaltation that I feel in the presence of these spirited things.”

Several weeks before the show’s opening, Fleming curator Andrea Rosen walks through the gallery where some displays are complete and others await finishing touches. She points out favorite pieces and discusses how the show has come together.

“An academic museum really thrives on collaborations like this. It is true of any collaboration—whether with a collector or a scholar or a living artist—that we as the museum get pushed to expand our comfort zone because of this meeting in the middle,” Rosen says. “Randy is a bit of a provocateur. Understandably and laudably so, he wants to get visitors to think about the fact that these objects are not exotic, they are not foreign, they are us. The very complex nature of them and the nuanced relationships they represent, that’s true of objects in our own lives, maybe in ways we don’t realize.”

The new exhibition traces to when religion professor Vicki Brennan’s classes began to study Matory’s “Sacred Arts of the Black Atlantic Collection” and the rituals of priestesses and priests of the Afro-Atlantic religions.

The first wave of Brennan’s students explored the collection via Matory’s website, curating a selection of objects and identifying themes, later presenting them to both Matory and the Fleming leadership. During a subsequent semester’s course, students in one of Brennan’s courses took the next step by beginning work on supplemental educational materials for the exhibition. This semester, her students will ethnographically document how audiences receive the show.

“They’ll examine issues of religion, race, representation, and display, especially concerning sacred objects and the staging of an exhibition about African and African-American religions in a museum located on a university campus in one of the least diverse and least religious states in the United States,” Brennan says.

She adds, “The student involvement in this project has been a great experience for them to learn more about how to apply the ideas and theories we talk about in class to real world contexts, such as the museum.”

As the Fleming features “Spirited Things” this semester, the museum is in its usual role as a place for aesthetic appreciation, but also becomes a site for religious veneration — that “expansion of comfort zone” curator Rosen mentioned — in order to present the objects in a more authentic context.

Two of the four altars that ground the exhibition will be ritually activated. On Tuesday, Sept. 26, and Wednesday, Sept. 27, practitioner Willie Zapata creates a Cuban Santeria anniversary altar. On Wednesday, Oct. 11, Haitian Vodou priestess Marie Maude Evans will give a lecture, and on Thursday, Oct. 12, she will lead a ritual celebration, open to the public, that will feature drummers and dancers.  

Anticipating the opening and all that has led up to it, Matory says, “I still cannot believe it. Working in the gallery with my colleagues at the Fleming and thinking about this overall experience gives me goosebumps and make me feel slightly breathless.”

The Fleming Museum’s Fall Opening Reception is Thursday, Sept. 28, 5:30-7 p.m. In addition to “Spirited Things,” the museum will also celebrate the opening of “Herbert Barnett: Vermont Life and Landscape, 1940-1948.” Both special exhibitions run through Dec. 15, 2017. 

Source: UVM News

For the past 23 years, Jeff Modereger has told first-year students a poignant story about one of his first plays at UVM as a new theater professor. Illustrative of the healing power of good theater, the story has stayed with many students long after graduation.

One of those students, Randa Karambelas ’01, was so moved by Modereger’s description of the audience reaction to “A Piece of My Heart”— a play based on true stories told by women who served in Vietnam — that she vowed to produce it one day in New York. Now an accomplished actor, producer and writer, Karambelas made good on her promise by bringing the play to the off-Broadway IATF theater this month via her own production company, Little Spoon, Big Spoon, Productions, LLC.

What’s more, she vowed that only Modereger could be the set designer—another promise kept.

Karambelas had one condition: that Modereger’s design would be the central element. “I hired my entire production team with the disclaimer that the scene design was already established,” says Karambelas. “Once everyone saw Jeff’s design, they were all onboard and we built the production from there.”

At first glance, it is a raked stage covered in textured fabric with bamboo lattice worked into the background. The design is deceptively simple, until the end when it underscores Shirley Lauro’s entire script and the 20-year journey these women have been on. “It ties together the past, present and future in a way that I have never seen done before in theatre,” says Karambelas. “And no one in the audience expects it. It’s the final button.”

What the audience doesn’t know is that Modereger’s design pays tribute to his cousin, David E. Hevle – a Marine Corps Corporal who died in 1967 while on duty in Quang Tin. For Modereger, Karambelas and the production team, the play is a tribute to his cousin. “The storytelling, the direction, the acting and each of our design elements echo the only line that is repeated throughout the play – ‘to honor the brave men and women who served so well and gave so much,’” says Karambelas.

“That’s the power of theater,” says Modereger, a scenic designer for Broadway, television, and film. “We humanized everybody sitting in the theater. It stuck with Randa all these years. It’s the reason I keep telling these stories to my students.”  

For Karambelas, bringing the play to New York marks a milestone in a career that began in theater, took a turn into the corporate world, and has returned to her love of the stage.

Building from experience gained in the business world, she launched Little Spoon, Big Spoon Productions, along with business partner Chelsea J. Smith, with a focus on socially conscious artistic ventures that support related non-profits. For “A Piece of My Heart,” 20 percent of all proceeds and 100 percent of all donations will benefit Hope for the Warriors, a veterans organization supporting post 9/11 service members and their families.

One of her proudest accomplishment with this production: keeping it in the UVM family, by hiring alums including Timothy Parrish ’07 as a lighting designer, Danielle Varcasia ’10 as an electrician and Jamien Lundy Forrest ‘01 as part of the technical crew.

“Jeff taught me that art can heal,” says Karambelas. “As an artist, I have learned that if art doesn’t move you, mark you or change you in some way, then you are doing it wrong. I am so fortunate that today, all these years later, I have been able to team with my college professor on a professional level and do just that. We’ve come full circle. I am very proud of what we have put on this NYC stage.”

Source: UVM News

From the moment he entered the gym for a Special Olympics unified basketball team practice as a Burlington High School junior, Sam Donnelly ’20 felt it. “It was like a switch flipped,” he says, immediately drawn in by a warm welcome and seamless spirit of equality and inclusion. So began a lasting relationship.

Six days after high school graduation, Donnelly moved to New York for a gap year with, he admits, a vague plan and a thin bank account for city living, built on mowing lawns and other high school jobs. Almost immediately, a shot in the dark “Can I have an internship?” tweet at Special Olympics in NYC landed on the right phone. Yes, you can. Unpaid, but Donnelly stacked up experience and later earned a paid internship at Special Olympics Vermont.

During his first year at UVM, 2016-17, Donnelly deepened his Special Olympics work on both a local and global scale—founding the UVM Special Olympics Club to rally like-minded students and traveling to Graz, Austria, last spring for the Special Olympics Global Youth Summit. There, Donnelly presented on his idea, funded by a $2,500 SO grant, to create a social inclusion class at Vermont high schools.

As his sophomore year begins, Donnelly already has a strong vision for where he’d like to be when college graduation arrives. President of UVM Democrats student club, he has his sights on a Burlington City Council seat, first step, he hopes, in a career in public service that might one day lead to the U.S. Senate. At the core of Donnelly’s political ambitions—supporting and shaping education and inclusion at a policy level.

A major in community and international development in Community Development and Applied Economics, Donnelly has found an ideal academic fit. “That department is what makes it for me at UVM,” he says and rattles off the names of professors who have influenced him—Dan Baker, Kelly Hamshaw, Jane Kolodinsky, Tom Desisto. “I am not only excited to go to class, I’m excited do my homework. Every single example used in that program is about Vermont. I get the opportunity to apply that, make it real.” 

Source: UVM News

New England has been losing forestland to development at a rate of sixty-five acres per day—and Vermont is losing 1,500 acres of forest every year—according to a new report released today by the Harvard Forest and a team of authors from across the region including two scientists at the University of Vermont.

Public funding for land protection has also been steadily declining in all six New England states and is now half what it was at its 2008 peak. Land conservation trends have followed suit.

“Over the last decade, Vermont lost about one percent of its forest cover due mostly to suburban and rural residential sprawl, reversing a 150-year trend of forest recovery and expansion,” says co-author Bill Keeton, professor of forestry & forest ecology and Gund Fellow at the University of Vermont.

Conversion to development is the biggest near-term threat to forests, bigger even than climate change, the scientists report.

“If our goal is to make sure our forests in Vermont are resilient and able to adapt to the changes that climate change and invasive species pose, then the first critical step is to keep those areas forested,” says co-author Tony D’Amato, an associate professor and director of UVM’s Forestry Program. “That is often lost in our discussion of how to manage and conserve in the face of such future uncertainty.”

Fading forests

The new report, Wildlands and Woodlands, Farmlands and Communities, documents that public funding for land conservation in New England dropped fifty percent between 2008 and 2014 to $62 million per year, slightly lower than 2004 levels. The pace of regional land conservation has also slowed substantially from an average of 333,000 acres per year in the early 2000s to about 50,000 acres per year since 2010.

“The incremental chipping away of forest and farmland by scattered development is hard to see day-to-day but it adds up over time and represents a significant threat to the region,” said David Foster, director of the Harvard Forest. “If we stay on the current path, we’ll lose another 1.2 million acres of open land by 2060.”

Opportunities

Despite these trends, the authors assert that the targets outlined in their bold vision for the future of the New England landscape are still attainable and they identify opportunities for gaining ground.

“Vermont has led other New England states in terms of forest protection efforts, with combined federal and state spending for land conservation here at a per capita rate 4.6 times that of neighboring New Hampshire, for example,” says UVM’s Bill Keeton. “With this report we present a clear vision of strong and continued community-level engagement in farm and forestland conservation to compensate for rapidly declining federal and state funding across New England as a whole.”

In Vermont, twenty-three percent of the state’s land area is currently conserved as forest and farmland. The state ranks first in New England in per capita state funding for land conservation at an average of $6.70 per person per year for 2004 to 2014.  Nevertheless, annual land conservation rates in Vermont have generally fallen back to early 1990s levels after a period of elevated conservation in the late 1990s, even as groups report that private landowners’ interest in conserving their land remains high.

Report series

This is the third in a series of Wildlands and Woodlands publications led by Foster, Keeton, D’Amato and a team of colleagues. Previous reports defined a regional vision that calls for conserving thirty million acres of forest—seventy percent of the region’s land area—and all remaining farmland. The vision proposes that most of the conserved forestland should be managed for wood products and other benefits, with ten percent managed as wildlands.

“Bill and I were also co-authors on the original vision for the New England landscape published a few years back and I also served as a coauthor on the original Wildland and Woodlands vision that was developed for Massachusetts before we explored a more regional approach,” notes UVM’s Tony D’Amato—who has one eye on the next generation of forestry scientists and professionals. “The message from this report is very consistent with what we teach and research in the UVM Forestry Program,” in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources.

Triple the pace

“When we look specifically at forests in New England, it is clear that the impacts of land use will be far greater than those of climate change over the next 50 years,” said Harvard Forest ecologist Jonathan Thompson. “This may seem counter-intuitive given the major threat that climate change poses to all sectors of society. But climate change slowly alters the health and types of trees that grow whereas conversion eliminates forests altogether.”

The report’s authors say it is still possible to attain the Wildlands and Woodland vision by tripling the pace of conservation, reversing trends in public funding, putting more land to work for sustainable farming and forestry, and integrating land conservation with the planning of cities, suburbs, and rural communities to reduce forest loss and promote more efficient use of land for economic development.

“We need to do everything we can—a lot more than what we’re doing now,” says UVM’s Bill Keeton, “to keep our forests, and to keep them resilient.”

Source: UVM News