Plant growth chambers produce controlled environments, which are crucial in making reproducible observations in experimental plant biology research. Commercial plant growth chambers can provide precise controls of environmental parameters, such as temperature, humidity, and light cycle, and the capability via complex programming to regulate these environmental parameters. But they are expensive. The high cost of maintaining a controlled growth environment is often a limiting factor when determining experiment size and feasibility. To overcome the limitation of commercial growth chambers, we designed and constructed an inexpensive plant growth chamber with consumer products for a material cost of $2,300. For a comparable growth space, a commercial plant growth chamber could cost $40,000 or more. Our plant growth chamber had outside dimensions of 1.5 m (W) x 1.8 m (D) x 2 m (H), providing a total growth area of 4.5 m2 with 40-cm high clearance. The dimensions of the growth area and height can be flexibly changed. Fluorescent lights with large reflectors provided a relatively spatially uniform photosynthetically active radiation intensity of 140–250 μmoles/m2/sec. A portable air conditioner provided an ample cooling capacity, and a cooling water mister acted as a powerful humidifier. Temperature, relative humidity, and light cycle inside the chamber were controlled via a z-wave home automation system, which allowed the environmental parameters to be monitored and programmed through the internet. In our setting, the temperature was tightly controlled: 22.2°C±0.8°C. The one-hour average relative humidity was maintained at 75%±7% with short spikes up to ±15%. Using the interaction between Arabidopsis and one of its bacterial pathogens as a test experimental system, we demonstrate that experimental results produced in our chamber were highly comparable to those obtained in a commercial growth chamber. In summary, our design of an inexpensive plant growth chamber will tremendously increase research opportunities in experimental plant biology.
Environmental education programs have been evaluated to assess short-term effects on participants; however, few studies have examined long-term effects. We quantified how the Texas Chapter of The Wildlife Society's Wildlife Conservation Camp (WCC), Texas, USA, has affected high school students. A web-based survey questionnaire measured attitudes and behaviors of participants toward wildlife conservation and natural resources. A subset of questions was taken from the 2011 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation to provide a comparison population (USDI, USFWS, USDC, and USCB 2011). The majority of respondents reported moderate to large increases in knowledge (89%) and interest (80%) of wildlife conservation and observation from the WCC and major influence on the course of their lives (85%). Most respondents (86%) who went into a conservation-related field reported the WCC influenced their career path. The majority of WCC respondents took special interest in wildlife around the home (66%) and away from home (70%) compared with Texans (likely wildlife watchers) surveyed in the 2011 National Survey (75% and 23%, respectively). The WCC can influence knowledge and interest of wildlife and recruitment into conservation-related fields. Improvements to the program include increased outreach to diverse audiences and scholarship opportunities. Our results may guide the evaluation of other outdoor camps as we strive to better understand how educational programs can create a diverse generation of ecologically literate citizens and conservation leaders. Ó 2016 The Wildlife Society.
Advertisement and combat calls of the glass frog Centrolene lynchi (Anura: Centrolenidae), with notes on combat and reproductive behaviors. We describe the advertisement and combat calls, combat behavior, and reproductive behavior of the glass frog Centrolene lynchi, an endemic species of the cloud forests of Ecuador. The typical advertisement call consists of a tonal note and 1-3 peaked notes, each with 1-3 pulses. Variations on this advertisement call include the addition of a short note before the tonal note, as well as the absence of the tonal note. These modifications may be similar to the described call modifications of other anurans in response to the presence of conspecific females and males, potential predators and/or changes in the sound environment. Additionally, we describe the combat call emitted during previously undescribed venter-toventer combat between males. The discovery of this combat behavior is consistent with the hypothesis that venter-to-venter combat behavior is a shared derived trait of the subfamily Centroleninae. Finally, we describe male reproductive habits and development of the species, including egg attendance by males and implied male parental care.
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