Authorship invitation for SE Asian general flowering & masting project
Zoe Lieb
Hello Mastwatch members,
I am Zoë Lieb, a PhD student at the University of Queensland advised by Dr. Matthew Luskin (Ecological Cascades Lab). I am interested in studying how tree reproduction cycles influence wildlife communities through the phenomena of pulse resource events in Southeast Asia and other tropical rainforests.
Many Southeast Asian tree communities engage in general flowering and mast fruiting (GFM), which is likely a highly influential ecological phenomenon on trophic levels in rainforests. However, we lack detailed spatiotemporal mapping of GFM events across the region. We believe that by combining our/your expert input on local fieldwork sites, along with regional climate data and satellite imagery – plus some spatial modeling – we can produce useful phenology maps for the past few decades for the region. The resulting maps will be probabilistic coverage layer and will certainly be a huge improvement on the current dearth of clean standardized collated phenology observations for the region.
We are now seeking expert observations about general flowering and fruiting events (or lack thereof). These observations can be from your personal field notes, publications, the information you receive from your teams in the field, confident memory, or essentially any source you are comfortable drawing from. Please find more background information about the project below and if you have any questions, please reply directly/privately to this message.
To participate in this study and be included as a co-author please use this online survey to provide your publishing details & institution. The survey has an easy set of questions to provide your observations for a single location. You can retake the survey for multiple locations OR download and send back via email the Excel datasheet from this Dropbox link for multiple site entries. Please also forward this email to anyone else you believe can provide a flowering and fruiting observation and CC Zoë Lieb (z.l...@uq.edu.au) and Matthew Luskin (m.lu...@uq.edu.au) so we can properly invite them.
Thank you and we look forward to collaborating on this exciting project!
Zoë & Matthew
Zoë Lieb
University of Queensland
Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science
The Ecological Cascades Lab
Pronouns: she/her
+61 0479137154 (Australia)
+01 201 486 1995 (United States)
_______ BACKGROUND & DETAILS _________
- Big picture objectives -
We are inviting our colleagues to be co-authors on creating Southeast Asian phenology database that includes published observations and expert observations. In the questionnaire, we are asking for your observations of prior general flowering and masting (GFM) events in the past 50 years.
- Who are we? -
This questionnaire is led by Zoë Lieb (z.l...@uq.edu.au) for one of her PhD chapters at the University of Queensland. The project is supervised by Matthew Luskin who has been working in SE Asia for 15 years and has senior-authored a variety of large collaborative projects (e.g., many of you are part of the camera trapping database; more info at https://www.ecologicalcascades.com/pubs).
- General flowering and mast fruiting (GFM) -
For this project, we define GFM as when >15% of tree species in a forest flower over a short period (3-4 months). Rather than following an annual cycle, GFM in Asia is usually triggered by an El Niño-associated weather anomaly (e.g., drought) every 2-10 years and is often a highly visible event. GFM is often associated with prolific synchronous fruit production a few months later. Within 3 months, fruit production can yield >50% of the total collected over 2+ years. However, some GFM events have had lower fruit sets and fruit fall, possibly due to pollination failure or unfavorable weather events that cause flowers for fruit to be unsuccessful.
- Inspiration and help -
This project was inspired by our relationships with the Smithsonian Institution’s ForestGEO research network in Asia. In preparing this project, we have sought guidance from senior phenology researchers in the region – both over the years and recently – including Stuart Davies at ForestGEO, Yu-Yun Chen and I Fang Sun in Taiwan, Shawn Lum in Singapore, Cam Webb in Borneo, and Shoko Sakai in Japan. Our intention is that this first dataset and mapping project will inspire other collaborative projects on similar themes.
- Data use -
The first use of this project is an open-access peer-reviewed publication with >50 authors that will report the phenology dataset and provide resulting maps.
Some downstream outcomes of this work may include: timely phenology monitoring and GIS mapping products using satellite imagery and machine learning; assessments of the impacts of GFM on vertebrates; linking vertebrate population dynamics to changes in predation and food availability; additional datasets to determine the effects of climate and climate change on rainforest phenology.
- Do have empirical phenology data? -
We are also seeking collaborators for a synthesis project that includes empirical field data collection of GF/masting, such as from seed traps, percent flowering, or other phenological observations. In the final section of the survey, we ask about empirical data you may have available.
With 2023 now showing El Niño conditions, we may ask for your (or your field teams') specific observations of flowering and fruiting this year in a subsequent survey.