Robel’s Research Realizations

Although Robert “Bob” Robel, professor emeritus of biology, has been offi cially

retired for several years, he still maintains an offi ce in the Division of Biology and he continues to help other faculty members with their research.

Most recently, he had a hand in research that benefi ted prairie chicken populations by identifying man-made structures that repel females from nesting, such as wind turbines, center pivot irrigation systems and even fences. In the past few years he advised one of the big wind energy companies to move the proposed location for a wind farm in Kansas from its fi rst three choices to an area with less of an impact on prairie chickens.

“They wanted to avoid adverse impacts on prairie chicken populations,” Robel said. “They had three sites down in south central Kansas, great sites – probably better wind sites – but that’s a company that has an environmental conscience.”

Robel has a longtime passion for wildlife and anatomy. When he was in sixth grade he began working with a taxidermist and bought the business from his retiring mentor when he was a sophomore in high school. He owned and operated it throughout his undergraduate years, putting himself through college at Michigan State University.

Although Robel was accepted into medical school when he was a senior in high school, he switched from premed to wildlife ecology in his junior year of college because he felt he would be confi ned to an offi ce if he became a doctor.

His interest in taxidermy remains through today.

During his undergraduate years, he mounted 80-100 deer heads per year in addition to preserving other aspects of the animals. He still has a pair of 60-year-old leather moccasins and a pair of velvety deer-hide leather gloves, made by his company. Step into his Division of Biology offi ce and its like stepping into a natural history museum, with its array of animals protruding from its walls.

After working for the Michigan State University museum, where he collected and harvested specimens for display, Robel knew he wanted to continue his education. He sought out advisers and had funding lined

The BULLETIN SPRING NEWSLETTER 2012

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

ROBEL’S RESEARCH REALIZATIONS - 1

K-STATE ZOOLOGY ALUMNUS ESTABLISHES ICE AGE MONUMENT - 2

FRIENDS OF THE PRAIRIE: COUPLE’S GIFT SUPPORTS EDUCATION - 3

NO GUTS, NO GLORY: K-STATE BIOLOGISTS RECEIVE $2.8 MILLION

FROM NIH TO STUDY VIRUS ESCAPE FROM MOSQUITO MIDGUT - 4

A LETTER FROM SPOONER - 5

THE BULLETIN IS GOING ELECTRONIC - 5Robert Robel recently advised a wind energy company

to move their proposed location to avoid adverse impacts on prairie chickens.

Contact Us!Phone: 785.532.6615E-mail: biology@k-state.eduWebsite: k-state.edu/biology

up at the University of Idaho and Utah State University, while he was still an undergraduate, for his master’s and doctoral degrees, respectively. In 1961, he was hired as an assistant professor in Kansas State University’s department of zoology — before the merger that created the Division of Biology.

On a Fulbright Scholarship, Robel traveled to the United Kingdom to study black grouse in 1967. While there, he was asked to help with a long-term study on red deer, known in North America as elk. He developed a management plan for increasing deer numbers by culling female deer that were not capable of producing healthy off spring.

“We decided to maximize production by taking the nonproductive individuals out of the population,” Robel said. “We developed a technique where we could determine whether or not a female deer was going to have a calf that survived to adulthood, when she was only 1 and half years old — before she was ever bred.”

It was through his deer management plan that he gained worldwide recognition in the fi eld, and he was invited to speak in various countries from Russia and Australia to Singapore and Thailand. In exchange, Robel asked his hosts to arrange opportunities to hunt various animals. In the process he was able to see a great deal of the natural world.

A lot of his research through the years has been on hunting related species to increase the amount that can be harvested

from a sustainable population. In an eff ort to strengthen such research, he helped in the establishment of the Kansas Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit on K-State’s campus to serve as an important collaborator for the university’s ecological and wildlife scientists.

Robel has served as consultant and science adviser for several Kansas governors, energy companies and numerous committees and task forces. He has also served as the U.S. Olympic shooting team chairman, which is the third most popular sport for participants in the Olympics.

In 1989, he received the Centennial Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Idaho and was inducted into the school’s Alumni Hall of Fame in 1997. In 2001 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the College of Natural Resources Alumni Association at Utah State University. He has also been the recipient of the Governor’s Conservationist of the Year Award, Proud Kansan Award from the Kansas Outdoor Writers Association and the Outstanding Professional Award from the Kansas chapter of The Wildlife Society.

Division of Biology

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K-State Zoology Alum Establishes Ice Age Monument

Kansas State University alumnus George Callison was looking for a way to give back to his hometown – the

small town of Blue Rapids, Kan.

Drawing on his undergraduate education in zoology at K-State – before the Division of Biology was merged from the departments of zoology, bacteriology and botany –

and his experiences thereafter, Callison is building the Ice Age Monument in Blue Rapids as a tribute to the era that shaped the landscape.

The monument is being built in the community’s City Park and will depict the glaciers that once sculpted the land that made Blue Rapids an ideal place to establish a town.

“The town was established because the glaciers that once moved through sculpted the land, creating rapids,” said Callison, a professor emeritus of biological sciences at California State University, Long Beach. “The rapids on the Blue River created enough of a drop in the water gradient that the differential could be used as a hydrostatic head to power a plant generating enough energy for a few factories.”

During embryology class at K-State in 1961, Callison was in charge of copying the illustrations at lectures to share with others in the class. It helped him develop his artistic skills and combine them with his appreciation for the natural world. Since then, he has spent the majority of his career designing nature parks and touring natural history exhibits. Most recently he has pursued a retirement career in fine arts painting.

Those experiences and the connections he made with

various design and exhibition specialists have helped him in his quest to create the Ice Age Monument. The monument design includes four concrete white pylons, the tallest being 16 feet tall to represent the size and shape of the glaciers. Along with the pylons are gigantic boulders, brought down from Minnesota by the glaciers and deposited in Kansas. A few of those boulders are embedded in the pylons to emphasize the power of the glaciers. Large illustrated labels tell of the Ice Age, the great glaciers and the oldest rocks in Kansas. In addition, blue and white lights will shine on the monument at night to give the pylons the appearance of ice.

“When things like the ice age projects are installed in small communities, they add yet another feature that helps the community members have pride in their town,” Callison said. “When people have pride in something they tend to respect it and build upon that pride with enthusiasm.”

Callison is the initiator, chief designer, coordinator and fundraiser for the project and he credits his education at K-State for sparking his curiosity about the history of life and nature on our planet.

“K-State professors were instrumental in my having fun, fascinating and productive careers as a biology professor at California State University, Long Beach; a research vertebrate paleontologist at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History; a nature park designer with Ron Yeo, an architect from Corona del Mar, Calif., who is also a fellow of the American Institute of Architects; an educator and designer of touring natural history exhibitions featuring robotically animated animals at Dinamation International Corp. in California; and currently as a fine arts painter living in Grand Junction, Colo.,” Callison said.

Callison hopes the monument will be completed by the end of March, with a dedication ceremony set for 11 a.m. May 19. The dedication will include ice age refreshments, such as real glacier water and items representing the diets of the woolly mammoth and saber-toothed cats.

Patricia Osborne, Head of the Blue Rapids Historical Society and Museum, helps George Callison, Designer of the Ice Age

Monument in Blue Rapids, Kan., turn the first shovel and begin construction.

Division of Biology

The BULLETIN | SPRING NEWSLETTER 2012

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Friends of the prairie: Couple’s gift supports educational

programming for kids on Konza

A gift by a Manhattan couple will help support educational programming for children at Konza Prairie Biological Station and

honor a longtime environmental educator.

Karen and Steve Hummel, Manhattan, have established the Valerie Wright Legacy Fund with the Kansas State University Foundation to provide financial assistance to the Konza Environmental Education Program, also known as KEEP. The Hummels, both university alums and Konza Prairie docents, made their gift in honor of Valerie Wright, who is retiring after serving as the prairie’s environmental educator for 15 years.

The Konza Environmental Educational Program offers school-age children special opportunities for scientific discoveries.

“Valerie has been instrumental in developing KEEP’s infrastructure and implementing the scientific and educational programs,” Steve Hummel said. “It was very important to us that we do something to recognize her efforts before she retired.”

The Hummels have established the fund with a $2,000 donation and are challenging residents of Manhattan and surrounding communities to provide additional contributions. As an incentive, the Hummels have agreed to match new donations up to an additional $3,000.

“We are both very fond of the prairie and realize its importance in environmental preservation,” Karen Hummel said. “The education programs that are conducted on Konza are very important in getting the kids out on the land, learning scientific methods and learning about nature firsthand. This fund will support the continuation of those activities while continuing Valerie’s legacy.”

Total donations must reach the $6,250 minimum required by the foundation for the Valerie Wright Legacy Fund to be established as an expendable fund. The Hummels and John Briggs, Konza Prairie director and professor in the Division of Biology, hope to raise more than $25,000 so the fund may be transferred into an endowed account that would be eligible for gained interest.

Kansas State University and the Nature Conservancy jointly own Konza Prairie Biological Station, and the Division of Biology manages it.

“The station has a threefold mission of long-term ecological research, education and prairie conservation,” Briggs said. “The KEEP program is

essential to our education mission, and a large portion of its funding comes from the private sector. This gift is an appropriate way to honor Valerie’s extreme dedication to Konza Prairie Biological Station and especially KEEP.”

Under Wright’s guidance, the environmental education program has reached more than 20,000 students, and it has trained 231 Konza Prairie docents and 48 Kansas teachers since she established the program in 1996. Wright also has developed Konza Prairie educational kits that meet state standards in many areas, including science, math and physical education, and she has delivered them to every school in USD 383.

“Valerie’s work has a multiplier effect,” Karen Hummel said. “She develops and implements programs to train school teachers and docents who, in turn, share information about the prairie and environmental conservation with other adults and children.”

Wright said she is excited about the generous gift from the Hummels.

“How do you thank somebody for doing something so wonderful and important? It is amazing that they can think about the future of the program, the importance in this kind of education and can go forward and make it happen. It is comforting to know that KEEP is going to have a bright future,” Wright said.

Jill Haukos, Wright’s successor as environmental educator, began Jan. 23. She has a bachelor’s degree from South Dakota State University in wildlife and fisheries management and a master’s degree from Texas Tech University in zoology-environmental education. Wright will work with Haukos throughout the next year to transition her into the position.

Contributions can be made to the Valerie Wright Legacy Fund at http://www.found.ksu.edu. Select “give now” at the top of the page and designate the gift to the Valerie Wright Legacy Fund by typing the fund’s account number, F40760, under “other” at the bottom of the gift designation list. Contributions also may be sent by check to the KSU Foundation, 2323 Anderson Ave. Suite 500, Manhattan, KS 66502-2911, with the account number, F40760, in the memo, or send a note stating that it should be designated to the Valerie Wright Legacy Fund.

For more information about the Konza Environmental Education Program and docent program visit: keep.konza.k-state.edu

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No Guts, No Glory: K-State Biologists Receive Nearly $2.8

Million From NIH to Study Virus Escape From Mosquito Midgut

Kansas State University associate professors of biology Rollie Clem and Lorena Passarelli have been

bouncing ideas off each other since they met in graduate school.

This strategy has recently paid off and resulted in the pair being awarded a four-year $2.8 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, to study how mosquitoes transmit viruses.

The two have maintained independent research programs even though they have been married for 20 years and have been research colleagues even longer. However, they have always used each other as sounding boards for ideas, and these discussions recently revealed that their latest research might be connected.

“Lorena’s group was working on the problem of how a virus called baculovirus escapes from the midgut, which is the primary site of baculovirus infection in caterpillars,” Clem said. “My group was working on apoptosis, a type of cell death, that occurs during virus infection in mosquitoes, when we realized that both processes use some of the same proteins.”

Uncovering that both systems – the caterpillar and the mosquito – had similarities in the pathway that a virus uses to move through its host provided the couple with incentive to pool their knowledge.

“At the time we were each planning on submitting our own grant proposal to fund our projects, but then we realized that a joint proposal would be more competitive and innovative,” Passarelli said.

With the help of their collaborator Alexander Franz from Colorado State University, the three will study how mosquito-borne viruses, such as dengue and Chikungunya viruses, are able to escape a mosquito’s midgut after they are ingested and move to the salivary glands, where they can be transmitted to the mosquito’s next host.

“There is not much known about the process of how viruses move from the midgut to the salivary glands,” Clem said. “All that is known is that there are some examples where certain viruses can infect a strain of mosquito and can’t escape the midgut, so there is a block called a midgut escape barrier. The existence of this barrier implies that midgut escape is not simply a passive process.”

To better understand the midgut escape barrier, the trio will be working with Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which are known for their involvement in transmitting yellow fever and dengue fever. The eventual aim is that this knowledge can be used to prevent virus transmission by mosquitoes in the wild.

“Viruses that are transmitted by mosquitoes are a huge public health problem in many parts of the world and are becoming more of a problem in the U.S.,” Clem said. “If we

can fi gure out how to prevent the virus from escaping the midgut of the mosquito then we can hopefully block the transmission of these viruses. However, at this point we are in the early stages of trying to understand what controls the ability of the virus to escape from the midgut.”

Insects have a protective mesh lining the midgut called a basal lamina, which is thought to inhibit viruses from escaping the midgut. However, penetrating the basal lamina are tracheal cells, part of a network of cells that aid in gas exchange throughout the insect’s body. The tracheal cells reach into the midgut to provide gas exchange for the midgut cells, Passarelli said.

“If the tracheal cells that penetrate the midgut become infected, they can provide a pathway from the midgut to the rest of the insect,” Passarelli said.

Some of Passarelli’s work on caterpillars, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2010, showed that baculoviruses are able to induce degradation of the tracheal cell basal lamina, infect the tracheal cell and invade the rest of the caterpillar. This led them to hypothesize that a similar process might be triggered by virus infection in mosquito midguts. Preliminary experiments indicated that this might be the case, Clem said.

Clem and Passarelli believe that their marriage is an advantage to them as scientists, since it provides opportunities to discuss science and learn from each other’s expertise. However, they don’t always agree, which makes for a more interesting discussion.

“Having diff erent points of view is an advantage for our research,” Clem said. “We met as graduate students in the same lab and from the very beginning we have worked well together.”

Their partnership does not just end at research and marriage. They also teach a class together, BIOL 730 General Virology, and they are exercise partners.

“Running together provides a relaxing setting to come up with new research ideas,” Passarelli said. “Some of our best discussions happen while we are running.”

Both Clem and Passarelli received their doctoral degrees from the University of Georgia and joined Kansas State University’s Division of Biology in 1997.

Viruses transmitted by mosquitos are a growing public health concern. K-State professors of biology, Rollie Clem and Lorena Passarelli are working to block the transmission of these viruses.

Division of Biology

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A Letter from Spooner Brian Spooner, Director of the Division of Biology, Ph.D.

Hi Everybody, I’m glad to see you are reading our Alumni Newsletter, and keeping up on

events in the Division of Biology. We continue to have a continuum of interesting, high achieving students; outstanding classroom faculty instruction; world-class faculty research and grant acquisition; outstanding productivity by emeritus faculty; and ongoing achievements by our alumni.

What you read here are just examples of our constant efforts to improve in every aspect of our mission, which is: To generate and disseminate new and existing high-quality biological scientific knowledge, in a supportive and diverse environment, to students, professional colleagues and the public through teaching, research and outreach.

As one example of a new effort, we recently hosted our first graduate student recruiting event, where we brought the most outstanding graduate candidates from across the nation to campus for a two-day focused visit designed to increase the number of these best and brightest students who choose our program. This will be an annual event.

While the costs are high, outstanding new graduate students are critical for the quality of our graduate program and the quality of research in the division. Your contributions could help us cover the cost of events like this. You would be investing in the continued commitment of biology to lead the university in research and education.

K-State Notice of Nondiscrimination

Kansas State University is committed to nondiscrimination on the basis of race, color, ethnic or national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, age, ancestry, disability, military status, veteran status, or other non-merit reasons, in admissions, educational programs or activities and employment, including employment of disabled veterans and veterans of the Vietnam Era, as required by applicable laws and regulations. Responsibility for coordination of compliance efforts and receipt of inquiries concerning Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, and the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, has been delegated to the Director of Affirmative Action, Kansas State University, 214 Anderson Hall, Manhattan, KS 66506-0124, (Phone) 785-532-6220; (TTY) 785-532-4807.

The BULLETIN | SPRING NEWSLETTER 2012

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Thank you for your Support!

To make a gift, visit our website at: k-state.edu/biology/makeagift.html

Your generous donations help us provide a quality education to our students. There are approximately 900 undergraduate students and 70 graduate students enrolled every year. Annually, the Division awards nearly $80,000 in scholarships to undergraduates and fully funds each graduate student at a cost of $25,000 per student.

Contact Us!Phone: 785.532.6615E-mail: biology@k-state.eduWebsite: k-state.edu/biology

Division of Biology