Biological Station (UMBS)

College of Literature, Science, and the Arts

The University of Michigan: An Encyclopedic Survey was first published beginning in 1942. For its 2017 Bicentennial, the University undertook the most significant updating of the Encyclopedia since the original, focusing on academic units. Entries from all versions are compiled in the Bicentennial digital and print-on-demand edition.

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1. Biological Station (UMBS) (1942) 1 George R. La Rue

2. Biological Station (UMBS) (1975) 15

3. Biological Station (UMBS) (2015) 19 David M. Gates

[1]

Biological Station (UMBS) (1942)

George R. La Rue

IN the spring of the year 1900 Professor Jacob E. Reighard of the Department of Zoology appeared before the Board of Regents to discuss the establishment of a biological station on the Great Lakes, to be under University control but maintained by the government. The Regents then asked President Angell to take the matter up with Senator James McMillan in the hope of obtaining favorable action by the government. Apparently the project came to naught. The idea was not entirely abandoned by the University, however, for in October, 1903, Professor John O. Reed included in his plan for the betterment of the Summer Session a suggestion that a biological station be established at some suitable place on the lakes of Michigan, “for the study of Botany and Zoölogy and for accommodation of persons desiring to do advanced work in those lines” (R.P., 1901-6, p. 270). But again no immediate action resulted. Authorization of the establishment of a biological station was finally secured and was recorded thus in the minutes of the Board of Regents for April 28, 1909:

On motion of Regent Carey it was voted that a teaching or research 2 Biological Station (UMBS)

station in Botany and Zoology at a total appropriation for equipment, salaries and other expense for 1909 not to exceed $2,000, should be established at the Bogardus Engineering Camp,1 provided at least twenty students should elect the course for the coming Summer Session.

(R.P., 1906-10, p. 472.)

During the summer of 1908 the University had acquired a tract of land of nearly fourteen hundred acres, on the south and east shores of Douglas Lake, Cheboygan County, partly by purchase and partly by gift from Charles and Hannah W. Bogardus, of Pellston (R.P., 1906-10, pp. 274-75, 348). According to Reighard, Colonel Bogardus and his wife had expressed the wish that scientific orkw be done on the site:

With that remark, the biological station was conceived. Dean Cooley wanted still more land and thought that the founding of a biological station might lead Colonel and Mrs. Bogardus to offer it on the same favorable terms as before. He took the matter to the Board of Regents and, largely through the efforts of Regent Carey, they were persuaded to send a committee from Ann Arbor in the fall of 1908 to look over the proposed site.

(Reighard, p. 5.)

The personnel of that committee does not appear on the records of the Regents, nor is their report acknowledged or published. Reighard stated that he was not a member and that he did not know its membership, but that Frederick C. Newcombe of the Department of Botany represented the science of biology, and he believed that the secretary of the University and several Regents were members of the party. The committee recommended that the Regents found a biological station to be administered by the Summer Session. George P. Burns, of the Department of Botany, who may have been a member of the committee, strongly urged the establishment of a biological station. Although only fourteen of the required twenty students applied for admission, the Biological Station was permitted to go ahead under the directorship of Reighard and with Burns

1. This name later (Mar., 1916) was changed to Camp Davis. Biological Station (UMBS) (1942) 3 as the other member of the teaching staff and Miss Frances J. Dunbar as general assistant. For buildings the Station had one of the two small, old log buildings which had been hastily built about 1904 for use as a railroad grading camp. The surveying camp was located a third of a mile farther west on South Fishtail Bay of Douglas Lake. About six miles to the west and a little south was the village of Pellston, eight miles southeast was Topinabee, and thirteen miles northeast was Cheboygan. A plague of black flies delayed the opening of the session for a week, and this delay gave much-needed time for erecting the tents for living quarters and for installing shelves and windows in the log laboratory and a platform and a hand pump for the aquarium. Photographs taken at the time record these preparations and the barren appearance of the landscape, which had been repeatedly burned over. Gaunt black stubs twenty to fifty feet high were prominent features of the landscape, and huge pine stumps showed that a magnificent pine forest had been removed some thirty years earlier (1876 and 1877). The women students lived in tents pitched near the engineers’ dining tent on the hill behind the surveying camp. The men’s tents were pitched along the shore west of the log laboratory. The log laboratory had shelves for equipment, books, supplies, and specimens, also tables for classes, research, and officeork. w Those few tents, some of them borrowed, and the old log building used as a laboratory, with a small shed attached at the rear, a platform, a water tank, and a hand pump for the aquarium, constituted the physical plant. The fleet consisted of three rowboats. There were no automobiles nor trucks for transportation overland. Students and staff boarded at the dining tent operated by the Bogardus Engineering Camp. Since the Biological Station was still considered an experiment, at the close of the session the students were asked to report on the value of their work and their experiences during the summer. Without exception, these reports (in the Biological Station files) were enthusiastic in their praise of the character and quality of the instruction, of the type of courses offered, and of the value of the work accomplished in preparation for teaching and research. All placed high value 4 Biological Station (UMBS)

on their experiences. Most of the students preferred living in tents to living in dormitories. Their suggestions in these letters had considerable weight with Director Reighard and with the administration in evaluating the Station as an experiment in biological education. Although the Station was considered to have been successful, there remained much uncertainty regarding its permanence and, particularly, its location. From 1913 to 1916 inclusive the very existence of the Station was endangered; it lacked the strong support of the Departments of Botany and Zoology. A majority of its staff and students came from other institutions. The comprehensive and vigorous report of Director Otto C. Glaser at the close of the session of 1916 brought it the needed support of the departments and strengthened the determination of the Summer Session authorities to continue its existence. Since that time the Station has been looked upon as an established part of the Summer Session and well past the experimental stage. The Station had been situated on Douglas Lake because the University owned the land and on that particular site because of its proximity to the Bogardus Engineering Camp and the availability of the log buildings. There had been no survey of the state to determine the best area for a biological field station, nor had the Bogardus tract been carefully surveyed for the best site. As early as 1911 parties from the Station had examined Burt Lake and had reported on its nonsuitability as a location. Adverse reports were made following examinations of Pine Lake in Charlevoix County in 1917 by members of the staff and of a tract south of Williamsburg in 1927 by members of the staff and Regents Beal and Hubbard. In later years much of the shore line of Douglas Lake was carefully examined, and reports were made on part of Section 29, Munro Township, lying at the northwest corner of the tract. Again and again the directors and their staffs examined Grapevine Point, about three-fourths of a mile north of the Engineering Camp, and brought that site to the attention of the Board of Regents. Plans were prepared for the development of a physical plant on that site, and repeated requests for funds for that purpose were presented to the Board. Biological Station (UMBS) (1942) 5

In turn, the Board, no less than twice, requested funds from the legislature for the development on Grapevine Point. Meanwhile, after the World War, the growth in the enrollment at the Biological Station had been rapid and continuous. Many small buildings had been erected on the narrowly limited original site, bounded on the front by the lake and on the side and back by the engineers’ base line and an old dry beach pool. Roads and streets had not been built and could not be cheaply constructed on the soft beach sand. A water supply under pressure, sanitary toilets, and other conveniences had not been provided. The old site was recognized as intolerable, and the need for expansion became greater year by year. In the fall of 1927 a party consisting of President Little, Secretary Smith, Regent Beal, Deans Huber, Kraus, and Dana, Professors Bartlett and Ruthven, and Directors La Rue and Johnston inspected the two camps on the Bogardus Tract and examined Grapevine Point as a site for the Biological Station. By that time the staff members had become convinced that no better area for biological study would be found in the state, and the great value of the accumulated data was recognized. Following that trip of inspection it was made known that Director Johnston and the staff of Camp Davis desired to give up their location on Douglas Lake and to build a new camp in Wyoming. Growth of trees and underbrush, since fires had been prevented, had been so great as to interfere seriously with the practice of surveying. The old engineering camp thus became available for the Biological Station, and the plan to erect buildings on Grapevine Point was abandoned. The summer of 1928 was spent in preparing plans for the occupation of the Camp Davis site. In February, 1929, the Regents set aside the sum of $70,000 for the development of camps for surveying and biology. That summer and fall and the spring of 1930 were spent in carrying out these plans. On the old Camp Davis site this work involved the cutting and grading of new streets, the extension of the water and sewage systems, and the erection of several buildings. New water tanks and septic tanks were built, and two two-story laboratory buildings were constructed, in addition to an administration building to house offices, with a stockroom-store on the first floor and a dining 6 Biological Station (UMBS)

hall and a kitchen on the second. Ninety-nine other buildings were moved or put onto foundations. Although work had not been completed, the session of 1930 was held in the new location, which included the old Camp Davis site and extended as far to the east as the old log laboratory. On this site there is a central campus area which includes the laboratories, the keeper’s residence, the aquarium building, a small animal house, a garage, the library, the clubhouse, and the administration building. Immediately to the west on the main street (State Street) is a group of eighteen small houses set aside for married students, and on the hillside behind and west of this area is a group of twenty-three small houses for men students. At the west end of State Street are a garage and the covered harbor and boathouse. Immediately east of the campus area along State Street are the three Health Service buildings, an office and living quarters for the dean of women, living quarters for the kitchen force, and thirty-one houses for women students, guests, and investigators. Along East State Street, extending from the guest houses to the log laboratory, are a dozen houses for faculty members. Since 1930 many unfinished construction jobs projected on the original plans have been completed. These include additions to the aquarium building, the conversion of the basement of the Camp Davis kitchen into a photographic suite with five darkrooms, the insulation of the dining hall and kitchen, the wiring of many buildings for electric light or power, the construction of retaining walls and of stone paths from broken concrete floors, the development of clayed paths, the construction of terraces in front of the administration building, of log stairways outside certain buildings, and of a tower on which insects can be collected at night with the aid of an arc light, and the reconstruction of the baseball diamond. Except for the construction of fire lanes around the two stations and attempts to prevent forest fires, no efforts had been made for more than twenty years to improve the forest on the tract. Natural reseeding was in process on certain areas, but on others there were only scattered clumps of bushes and aspens. In 1930 the forest was placed under the supervision of Professor Willett F. Ramsdell, of the School of Forestry and Conservation, Biological Station (UMBS) (1942) 7 in order that the existing forest might receive expert care and be improved by planting and by the removal of the less desirable trees. This was made possible through the generosity of the George Willis Pack Foundation and of members of the Pack family. Before June, 1937, approximately one thousand acres had been planted. A program of long-term studies on the Biological Station forest has been instituted by Ramsdell and his colleagues. The fire lanes built around the two stations in the early years had long gone untended. In 1931 the co-operation of the State Department of Conservation was secured in the construction of certain fire lanes on the property; later, with the aid of the Civilian Conservation Corps, the University was able to have some miles of work roads built and the fire lanes extended and improved. These are maintained by annual cultivation. The CCC in 1933 constructed a building for the forestry equipment and in 1934 erected an eighty-five-foot fire tower which had been donated by the Department of Conservation. The original tract of nearly fourteen hundred acres has been extended by purchase and by acquisition of tax titles. In 1940 it comprised about four thousand acres. Early in 1942, by means of a special legislative act, the State Department of Conservation was enabled to transfer to the University for the purposes of its Biological Station more than three thousand acres of tax- reverted lands which the Department of Conservation had earlier acquired from the state. Nearly half of this new tract is adjacent to the old one, but other parcels are separated. Instruction at the Biological Station. — Teaching is an important function of the Biological Station. With few exceptions the courses offered have supplemented instruction given in colleges and universities, and emphasis has been placed upon field work, but not to the exclusion of work in the laboratory and the library, the degree of emphasis upon each aspect depending upon the course and upon the special interests of the instructors and the students. In the following brief account of the courses subject matter can be indicated only by titles. It is impossible to describe clearly the changes in content, method, and emphasis as the professors changed. 8 Biological Station (UMBS)

Zoology. — Courses treating the field aspects of vertebrates have been an important part of the offerings of the Station from the beginning. The first course was entitled the Natural History of Vertebrate Animals. With some changes in title and emphasis this course was given by Jacob E. Reighard (1909, 1911-12), Norman H. Stewart (1910), Max M. Ellis (1913-17), and Frank Smith (1919-22) for two hours of credit. Reighard emphasized behavior and evolution in lecture and library work, but field studies received attention. Stewart gave emphasis to field studies, Ellis and Smith to ecology and taxonomy. This course was replaced by Ichthyology, two hours, and Herpetology and Mammalogy, two hours, both offered by Francis Harper in 1923 and 1924 and by Charles W. Creaser since 1925. Birds were included in Natural History during the years 1909 and 1910, but in 1911 became the object of a separate two-hour course, the Natural History of Birds, given by Smith and continued by Smith and John S. Dexter (1912), Ellis and James S. Compton (1913), Compton alone (1914), Norman A. Wood (1915), and Reuben M. Strong (1916). The title was changed to Ornithology in 1917, and under this name the course was given successively by Strong (1917), Roland F. Hussey (1918), Dayton Stoner (1919-20), Zeno P. Metcalf (1921), Frank N. Blanchard (1922-27, 1929-37), Alfred O. Gross (1928) while Blanchard was on leave, and Olin S. Pettingill (1938 — ). Because of increased interest in the subject, Advanced Ornithology was started by Blanchard in 1923. For many years the enrollment in the elementary ornithology course was higher than that in any other course except Entomology. The invertebrates have always received their share of attention. Reighard gave a course entitled Fresh-Water Biology, two hours credit, in 1909. This course gave way in 1910 to the Natural History of Invertebrates, by Arthur S. Pearse. Without change of title this course was given successively by Frank Smith (1911-14), Robert W. Hegner (1915), and Otto C. Glaser (1916). Then the title was changed to read, the Natural History of Invertebrate Animals with Reference to the Principles of Ecology, and it was given by Walter N. Koelz (1917) and by Paul S. Welch (1918-22), who emphasized the limnological aspects Biological Station (UMBS) (1942) 9 and introduced quantitative methods. In recognition of these changes, the course was renamed Limnology in 1923. The Natural History of Vertebrates was re-established in 1933 as a four-hour course, and it has been given regularly by Frank E. Eggleton, with emphasis upon taxonomy and ecology of invertebrates exclusive of insects and parasitic worms. Limnology, as indicated above, developed from the course known as Natural History of Invertebrates and was first given under its new name in 1923 as a four-hour course. Since its inception it has been taught continuously by Welch, although Eggleton was associated with him in this work for three years (1931-33). The need for additional training in methods of limnological research led in 1931 to the establishment of a two- hour course named Limnological Methods and given by Eggleton. Repeated in 1932, it has been given in alternate years thereafter. Instruction in entomology began in 1912, when a two-hour course entitled the Natural History of Insects was offered by Smith and Welch, with Welch giving the instruction. It was given by Welch in 1913, by Ellis in the years 1914-17, and in 1918 by Welch, as Ellis had been called to war service. Stoner gave the course in 1919 and 1920, and Metcalf in 1921. Without undergoing any change in content, it was renamed Entomology in 1922, and Robert Matheson was put in charge. It was made a four-hour course in 1923, when Herbert B. Hungerford took charge of it. Hungerford has continued to give the course except in 1928, when he was on leave and Clarence H. Kennedy gave it. For years this course had been deservedly popular, and usually there were more students enrolled in it than there were in any of the other courses. A course in helminthology was established in 1927 and has been given every year since by William W. Cort and Lyell J. Thomas. In 1910 Arthur S. Pearse and Miss Mary T. Harmon gave the course entitled Zoology for Teachers, and Horace B. Baker gave Natural History of Mollusks in 1911. Neither course has been repeated. In the early years students who had had no previous biological training were sometimes admitted to courses in zoology. Only 10 Biological Station (UMBS)

once, in 1915, was the elementary course called General Zoology given, and then Cort was in charge. With few exceptions since that date students taking zoology courses have been required to present one or more courses in biology or zoology for entrance. Botany. — During the first three years there was a complete change of the botanical staff (one professor) each year, resulting in extensive changes in courses. During the first session, however, three important lines of botanical work were begun which have been pursued almost without interruption to the present. These are ecology, systematic botany, and a botanical survey of the region. From time to time there have been changes in emphasis, new aspects of these major fields have been undertaken, and new courses have been added as the staff grew and demand warranted. The Teachers’ Course in Ecology, which was given by George P. Burns in 1909 for two or for four hours of credit, was never repeated in that form; in 1913 and 1914, however, a course called Ecology but which dealt with the ecology of plants, two hours, was given by Henry A. Gleason. It was enlarged to a four-hour course in 1915, when it was given by Gleason and Frank C. Gates. Since that time it has been given annually by Gates. In 1930 the title was changed to Plant Ecology. A two-hour course known as Advanced Ecology was given by George E. Nichols in the summers 1926-30 inclusive. The first course in systematic botany (1909) was Burns’s Identification of Trees and Shrubs, two hours, which was superseded in 1910 by a more general course, Systematic Botany of Seed Plants, two hours, by Pool. Since that time it has been called Systematic Botany and has been given by Gleason (1911-14), Frank C. Gates (1915), John H. Ehlers (1916-38), and William C. Steere (1939 — ). Advanced Systematic Botany, two hours, dealing with grasses and sedges, was instituted by Ehlers in 1915 and was given annually thereafter until 1932, since which time it has been alternated with Aquatic Flowering Plants, two hours, also given by Ehlers and continued by Steere (1939 — ). The systematics of the lower plants have also been the subject of courses. Taxonomy of the Bryophytes, two hours, and Taxonomy of Fresh-Water Algae, two hours, have been given by Nichols (1920-38), Hempstead Castle substituting for him in Biological Station (UMBS) (1942) 11

1931 during his illness. The algae course has appeared under a variety of titles. The two-hour course named Mycology and given by R. J. Pool in 1910 has never been repeated, although the present staff has been on record for many years as favoring the re-establishment of such a course. During the early years some students without previous biological or botanical training were admitted. For them in 1910 Pool gave a four-hour course designated the Course in Field and Forest Botany. This was continued by Gleason and Fred A. Loew during the summers of 1911 and 1912, and was given by Harry N. Whitford in 1913, by Gleason and Frank T. McFarland in 1914, by McFarland in 1915, and by Richard M. Holman in 1916 and 1917. For students with only laboratory training in botany this course served as an introduction to field work and became the vehicle for ecological training during the summers 1910-12, when a regular course in ecology was not given. Plant Anatomy was a two-hour course established in 1915 by Gleason and Walter E. Rogers, and was enlarged to a four-hour course in 1930. Those who have given it are Holman (1916-17), Ehlers (1918), Bert E. Quick (1919), Nichols (1920-22), Gleason (1923), William Seifriz (1924), and Carl D. La Rue (1925 — ). A second course, Ecological Plant Anatomy, two hours, was given by C. D. La Rue in the summers 1926-35 inclusive. The latter course gave way to Plant Tissue Culture and Morphogenesis (1936 — ), also given by La Rue. Plant Geography, a two-hour lecture course, was begun by Seifriz (1924) and was given after the first year by C. D. La Rue (1925-29). Research. — From the very beginning, qualified students have been invited to undertake research on the flora and fauna of the region, under direction. Among the subjects offered in botany may be noted ecology (Burns), taxonomy and ecological relations of bryophytes and algae (Nichols), ecology of flowering plants (Gleason, Gates), taxonomy and distribution of flowering plants (Ehlers), plant anatomy, tissue culture, and morphogenesis (C. D. La Rue). In zoology research has been offered in these fields: systematic and faunal zoology (Pearse), behavior of animals in relation to their environment (Pearse), evolution and behavior 12 Biological Station (UMBS)

(Reighard), fishes (Reighard, Ellis, Smith, Francis Harper, and Charles W. Creaser), Sporozoa (Ellis), Oligochaeta (Smith, Welch), mollusks (Baker), insects (Welch, Ellis, Stoner, Metcalf, Matheson, Hungerford), sponges (Smith), arthropods (Hegner), birds (Strong, Stoner, Metcalf, Gross, Blanchard), amphibians and reptiles (Blanchard), parasitic worms (Cort, George R. La Rue, Thomas), aquatic organisms (Smith), mammals (Harper, Creaser), limnology (Welch), and natural history of invertebrates (Eggleton). Graduate students, staff members, and visiting investigators have published no less than 450 scientific papers based on the fauna and flora of the Douglas Lake region during the years 1909-39, making that region well known to biologists of the world. Personnel. — The Biological Station has developed under the directorship of six men: Jacob E. Reighard, 1909-14 (not in residence in 1910, 1913, and 1914); Arthur S. Pearse, Acting Director, 1910; Henry A. Gleason, Acting Director, 1913 and 1914, and Director, 1915; Otto C. Glaser, 1916; George R. La Rue, 1917-39; and Alfred H. Stockard, secretary, 1931-39, and Director, 1940 — . It is impossible to list all the faculty members and give a full description of what they have accomplished for the Biological Station. A number of men taught for a single session, others for two or three, a few for many years. In general those who served the Station for long terms have made by far the greatest contributions to the development of research and teaching programs. Professor Reighard was in residence during three sessions only, but he exerted a profound influence on all aspects of the Biological Station program. He emphasized research, insisted that the courses be based on the fauna and flora of the region and that they be scientific, and set up the daily routine which has since been followed with only minor variations. Gleason (1911-15) developed a course in plant ecology and ecological methods. His branch of teaching and research has been ably carried on since his time by one of his students, Frank C. Gates (1916 — ). Frank Smith, of the University of Illinois, was a member of the staff from 1911 to 1914 inclusive and again during the summers 1919-22 inclusive. During his first period Biological Station (UMBS) (1942) 13 of service he developed courses dealing with invertebrates, and in the second period he took over vertebrate courses, which he ably conducted. Faculty members who have served the Biological Station for many years and have made important contributions to teaching and research include Frank N. Blanchard, who had charge of the teaching in ornithology and of the research in both ornithology and herpetology in the years 1922-37; William Walter Cort of Johns Hopkins University (1915-16, 1927 — ), in parasitology; Charles W. Creaser of Detroit City College, now Wayne University, in ichthyology, herpetology, and mammalogy (1925 — ); Frank E. Eggleton (1929 — ) in limnological methods and the natural history of invertebrates; John H. Ehlers (1916-38), in systematic botany and aquatic flowering plants; Frank C. Gates of Kansas State College (1915 — ), in plant ecology; Herbert B. Hungerford of the University of Kansas (1923 — on leave, 1928), in entomology; Carl D. La Rue (1925 — ), in plant anatomy, plant tissue culture, and morphogenesis; George E. Nichols of Yale University (1920-38), in the taxonomy of algae and bryophytes; Lyell J. Thomas of the University of Illinois (1927 — ), who was associated with Cort in parasitology; and Paul S. Welch (1918 — ), in limnology.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Announcement of the Biological Station, Univ. Mich., 1909-40. Announcement of the Summer Session, Univ. Mich., 1909-40. “The Growth of the Summer Session.”Mich. Alum., 23 (1917): 188-90. Harmon, Lucie. “Life at the Biological Station.”Mich. Alum., 16 (1910): 416-18. La Rue, George R.”Biological Station …”Mich. Alum., 36 (1930): 737, 747-48. La Rue, George R.”The University of Michigan Biological Station.”Collecting Net, 6 (1931): 169-73. La Rue, George R., , Peter O. Okkelberg, , and John F. Shepard. MS, “Jacob E. Reighard.”In MS, “Minutes of the Meetings of the Faculty … College of Literature, Science, and the Arts,” Univ. Mich., Apr. 6, 1942. 1940 — , pp. 834-40. [News notes.]Mich. Alum., 15 (1909): 375-76; 16 (1910): 351-52; 29 14 Biological Station (UMBS)

(1922): 90; 33 (1927): 815; 39 (1933): 625; Mich. Daily, Mar. 25, 1910; Mar. 16, 1912; Mar. 23, Apr. 15, and May 18, 1919. President’s Report, Univ. Mich., 1920-40. Proceedings of the Board of Regents …, 1896-1940. Reighard, Jacob E.”The Biological Station’s First Year.”Mich. Alum., 40 (1933): 5-6, 9-10. “A Scientific Laboratory in the Wilderness.”Mich. Alum., 31 (1925): 307-10. Shull, A. Franklin. “Jacob Ellsworth Reighard.”Science, n.s., 95 (1942): 344-46. [2]

Biological Station (UMBS) (1975)

The Biological Station was established in 1909 simultaneously with the Engineering camp, Camp Davis, along the southern shore of Douglas Lake in Cheboygan County, Michigan. When the civil engineers moved Camp Davis to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in 1929 the biologists relocated their station on the former Camp Davis site. Dr. George R. LaRue, Director, 1917-39, was largely responsible for a faculty of great reputation and the establishment of a modern physical plant. Dr. Alfred H. Stockard, who had been Secretary to the Director since 1931, assumed the position. The faculty in 1940 was distinguished and nearly all had an international reputation. He served as director until his death in 1966. Frederick K. Sparrow, Professor of Botany at the University became Acting Director for 1967-68 and Director from 1969 through 1971. While Dr. Sparrow was on leave in 1968, Alexander H. Smith, Professor of Botany, served as Deputy Acting Director. Dr. David M. Gates, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, became Professor of Botany in Ann Arbor and Director of the Station in September 1971. The increasing complexity of the Station’s operation and many deferred activities suggested that a full-time Administrative Manager position be established the year around. Mark W. Paddock assumed this position. During summer sessions there was additional administrative assistance and a social director, 16 Biological Station (UMBS)

a position previously designated Dean of Women. Clem Bur retired in 1972 after being associated with the Station for over fiftyears y and as caretaker since 1940. World War II interrupted golden years of Station growth and achievement. Some of the professors were involved in the war effort teaching elsewhere or exploring jungles for new sources of quinine or rubber. Student enrollment fell to the lowest in decades, but following the war enrollments jumped to all-time highs. During the years 1940 through 1975 the Station acquired 5,691 additional acres, bringing the total ownership to 9,615 acres. In 1975 the Chase S. Osborn tract of 3,000 acres on Sugar Island near Sault Ste. Marie was transferred from the Graduate School to the Station. A couple of toilet-shower buildings were built in the late 1940s, the library in 1949, and Cort Laboratory about 1952. The Superintendent’s house was built in 1967. The university administration realized in the 1960s that if the station was to have a year-round research program it would need winterized facilities. The old boathouse was torn down and with funds from the National Science Foundation the Alfred H. Stockard Lakeside Laboratory was built in 1966. A dormitory to provide winterized housing was also completed in 1966. Faculty cabin 48 was built in 1971. A large bequest, $97,000, left to the Station by Professor and Mrs. Charles W. Creaser, became available in 1971 and made it possible among other things to build a resident scientist cabin near the Lakeside Laboratory and winterize cabins 25, 27, 29, and D-1 during 1972-73. Student housing was overcrowded. Two winterized quadruplexes were built on the hill top during 1974-75. A new Director’s cottage, fully winterized was completed in June 1974. The dining hall built in 1930 was outmoded and replaced by a new building in time for the 1976 summer session at a cost of $347,000 from private funds. Faculty cabin 46 was renovated in 1975 and all others scheduled for renovation soon thereafter. Student enrollment varied considerably over the years from 107 in 1940 to lows of 51 in 1943, 75 in 1954, and 86 in 1972 to highs of 137 in 1949, 133 in 1961, and 136 in 1975. Some of the enrollment trends are tied to availability of grant-in-aid Biological Station (UMBS) (1975) 17 support to students. The National Science Foundation provided modest but steady support for students at the Station from $6,000 for 26 students in 1955 to $10,350 for 29 students in 1971. NSF discontinued all support and this had catastrophic consequences in 1972. During 1973, 1974, and 1975 we had mixed sources of funding for students including the Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs, the Rackham School of Graduate Studies, and the Rockefeller and Scaife Foundations for a total of $26,650 to $34,600.

Courses and Faculty

All courses taught at the Station, the faculty and the years offered are given in Table I. Some courses have had high stability over time and some have been quite variable. It is important to have the same person teach a given course over a period of several years and thereby become thoroughly familiar with the region. There is also stimulus to be gained by having different people teach courses in alternate years.

Conferences

The Wilson Society held its national meeting at Douglas Lake in 1952 and again in 1974. A symposium on biophysical ecology was held at the Station in August 1973 and resulted in a book (D.M. Gates and R. B. Schmerl, eds., Perspectives of Biophysical Ecology, Springer-Verlag). The National Science Board, the policy board for the National Science Foundation, and the NSF administration met at the Station in 1974. In August 1975 an Ecology-Meteorology Workshop sponsored by DOE was held and the Executive Committee of the American Institute of Biological Sciences met at the Station.

Research

During the years 1940-75 a total of more than 917 papers were published from research done at the Station. Almost all research at the Station was done only in warmer months until 1972 when a new, year-round research program was begun. A series of large grants from the National Science foundation program 18 Biological Station (UMBS)

“Research Applied to National Needs” enabled the development of a resident research staff at the Station including a full-time resident limnologist Dr. John E. Gannon and a support staff of four to six. NSF, under their facilities support program established a resident technician-biologist responsible for equipment and supplies on a year-round basis. This new research program concentrated upon northern Michigan environmental programs, in particular, the study of water quality/land use relationships. Scientists from the School of Natural Resources and the Institute of Social Research participated with the Station on this effort. There was extensive interaction with northern Michigan lake associations and resource management agencies. Great Lakes research by the resident staff was carried out through financial support of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The National Park Service funded several biological surveys in the new Sleeping Bear and Pictured Rocks National Lakeshores. [3]

Biological Station (UMBS) (2015)

David M. Gates

“For the first mile or so there were signs of a little travel on the road and a few pitiful attempts at farming. All of this ended at a little sawmill on the Maple River. From that point on there was not a field or a fence or a house or another traveler on the road, nothing but a poor forest of aspen and birch. For thirty years fires had repeatedly swept through the area and even the fast-growing aspens could never develop to maturity. Projecting far above them were the white barkless trunks of huge white pines which had been rejected by the lumberman and still testified to the height of the original forest. “The land was sometimes slightly hilly and occasionally we could get a glimpse of Burt Lake off to the south. Then we passed the head of a deep V-shaped canyon carved out of the soft sand and so deep we could not see the bottom through the dense vegetation. This was the Gorge, where a thousand springs, fed by seepage through the sand from Douglas Lake, have gradually carried away the sand and deposited it a mile or so away to form a large delta in Burt Lake. Parallel with us on our left was a sand ridge, possibly of morainic origin, and out of sight beyond it we knew was Douglas Lake.”

– Henry Allan Gleason, assistant professor of botany, arriving at the Biological Station via horse-drawn wagon in 1911

To settlers, northern Michigan was a wilderness of forest, 20 Biological Station (UMBS)

wetlands, and lakes to be conquered, but to Native Americans it was a familiar landscape within which lifestyles and cultures developed for millennia. Douglas Lake lies in a transition zone within this region, where coniferous forests increase to the north and deciduous hardwood forests are more extensive to the south. Vast expanses of large trees (many three feet or more in diameter), especially white pines, attracted 19th-century entrepreneurs who cut the forests and developed a thriving but transient lumber industry. The original landscape and its frenzied transformation set the stage for the University of Michigan Biological Station. The first surveys of the region were made between 1840 and 1843 by William A. Burt and John Mullett, for whom Burt Lake and Mullett Lake were named. U.S deputy surveyor Harvey Mellen [also known as Mullen] re-surveyed the area of Turtle Lake (now Douglas Lake) in 1855. In the 1840s, Cheboygan and the adjacent Duncan City were established on the Lake Huron shore. In 1852 Congress granted public land to the state of Michigan, which in turn granted large tracts to the St. Mary’s Falls Ship Canal Company to provide timber for construction of a navigable passage around the rapids at Sault Ste. Marie. Following completion of the canal, 720 acres of timberland on the south shore of Douglas Lake were transferred to the company in 1855. Meanwhile, about 1,200 acres of pine land on the southeast shore of Douglas Lake were acquired by J.W. Duncan & Co. Logs were hauled by horses to Burt Lake for floatation to the Cheboygan lumber mills. Both of these tracts would eventually become part of the Biological Station property. An 1856 act of Congress granted railroad companies land to construct rail lines northward into Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. In order to finance rail line construction, the companies sold off their land grants to settlers. In 1875, William H. Pells of New York bought some 27,000 acres of timber in Emmet and Cheboygan counties, including 1,300 acres in the town of Pellston, as well as land near Douglas Lake formerly owned by the Mary’s Falls Ship Canal and Duncan Company. On Pells’s death in 1886, his daughter, Hannah, and her husband, Colonel Charles Bogardus, inherited the timber lands. Biological Station (UMBS) (2015) 21

After moving to Pellston in 1900, Bogardus constructed the East Mill on the Maple River to process the timber cut between Burt and Douglas Lakes. He also built the Pellston Electric Light and Power Company with a dam on the Maple River southeast of Pellston, a planing mill, the Cheboygan and Southern Railroad, and the Pellston City Bank. Pells and Bogardus were archetypal timber barons, ruthlessly cutting all suitable trees on any and all lands they held title to, and sometimes beyond those boundaries. Slash and debris were left on the landscape along with whole trees not suitable for lumber. The fuel content of the woody debris was enormous, especially the resinous pine pitch. As a result, frequent fires swept through the region, blackening the ground everywhere. By the late 19th century, scientists and conservationists were increasingly concerned about the large regions of indigenous landscape being destroyed by saw and plow. At the same time, unregulated hunting was reducing wildlife populations dramatically. Occasionally, habitat loss and over-hunting led to extinction, as in the case of the passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius). Their last large nesting site was observed near Petoskey. Concerns over habitat and wildlife losses led to the birth of conservation organizations, the establishment of national and state parks, and the development of national and state forests. Botanists and zoologists realized that information on plant and animal species available to students was almost entirely based on laboratory studies, not on field observations. A new branch of science, ecology (from the Greek, oikos, meaning “house” or “home”), originated for the study of organisms relating to their habitats and each other, from unicellular organisms to top-of-the-foodchain predators. With this new awareness, scientists began to establish biological stations where “field biology” would be taught and where plants and animals of a station’s region would be classified and collected, adding to specimen collections of museums and herbaria, including those at the University of Michigan.

“We were now on what was known as the State Road, but the state had apparently forgotten it completely. It was hard pulling for the horses and no automobile, as they built in that year, could possibly be driven over the road. I had noticed a great number of side roads which branched off 22 Biological Station (UMBS)

in every direction, but showed no sign of ever having been used. These were the old logging roads, and they had persisted for thirty years merely because plants migrated so slowly over the sterile sand. After a time we turned abruptly into one of these side roads which did show evidence of recent travel, angled through the brush for a quarter of a mile, emerged on a little clearing, and there before us was Douglas Lake and the Biological Station.” – Henry Allan Gleason

In 1900, Jacob E. Reighard, a distinguished zoologist and fish expert on the Michigan faculty, asked the Regents to establish a biological station in the Great Lakes area. No action was taken at the time. Then, in 1908, Charles and Hannah Bogardus conveyed 1,441 acres (580 ha) on the shore of Douglas Lake to the University for use as a civil engineering camp. With the landscape wide open after logging, it was an ideal location to teach surveying. The parcel was named Camp Bogardus, then Camp Davis in honor of J. B. Davis, head of the U-M’s Surveying Department. In April 1909, the Regents, acting on Reighard’s suggestion, appropriated $2,000 for a teaching and research station for botany and zoology to be located next to the Engineering Camp on Douglas Lake.

The Pioneer Period, 1909-1915

Reighard served as director of the new Biological Station for the first six summers, but was in residence for only three summers: 1909, 1911, and 1912. Arthur Pearse, professor of botany, was acting director in 1910. Henry Allan Gleason, assistant professor of botany, served as acting director in 1913 and 1914, then as director in 1915. The initial site of the Biological Station was a railroad grading camp east of the engineering camp where two old log buildings stood. The one near the lake shore was used as a laboratory, dubbed “Log Lab.” The other was used for storage by the engineers, dubbed “Hotel J. B.” (after J. B. Davis). A tent was also used as a laboratory. U-M administrators regarded the Biological Station as an experimental program with a minimum enrollment of 20 students. Only 14 students enrolled the first summer in 1909; nonetheless, the Biological Station was allowed to make a Biological Station (UMBS) (2015) 23 beginning. The four men lived in “Manville,” a line of tents pitched west of Log Lab, while the ten women lived in tents called “Ladyville,” on the hill near the engineers’ mess tent. The women’s camp was moved to the lake shore east of Log Lab the second summer.

For the first four summers the biologists boarded with the engineers and a medical doctor at Camp Davis served everyone. The tents were all wall tents fourteen feet square, with a fly. They were pitched on a rough but permanent floor of the same size and supported on a permanent frame of stout poles. Two poles at each end formed an inverted V and supported the ridge pole. There were side poles outside the tent to which the sides were tied, and gable poles which helped secure the fly. In two corners of the tent were ticks stuffed with straw. The first week, when the straw was fresh, they were high in the middle, but they soon packed down to relative flatness. All of us, faculty and students alike, furnished our own blankets. There was also in each tent a small stove and a couple of light folding chairs. For light there was a kerosene lantern, but it was seldom used. Outside each tent door stood a small iron stand with a wash basin. Water was dipped up from the lake. – Henry Allan Gleason

Life was difficult for the first few summers. Sand was everywhere, blackened by charcoal from the fires that had swept the area. All transportation for classes was on foot, except for those going across the lake in row boats or the Station’s balky launch, the Alexander Forbes. To mail a letter or buy an ice cream cone, students and faculty had a choice—an eight-mile walk to Topinabee or a six-mile walk to Pellston. Much time and effort was required to make the facilities satisfactory for teaching and research. Faculty had to build a roof for Log Lab and caulk the spaces between logs. The site, located on an exposed stretch of Douglas Lake shoreline, was windy and sand blew into the lab despite the caulking. Faculty installed windows to keep out sand and rain, added a dark room, and built an aquarium for fish tanks. Plagues of black flies and mosquitoes made life less than pleasant. In 1910, student Cora Reeves published the first Biological Station research paper, “A remedy for the black fly pest in certain streams of the southern peninsula of Michigan.” It was based on her 1909 field study.

Twenty-three students attended in the second summer, 22 in the third (only two were men), and 18 in the fourth summer. Enrollments increased to 33 24 Biological Station (UMBS)

students during the fifth summer. Again, women were in the majority… The camp bell was rung at six o’clock. Breakfast was at six–thirty, and then they had an hour to straighten their tents and get ready for the day’s work, which began at eight. At four o’clock everyone went swimming. Supper came at six and curfew was at nine or half past. The only exception to this schedule was Professor Smith’s class in ornithology, which started at four in the morning every good day and many bad days as well. After supper the tent laboratory was reserved for recreation and on stormy nights it was crowded with students talking, playing cards, or singing. In the Log Lab and J. B. would be other students preparing specimens, writing up field notes, or reading. In good weather there might be a bonfire on the beach surrounded by a circle of people singing Michigan college songs. – Henry Allan Gleason

The Old Camp, 1915-1930

Gleason was named director in 1915, but he resigned soon after to assume the directorship of the U-M Botanical Gardens. He left Michigan in 1919 for the New York Botanical Garden, where he was head curator until 1950. During his three years as acting director and director, Gleason increased student enrollments and budget appropriations. He returned to the Biological Station to teach botany in 1923. Gleason had already advanced a seminal idea, which he referred to as “the individualistic concept” of ecology, whereby plant communities were conceived of as associations of individuals and species. This contradicted a prevailing idea in which plant communities were viewed as functioning similarly to “super organisms” with highly structured development patterns. Gleason stimulated a productive debate among ecologists, and moved on to make major contributions in plant taxonomy, co- authoring with Arthur Cronquist a definitive flora of the Northeast, published in 1963, entitled A Manual of Vascular Plants of Northeastern United States and Adjacent Canada. The latest edition of that book (1991) continues to serve as a primary resource for field botany. Otto C. Glaser, a professor of zoology, was appointed director in 1916. He moved the following year to Amherst College in Massachusetts where he later served as chair of the biology department and vice-president of the college. He continued Biological Station (UMBS) (2015) 25 his research in developmental biology at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA, into the 1950s. Glaser was succeeded in 1917 by George R. La Rue, professor of zoology at Michigan, who served as director for 23 years. He published extensively about parasites, with a particular emphasis on Trematoda (trematodes), a class of flatworms, beginning a path of research at the Biological Station which led to William W. Cort’s 1928 characterization of the life cycles of organisms responsible for “swimmer’s itch” in humans. The first permanent building, Houghton Hall, was built in 1915 for $1,000. It was 20 by 40 feet with windows along each side, a door at each end, and metal sheathing. At its dedication Gleason remarked: “Research is just as integral a part of the work of the Station as is the instruction. We have here research workers of all kinds, from the student who is just beginning his first problem in fear and trembling, half frightened at the very word research, to the chronic investigator whose mind is one immense question mark, who investigates all day and dreams of new species all night.” When LaRue became director in 1917, tents and straw-tick bedding prevailed, so the comforts of living had not improved much since the earliest summers. From 1913 on, the Biological Station had its own mess tent located close to the shore beyond Ladyville. It had a wooden floor and a wooden frame building at the end for a kitchen. Long tables covered with oil cloth each provided seating for twelve. Faculty and students dined together. All water used in camp was pumped by hand from wells located in Log Lab, Ladyville, and the kitchen. In 1918, because of World War I, there were only 13 students and a reduced staff. After the war there were annual increases in the student body until about 1929. During the mid-1910s, students at the Engineering Camp built small wood-framed cabins covered with galvanized sheet metal. The Biological Station built five wooden cabins, 14 by 16 feet, and covered them with roll roofing, green on the sidewalls and red on the tops. Most of the faculty still lived in tents. More wooden cabins were built each summer until 1929, when only one tent was used. In 1921 the first small wooden laboratory building, 14 by 34 feet, was built for parasite research. By 1929 26 Biological Station (UMBS)

there were ten such lab buildings. A new dining hall, 70 feet long, was built in 1925. By the late 1920s, courses were being taught in every branch of biology. Botany classes included taxonomy, ecology, plant anatomy, mosses, lichens, algae, and advanced ecology. In zoology, classes studied birds, insects, fishes, and parasitology. Limnology, the study of lakes and streams, was started in 1923. In that year, La Rue, reporting in the journal Science, listed faculty from Cornell University, Kansas State Agricultural College, the University of Kansas, the New York Botanical Garden, and Yale, as well as four from the University of Michigan. Students chose research topics under the direction of any one of the nine professors. Then, as later, research was highly interdisciplinary and field-oriented. By 1929, the forest around Douglas Lake had grown taller and denser, enough so that the engineering faculty and students had trouble keeping their survey lines open. As a result, they moved west and re-established Camp Davis near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. To the biologists’ delight, the engineers left all their buildings in place. When the engineers departed at summer’s end, the biologists’ buildings, located east of the engineering camp and more exposed to onshore winds, were moved to a more sheltered microclimate amid the engineers’ buildings on South Fishtail Bay. Most were transported on skids during the autumn and winter. Several new laboratory buildings were built, as well as a new dining hall. But the Great Depression had begun and plans for new facilities were curtailed, including a library, an animal house, a large garage and shop, and new toilets for students and faculty. Outhouses were used until the late 1930s, when toilets and showers were installed and electrical wiring was extended to faculty cabins.

The New Camp, 1930-1940

The move to the new location along the Douglas Lake shore vastly improved living conditions for everyone. The laboratory buildings from the old camp were sited along the shore and converted to faculty cabins. Students lived in the small wood- framed cabins covered with galvanized sheet metal, and also in Biological Station (UMBS) (2015) 27 the cabins covered with roll roofing, or tar paper. Each cabin now had a metal stove. Plumbing from a central well was extended to locations between every two faculty cabins. In 1934, La Rue asked the Cheboygan Rotary Club for help in getting better roads across Biological Station land. Much of the needed gravel was taken from a pit dug into the moraine behind the Biological Station residences. In the autumn of 1934, trees were cut along State Road three miles to the east as far as Bur’s farm (where I-75 runs now), three miles to the west to the top of the big hill, and to Bryant’s Resort northwest of the Biological Station, as well as along the west side of Burt Lake. With these roads, the Biological Station was no longer so isolated. From the first summer on, the courses were challenging for the students, who were in class for four days a week from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. The other three days were to be used for study. Advanced graduate students would take the same classes as the undergraduate students. Often the professor would begin with an hour-long lecture, then take the class into the field for the day, rain or shine. Enrollments grew, with the student population reaching 120 in the late 1930s. The students rode in open flatbed trucks, sitting on benches along either side. Later, station wagons were used, then vans. Boat travel on the lake made use of an in-board diesel launch, the Aquilina, later the engineers’ launch. A familiar sight to residents along the shore was this sleek, white launch with as many as five rowboats in tow, all filled to the brim with students.

Modernization and a Lakeside Laboratory, 1940-1966

Alfred H. Stockard, a U-M zoologist and vertebrate morphologist who had served as assistant to the director from 1931 through 1939, was named director for the 1940 session. He held the position until his death in November 1966. By then, he had spent 36 years attending to Biological Station programs, including 27 as director. Stockard dealt with many challenges, including the loss of students and faculty during World War II. In 1944, he reported in Science, “Though in 1942 and 1943 [the Biological Station] suffered a drop in enrollment, and…temporarily lost three of 28 Biological Station (UMBS)

its regular faculty to the war effort, the past summer saw an increase of enrollment to ninety-four students and investigators.” He said that all 12 faculty were expected to return by 1945, and that the Biological Station was preparing to accommodate up to 120 students and investigators. A decade later, in the January 1955 AIBS Bulletin, Stockard listed 15 faculty, including seven from U-M and others from colleges and universities across the country. In his words, faculty were recruited “for their proficiency at teaching and research…, regardless of any other association with the University of Michigan.” Clearly, the Biological Station had maintained its prominence as a national scientific resource. By the time of Stockard’s 1955 report, 850 papers had been published on research conducted at the Station. At that point it was a 30-acre campus with 144 buildings (including 96 single-room cabins) within an 8,850-acre tract. At mid-century, the Biological Station hosted “… about 250 persons—approximately 35 undergraduate and 75 graduate students, 20 independent investigators, 15 faculty members, 20 staff members and other employees, and families.” During his long tenure as director, Stockard modernized the bathrooms of the faculty cabins; greatly improved the physical plant; and constructed several faculty log homes, a new director’s residence, a concrete-block building for parasitology, and a new library building. The library expansion had been urgently needed, as the library housed nearly 8,000 books and journals and a collection of 25,000 catalogued reprints. Stockard’s most important project was the construction of a large, year-round laboratory. He began planning this building in 1964 to meet the needs of increasing research and the demand for a winterized building. He consulted with the faculty concerning research requirements and siting, then worked with university architects to draft plans for a proposal to the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fund construction. The facility was completed in 1966, just after Stockard’s death. Named the Alfred H. Stockard Lakeside Laboratory in 1973, it remains the Biological Station’s core research building. It has three stories and more than 24,000 square feet of research space; a boathouse; storerooms; laboratories; photographic darkrooms; Biological Station (UMBS) (2015) 29 a herbarium; an archive; a computer facility; and a seminar room. One condition for the NSF’s funding of Stockard Laboratory was for the University to build a winterized dormitory with funds from the state of Michigan. The two new buildings made possible winter courses and year-round research programs. Another challenge during Stockard’s tenure was the death or retirement of nearly all the long-time faculty. These scientists had led the Station’s development from the 1920s to 1950s; their work had brought the Station into the first rank of biological field stations in the U.S. Many younger faculty members, some of whom had been students at the Biological Station, were brought in to teach traditional courses or new ones. Two Biological Station students of this era later became Nobel laureates. Thomas Weller (1954), who developed techniques for growing the poliovirus in cultures of human and monkey cells, became a Harvard University professor of tropical public health. James Watson (1962), co-discoverer of the molecular structure of the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) double helix, became a Harvard University professor of biology and director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island.

Transitions, Growth, and Outreach, 1967 – 1986

After Stockard’s death in 1966, Frederick K. Sparrow was appointed acting director for 1967, then director in 1968. He served through the summer of 1971. Before his directorship, he had spent almost 20 years teaching Biological Station courses in aquatic fungi, algae, and aquatic flowering plants. Before his move to Michigan in 1936, he studied saltwater fungi in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and at the Cold Spring Harbor Biological Station. His colleague, the distinguished U-M mycologist Alexander H. Smith, the author of many academic volumes on fungi, as well as various mushroom field guides, served as acting deputy director in 1968 when Sparrow spent the summer studying marine fungi at the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratory. Sparrow retired as director after the summer of 1971 and from 30 Biological Station (UMBS)

the University of Michigan faculty in 1973. David M. Gates, professor of botany, was appointed director in September 1971, with Mark W. Paddock, whose background was in ecology and wildlife management, as assistant to the director. Gates and Paddock had known each other at the University of Colorado and worked together at the Missouri Botanical Garden, where Gates was director for six years. Gates and his students were engaged in biophysical ecology research, a field using the principles of physics and chemistry, combined with mathematical analysis, to explore how plants and animals interact with their environments. The methodology gave insight into the exchange of carbon dioxide between plants and the atmosphere, important knowledge for a world that burned fossil fuels, an act that increases atmospheric carbon dioxide. Gates, with a background in molecular spectroscopy and atmospheric science, spoke frequently across the nation about the greenhouse effect and climate change, including rising sea levels and melting glaciers. The focus of the Biological Station was beginning to shift toward preparing students for understanding the consequences of climate change on ecosystems. In the 1970s and ‘80s, a new director’s cabin was built, faculty cabins were enlarged, student cabins were improved, and plumbing was upgraded. Five new cabins were constructed, three of them winterized so that year-round investigators could live with their families. A better dining hall was constructed, then a lecture hall with a large auditorium and a seminar room. It replaced the “club house,” a carry-over from the engineer’s camp. Courses in winter ecology, now possible with the new year-round housing and the Stockard Laboratory, were first taught as short courses in January of 1973, 1974, and 1975. Many classroom buildings were improved and a large double- classroom building was built during the 1970s. The total population of the Station varied annually between about 200 and 300, a remarkable mix of people from far and wide, young and old, including faculty, research investigators, students, families, and work crew. All lived for eight weeks of summer in close proximity, ate meals together, suffered the usual social stresses, but were determined, overall, to make it Biological Station (UMBS) (2015) 31 work. Families with children were always an active part of camp life. In fact, for the children there was no finer place to be than in this beautiful environment. Even swimming was relatively safe with a broad, sandy, shallow shelf extending out from shore. Furthermore, the young people were surrounded by natural history experts who eagerly helped them to learn, and by students who took delight in playing volleyball, baseball, and other sports. Camp always buzzed with activity as people worked hard and played hard. Courses were notoriously difficult, as graduate students took some of the same courses as the undergraduate students. Students took two courses, each meeting two days a week for eight weeks, for a total of ten credit hours. Classes were small, usually eight to twenty students, to facilitate intensive field study. Over the years, many Biological Station alumni went on to important positions in teaching, research, medicine, conservation, environmentalism, and academic or business leadership. Former students from the Biological Station have held faculty positions at nearly every major university and college in the U.S. and at many foreign institutions. One Chinese student from the 1920s, Yi Fong Wu, became the first woman college president in China. The Biological Station was innovative in mixing coursework with field research, bringing together instructors and learners from all levels. From 1980 through 1988, the Naturalist/ Ecologist Training Program, supported by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, was unique among biological field stations. It was designed to help young scientists understand ecosystems. The idea was to integrate a cadre of graduate and undergraduate students with post-doctoral experts engaged in research. For several summers, in the Summer Science Institute for Science Teachers—a cooperative project with the U-M School of Education supported by the National Science Foundation—high school biology teachers from across the midwest upgraded their knowledge and teaching skills. Also, the first of a series of NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Program awards was made during this period. The NSF-REU Program allowed undergraduate students to engage in full-time summer 32 Biological Station (UMBS)

research under the tutelage of a professor or senior investigator in residence at the Biological Station. The Biological Station extended its expertise to the regional community. The NSF’s Research Applied to National Needs (RANN) program supported the first year-round research project at the Biological Station. Its goal was to assess the water quality of 38 lakes in Cheboygan, Emmet, and Charlevoix counties. Social scientists surveyed lakeshore residents regarding their views on housing developments, lake water quality, expected changes, and other issues. A spin-off of RANN was Community Lakes Environmental Awareness Research (CLEAR), a student-led effort to promote public awareness of inland lake protection. It was funded by NSF and the Kennedy Foundation. Many publications were issued by CLEAR, including information packages on septic systems, wetlands, water quality monitoring, and greenbelts. Booklets focusing on particular lakes (Burt, Douglas, Crooked, and Pickerel, for example) were distributed to residents. This work led to the establishment of the Tip-of-the-Mitt Watershed Council. This organization, based in Petoskey, has been active into the 21st century; its mission is to preserve and protect water quality in northern Michigan. The Biological Station and Tip-of-the- Mitt Watershed Council continue to collaborate on studies of freshwater systems aimed at protecting these resources. On the national stage, the Biological Station provided a convenient setting for professional meetings of moderate size. These included a Biophysical Ecology Symposium, several Ecology-Meteorology Workshops sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, and meetings of the Wilson Society, the NSF National Science Board, the American Institute of Biological Sciences Executive Committee, the International Diatom Society, and the Organization of Biological Field Stations. In 1979, the Biological Station was designated as a Biosphere Reserve by the United Nations “Man and the Biosphere” program and as an Experimental Ecological Reserve by NSF. These designations recognized the value of the Station’s long- term studies of northern Michigan ecosystems and endorsed the preservation of Biological Station property as a benchmark Biological Station (UMBS) (2015) 33 for continuing investigations as the global environment changed.

The Interdisciplinary Era, 1986-2002

Brian Hazlett, a U-M behavioral ecologist and longtime Biological Station faculty member, served as acting director for the year following Gates’s retirement in September 1986. James A. Teeri, botanist and physiological ecologist, moved from the University of Chicago to U-M in 1987, joining the Biology Department and assuming the directorship of the Biological Station. He remained director through his retirement in 2002. Mark Paddock, who had worked as associate director with Gates and Hazlett since 1972, continued in this position through 1991. Thomas Crandall was associate director from the time of Paddock’s retirement through 2002. The traditional eight-week summer courses continued, but in the spring term, several new courses were offered. Since it is cooler in spring, a number of the student cabins were improved by installing insulation and bathrooms. Spring term served to increase enrollments by allowing students to spend a month at the station focusing on a single, intensive course before the eight-week summer term. In 1986, Robert Fogel obtained NSF funds to build a below- ground laboratory for the study of soil. Named the Biotron, it was built to aid in the study of roots, fungi, invertebrate animals, and microbes in the soil. It had 34 below-ground windows, each with 16 removable panes, to give access to the soil environment. Nearly 500 nearby trees were studied with respect to carbon flow, root turnover, and mycorrhizal (root-fungus associations) dynamics. The Biotron was finished in 1987 and refurbished in 2003. In 1989, a 3,200-square-foot greenhouse was constructed for studying plants under controlled conditions. In order to grow plants in a more natural environment, but still modify their exposure to carbon dioxide, ozone, or other trace gases, a large group of open-top chambers were built in which plants could be grown at various carbon dioxide concentrations. Research using these chambers was stimulated by growing scientific interest 34 Biological Station (UMBS)

in the responses of plants and ecosystems to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. In 1994, the Stream Research Facility was built along the East Branch of the Maple River. It, too, was funded by NSF. It consists of a laboratory building and concrete pad on which temporary, artificial streams are constructed, using water pumped from the river. Stream design is flexible, and each summer investigators design streams with different flow rates, bottom types, shading, etc. to study biological responses to different stream conditions. The experimental streams are used for studying fish ecology, chemical communication among crayfish, insect behavior, lamprey biology, algal growth, leaf litter decay, and other biological processes. In this period, Biological Station researchers recognized the need to ask interdisciplinary questions about environmental issues of global and regional importance. They were particularly interested in interactions among forests, the atmosphere’s chemistry, and the climate system. To study these interactions, atmospheric scientists and biologists formed collaborations across scientific disciplines. The forest-atmosphere research program advanced dramatically in the late 1990s when two towers with gas and meteorological sensors were erected in the aspen-dominated forest on Biological Station land two miles west of the Douglas Lake campus. The PROPHET tower (Program for Research on Oxidants, Photochemistry, Emissions, and Transport), 35 meters tall, erected in 1996, houses instruments that measure above-canopy concentrations and fluxes of nitrogen compounds, ozone, and oxidants. It also helps advance understanding of how the atmosphere affects the forest nitrogen budget. The following year, a 50-meter tower was erected by the UMBS Carbon Flux Study (part of the U.S. Department of Energy AmeriFlux network). This tower facilitates the study of forest-atmosphere carbon dioxide, water, and energy exchanges. The Carbon Flux Study also measures physical, ecological, and soil conditions to follow carbon as it moves into plant biomass and soils. To take advantage of the collaboration between atmospheric scientists and biologists, the Biosphere Atmosphere Research and Training (BART) Program Biological Station (UMBS) (2015) 35 was created to train a new generation of scientists conducting research at the interface of biospheric and atmospheric sciences. Alongside the improvements in infrastructure, the Biological Station itself expanded with the addition of two significant properties. This enhanced the ability to preserve and study northern Michigan ecosystems. First, the Biological Station cooperated in 1987 with the Little Traverse Conservancy (LTC) to preserve in perpetuity the Colonial Point Forest near Burt Lake. This impressive old-growth stand, about 290 acres of mature hardwoods, pines, and hemlocks, was threatened with cutting when a lumber company sought to harvest exceptionally large red oaks. A Biological Station alumna, Wendy O’Neil, with her dedicated work for the Nature Conservancy, was instrumental in raising funds and support for the tract’s preservation. A 50-acre parcel, formerly Camp Knight of the Pines, with 1,600 feet of shoreline along North Fishtail Bay on Douglas Lake, was purchased in 1999 from the Methodist Children’s Home Society in Detroit after Camp Knight ceased operations. The Douglas Lake Improvement Association strongly supported the effort to purchase this property and raised significant funds in the form of pledges from members. These monies, together with University of Michigan funds, allowed the preservation of this valuable piece of shoreline for scientific research.

One Hundred Years and Beyond, 2002-

When Teeri retired in February 2002, Hazlett returned as interim director for the summer of 2002. Paul Webb, a U- M physiological ecologist and fish expert, served as interim director through the spring term of 2003. As long-time members of the Biological Station’s summer faculty, Hazlett and Webb worked through the transition period, increasing course enrollments and furthering the many active research programs. Knute J. Nadelhoffer, an ecologist and biogeochemist with expertise in forest and arctic ecosystems, became director in 36 Biological Station (UMBS)

June 2003. Before coming to Michigan, he was a scientist for 20 years at the Ecosystems Center of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, then, starting in 2002, director of the Ecosystem Studies Program at the National Science Foundation. He was recruited to become director of the Biological Station and professor in U-M’s new Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology while continuing to serve at NSF. He made periodic visits to work with interim directors Hazlett and Webb, and with Karie Slavik, who began as associate director in December 2002. Slavik was previously a research associate at MBL, where she managed the stream research for the Arctic Long-Term Ecological Research project located at the University of Alaska’s Toolik Lake field station in Arctic Alaska. (Nadelhoffer and Slavik continued a long tradition of personnel exchanges between the Biological Station and the MBL, which includes directors Glaser and Stockard, both of whom were also long-time researchers at the Woods Hole marine laboratory.) As the Biological Station celebrated its centennial in 2008, the administration was integrating the research and teaching programs even more closely than before. Students at all levels, from beginning undergraduates to graduate students and post- doctoral researchers, were increasingly involved in field studies of organisms, ecological processes, whole ecosystems, and ecosystem-climate interactions. Courses were planned to incorporate new environmental sensing technologies, modeling tools, natural history information, and cross- disciplinary activities into the field-based curriculum. Students at all levels were to be provided with skills and tools to identify key ecological questions and to solve environmental problems associated with increases in the human footprint on northern Michigan and the Earth as a whole. More than 8,400 students have been trained in field biology and are now widely distributed throughout the world.

Afterword

The Biological Station has always been at the leading edge of biological field stations across the nation with respect to course Biological Station (UMBS) (2015) 37 work and research topics in tune with the challenges of the time. Today, global warming requires understanding of the impacts of extreme temperatures (high or low), extreme precipitation (high or low), storminess, changing length of seasons, loss of lake ice cover, reduced or increased snow cover, changing atmospheric chemistry, and a continuing invasion by exotic species into the ecosystems of northern Michigan. The Station is situated at the ecotone between the deciduous forests to the south and the coniferous forests to the north, making the location an ideal place from which to to study the impacts of climate change on ecosystems. During the next century, the position of the ecotone may change considerably, with important impacts on the local ecosystems. With a foundation of more than a century of study and experience, the Biological Station’s scientists and students are uniquely equipped to track and understand these changes. Of even greater significance is the training of students. Biological Station alumni have explored the habitats of the world near and far, using the skills and techniques learned at the Station. To date, more than 8,400 students have passed through the Station. They have cast their influence over vast additional numbers of people (budding scientists, public citizens, administrators, political leaders, children, and many others), and have had distinguished careers in education, medicine, business, law, city planning, and other fields.