BOWLING GREEN, O. — From the treetops on the highest peaks to the minute algae on the mossy rocks in their valleys, the Great Smoky Mountains are home to one of the richest collections of life forms in North America. Now the National Park Service has embarked on an ambitious project to identify what is there.

According to Dr. Rex Lowe, an expert on algae, the project is unprecedented. The professor of biological sciences at Bowling Green State University is one of many scientists participating in the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory, a multiyear initiative to identify, name and describe every species of mammal, bird, insect, plant and other life forms in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. “

It could be described as the environmental equivalent to the Human Genome Project,” Lowe suggested. “We want to find out how diverse ecosystems can be, and the Smokies are a great place to study. They are where North meets South. The tops are home to species that were wiped out here in the Midwest when glaciation pushed everything south. The mountaintops are similar to ecosystems far north. And the lower elevations, especially on south-facing slopes, are subtropical ecosystems, very friendly to species that thrive in that environment.”

Lowe has a three-year, $399,956 grant from the National Science Foundation to investigate algal biodiversity in the park. He and two BGSU graduate students will work with three other scientists who make up the “Algal Twig,” a taxonomic working group. The project is expected to take from 10-15 years to complete. And, even then, “we’ll never really uncover every species,” Lowe said.

Taxonomists are people who differentiate and classify plants and animals. It is believed that fewer than 10 percent of the park’s estimated 100,000 species have been identified, so there is much work to do. “

We’re barely within an order of magnitude of knowing,” Lowe said of the quest. While participants don’t expect to find many new species of birds or mammals, there are dozens of people working on the insects alone. “Insects are such a big group,” he said, and the algae and fungi have only begun to be investigated.

Already, Lowe said, he and his team have described previously unknown species of algae.

The research effort includes not only finding and identifying species, but learning how many there are of each, the range of their habitats, their response to climatic conditions, their role in the greater ecosystem and their relationship with other species.

To help with the effort and share it with the public, Discover Life in America, a non-profit organization, has been founded to help find funds for scientists and graduate students to work in the park. The education community is also involved, and K-12 students are helping to gather samples for the teams to study and incorporating what they learn in their science curricula.

Neither plant nor animal, algae are distributed among several obscure kingdoms, Lowe said, though like plants, they are photosynthetic and make their own food. They can reproduce either sexually or asexually. The cell walls of some, the diatoms, are made of glass and are highly ornamented. It was these beautiful patterns of ornamentation that first attracted him to specialize in their study, Lowe said. “I saw these things and I was hooked. They are just gorgeous,” he said.

They live in moist habitats, such as the “spray zones” around waterfalls, he said. Though microscopic in size, when large numbers are present they appear as a golden sheen. He and his students will use both light and electron microscopes to study the algae samples.

The park service is providing cabins, some with rudimentary laboratories, in which the scientists may stay. Lowe and his team will make four, weeklong expeditions each year, collecting and bringing back samples. “We’re working in the very remote areas now,” he said.

Lowe said a fascinating aspect of the project is new research into the tree canopy. “

There are insects and microbes that live only in the canopies, and they’ve never been studied before,” he said. This is especially important considering that acid rain and air pollution are damaging the tree cover in the mountains and may be contributing to the loss of species. “The tops of the Smokies have some of the worst air quality in the United States,” Lowe said. This extends to ground level as well, with high concentrations of ozone threatening plant and animal life.

He was invited to participate in the project because of work he did previously for the park service with two graduate students, studying damage to the park’s streams by the non-native European boars that had been introduced into the region by hunters. Algae are very sensitive to water quality and are a good barometer of pollution, he noted.

(Posted December 09, 2003)