For Penn State Student Jason Gleditsch, Out-of-the-box Thinking is a Useful Scientific Tool

Jason Gleditsch, a self-proclaimed "bird nerd," grew up with nature-loving parents who spent a lot of time outdoors. So it was no wonder that he knew, from a very young age, that he wanted to find a career that would allow him to immerse himself in the picturesque, bird-and-plant-filled landscapes that he and his parents had always enjoyed. "When I was in the first grade, I probably didn't know the word 'ecologist' yet," said Gleditsch. "But I definitely had a sense that I wanted to learn about how plants and animals depend upon one another, how ecosystems evolve, and how human animals influence the natural world in both positive and negative ways."

Gleditsch said that by the time he entered high school, his interest in ecology had become focused on invasive-species management. At the time, he and his parents were living in Ohio, where Gleditsch participated in efforts to remove invasive species — numerically dominant plants that have been introduced to an ecosystem by humans. "Like my friends and teachers, I held the idea that these plants simply were not supposed to be there. So we made a point of getting rid of them because we believed we had to restore an ecosystem's supposedly natural balance." But Gleditsch said that after he and his classmates had removed many invasive species, he noticed something disturbing: many of the birds also had disappeared. "I started to wonder if there might be something positive that could come out of what appeared to be a less-than-ideal situation," Gleditsch said. "If they help other species to flourish, maybe not all human-introduced plants impact the environment in a negative way."

Gleditsch said that by the time he started his undergraduate career at Penn State, he knew that he had some radical ideas with regard to ecosystem preservation. Then, during his senior year, he met Tomás Carlo, an assistant professor of biology. "I knew that Dr. Carlo was the kind of out-of-the-box thinker and scientist who would encourage me to explore and test my ideas," Gleditsch said. So, during his final undergraduate year, Gleditsch, along with Carlo, tested how invasive fruiting plants affect ecosystems in the Happy Valley region of Pennsylvania. The team's conclusions confirmed what Gleditsch had begun to expect when he was in high school rooting out invasive species in Ohio — that communities of birds and plants develop mutually beneficial relationships with invasive species and that, contrary to prevailing ideas, a better strategy might be simply to leave well enough alone. In 2010, a year after Gleditsch had graduated from Penn State with a B.S. in biology, he and Carlo published their findings in the journal Diversity and Distributions. (Read the story about Carlo and Gleditsch's research here.)

During that same year, Gleditsch entered a graduate program in the Penn State Department of Biology with Carlo as his advisor, and he has continued to investigate invasive species and ecosystem balance. Gleditsch said that, after working in the Happy Valley region of Pennsylvania, he would like to plan similar research studies on the more intricate ecological systems of the tropics. He explained that two-season, rainy-and-dry tropical locations present new challenges that he never faced during his studies of Ohio and Pennsylvania ecosystems. "I would like to use isotopes to track the food chain in these nutrient-rich areas," he said. "So much research is focused on either plants or vertebrates. I would rather study communities as a whole — the interactions between plants and vertebrates."

After completing his graduate studies, Gleditsch plans to continue to do research, but he also wants to teach the next generation of "out-of-the-box" thinkers like himself. "My mother has taught art and swimming, while my father is a chemist, so I've always had an appreciation for both creative and scientific thinking," he said. "As a university professor, I think I would be in a unique position to be more accepting of students' ideas. I'd like to encourage them to come up with novel hypotheses and be brave enough to test them in the field." Gleditsch also said he would like to find time to pursue his other passions: landscape photography and bio-illustration. "It's a great artistic challenge to capture those 'perfect moments' in nature, like when a bird is holding a berry in its beak or a squirrel is balanced on a tree limb."