Good morning!
Timing is everything. At the University of Michigan Biological Station, nature offers a daily reminder.
Over the last few weeks, we’ve enjoyed the annual show of peak fall colors along Douglas Lake. As deciduous trees prepared for winter, chlorophyll production slowed, revealing shades of yellow and orange alongside emerging reds. Now those leaves are falling into the soil’s all-important litter layer, where the work of decomposition helps sustain the seasons to come.
I’m writing to you a few days shy of Halloween. It’s apt for a story about bats. You might spot them fluttering at twilight as the sun sets earlier and evenings take on a seasonal eeriness.
At UMBS, though, we love bats. These fascinating animals play vital roles in their ecosystems, and our feature story this month explores research involving a decidedly un-scary “batmobile.”
This summer, U-M undergraduate Brady Forton worked with science mentors, including U-M and UMBS alum Dr. Jessica Light, to investigate a question with implications far beyond northern Michigan: Are bat populations hit by white-nose syndrome beginning to recover? The fungal disease disrupts hibernation and has devastated bat populations since its arrival in Michigan in 2014. Understanding whether recovery is underway takes careful observation and time.
For students considering their own season at the Biological Station, a few timely opportunities are ahead.
On Monday, Nov. 2, from 1 to 5 p.m., UMBS Ambassador Dominick Noeker and fellow UMBS alumni are scheduled to take over the U-M Admissions Instagram account. They’ll talk with prospective students and parents around the world about the life-changing experience of taking spring and summer field courses at our Pellston campus. If you’re on Instagram, tune in — and bring your questions!
The takeover comes just ahead of our first information session in Ann Arbor on Nov. 11. Candice Everett, our academic program manager, will introduce the courses we’re planning for 2027, including art, history, biology, mycology, sensory ecology, journalism, ethnobotany, and American culture. She’s putting the finishing touches on the logistics now, and I look forward to sharing more with you next month.
For a glimpse of what those weeks at UMBS can mean, watch the new video in this newsletter. It features students on the bittersweet day they left the station after four weeks of living and learning here this spring or summer. No gimmicks. No hype music. Just students reflecting on their time immersed in nature and what they’ll carry with them.
Sometimes, the impact of that experience becomes clear after a student leaves.
I’m proud to share that Sarah Bungard, one of our 2025 Biological Station Undergraduate Research Fellows, has published her tree hydrology research in the October issue of JGR Biogeosciences. Her paper, “Hydraulic Trait Strategies Lead to Divergent Tree Growth Responses to Multidecadal Climate Variability,” is a wonderful milestone. You also can revisit our Student Success story from earlier this year to learn more about Sarah and her work with her UMBS science mentor Dr. Gil Bohrer.
Back on the forest floor, the leaves remind us that an ending can also be a beginning. That brings me to two book recommendations — one nonfiction and one fiction — that invite us to look more closely at soil, fungi and the discoveries beneath our feet.
I’m only 50 pages into Frank Ashwood’s “The World Beneath Our Feet: The Hidden Life of Soil and Why It Matters to Us All,” but I can’t put it down. Thank you to Ralph Heid, a friend and supporter of UMBS in Charlevoix, for bringing this fascinating book to my attention.
The book I have on deck is Chloe Benjamin’s “Under Story.” Highly endorsed by a UMBS staff member, it follows a woman in science through an odyssey of discovery, from life at a field station in Antarctica to teaching at a university in Wisconsin. It’s also a story of second chances, which is another kind of timing. I won’t give away too much, but please email me if you’d like to talk about it after you’ve finished.
As we enter sweater weather and cozy reading season, it’s a good time to slow down, fall into a book and consider what’s taking root. Even when we can’t yet see it.
Read the October 2026 UMBS newsletter to watch our new video, read a vareity of stories and view a photo gallery of recent visitors to the Pellston campus.
Sincerely,
Dr. Aimée Classen
Director
