ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, August 25, 1996 TAG: 9608260004
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV22 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: GILES COUNTY
SOURCE: ELISSA MILENKY STAFF WRITER
Call it Club Bio.
Nestled within the woods of Salt Pond Mountain, the Mountain Lake Biological Station looks almost like a rustic resort with its small cabins and casually clad inhabitants. Most of the cabins are named after Southern scientists, however, and research - not a dip in the lake - is of primary concern.
For nearly seven decades, the biological station has served as a scientific haven for students and teachers from throughout the country and even the world.
This summer alone, the station, affiliated with the University of Virginia, was the site of 15 short- and long-term research projects involving plants and animals as well as classes for high school and college students.
The research is wide-ranging. One scientist is studying the spread by insects of a sexually transmitted disease called "anther-smut" in a roadside weed called the white campion; another is looking at 10,000 trees over 30 years to see how they change over time.
A group of researchers also is examining how testosterone levels in dark-eyed junco birds affect their parenting skills and attractiveness to the opposite sex. The high-testosterone males are the "studs" of the junco world but aren't too attentive when it comes to taking care of the kids, their research has shown.
A well-kept secret
Between the classes and the research, the biological station serves as a temporary home to nearly 85 people each summer. Yet many residents and visitors to the New River Valley are unaware of the station's existence - even though it's just down the road from Giles County's famed Mountain Lake Hotel.
Wayne Angleberger, the biological station's business manager, recalled a visit this summer from a man who has vacationed at the hotel for 15 years but only this year realized there was a biological station higher up the mountain.
"People are most curious as to why they didn't know this place existed," said Angleberger, who has worked at the station during the summers with his wife, Mary Ann, for more than 20 years.
The station is open year-round but most of the activity occurs from June to the end of August, when summer classes are in session and research projects are in full swing. Researchers and their assistants come from around the country, including Indiana University, UVa, Duke and even Virginia Tech this summer.
Swiss, Japanese and Nigerian students and researchers also have spent time at the biological station, which is one of about 100 such stations scattered throughout the country. Director Henry Wilbur, a UVa faculty member, said only about 12 other field stations are as large or larger than Mountain Lake.
A natural laboratory
The atmosphere is part college campus, part outdoor science lab and part mountain get-away. Meals at the group dining hall, named after Thomas Jefferson, are heralded by a bell that children of students and faculty staying at the station jockey to ring. College students can be seen sitting on picnic benches deep in conversation.
Closer inspection reveals the signs of ongoing research projects, which are mostly conducted outdoors. A minimal amount of work is done in laboratories at the station.
Thin, black nets have been set up along the winding road leading up the mountain. Students and research assistants are trying to catch young dark-eyed junco birds to band and measure for the ongoing project on the evolution of parental behavior.
Nearby, more than 50 cattle feed troughs, modified to simulate individual stream beds, complete with water and sediment, sit under a ceiling of trees. Wilbur has placed aquatic and land salamanders in the troughs to examine how they relate to each other.
Pat DeCoursey, a University of South Carolina professor who is studying the fitness and long-term survival rate of chipmunks at Mountain Lake, called the station a "microcosm of the world at its very best."
UVa spends about $100,000 a year on salaries and maintenance at the station, which just about breaks even, Wilbur said.
The National Science Foundation has provided funding for buildings at the station and also pays for an undergraduate program that allows students to work on a long-term research project for the summer. The researchers who come to Mountain Lake pay a research fee and room and board and have already obtained funding for their projects from their universities.
Five-week summer college courses also are held at the station, in addition to a summer program for high school students that is run through Duke University. During the fall, groups of students come to Mountain Lake on weekends for field experience.
The station also reaches out to the community with nature walks for Mountain Lake Hotel guests, an in-service program for Giles County teachers and open houses for the public. Some of the researchers have worked with local farmers on various projects and one scientist even uses the resort's old golf course as an experimental breeding ground for a plant he is studying.
"Good relations with the local landowners are real important for us," said Wilbur, who wore a belt with a frog-shaped buckle and a T-shirt with a red cave salamander in the corner during an interview earlier this month.
An early beginning
The biological station began in 1929 at the Mountain Lake resort with only a handful of students and no buildings of its own. Salt Pond Mountain was an ideal location for a field station because of its large array of plant and animal species.
Shortly after its opening, UVa began leasing land once nicknamed "Rattlesnake Ridge" farther up the mountain.
The Anglebergers, both teachers in the Augusta County school system, have worked at the station every summer for a combined 50 years and are authorities on Mountain Lake's history. Mary Ann Angleberger came to the station in 1969 as a master's degree student. She worked part time in the office and ended up keeping the summer job, bringing her husband to Mountain Lake as well.
She said the first students at the station were instructed to wear knee-high boots to guard against the large number of rattlesnakes in the area - a population that has dwindled considerably.
Also in the early years, female students used to dress in formal hats and gloves while the male students wore long suits on Sundays, even though they were there in the middle of summer. Shorts and T-shirts have long since replaced that practice.
A who's who of scientists
Interesting and notable people have come through the station over the years. In 1981, the late Dian Fossey came to Mountain Lake to give a presentation on her gorilla research. She ended up staying for several weeks because she liked the station.
Wayne Angleberger recalled the story of a former station librarian. Edna Turpin, better known as a children's book writer, built a cabin on the Mountain Lake property during the 1920s with cedar-lined walls because she because she hated bugs.
"She paid a boy to take a brush and brush off all the firewood before it was brought into the cabin," he said.
The station also has attracted international media attention through the years. The British Broadcasting Corp. filmed a show on Wilbur's salamander research for two weeks one summer, but instead of using the surrounding natural area, they created a simulated forest for the taping. Wilbur also has been interviewed on National Public Radio.
The Anglebergers have seen many changes at the station through the years. Ditto machines have been replaced by modern copiers and computers. The single crank pay phone, the only telephone available when Mary Ann Angleberger first came to Mountain Lake, is long gone.
They also chuckle at the irony that UVa has a contract with Virginia Tech's dining services to supply food at the station, an arrangement that has been in place for several years. The Miles Horton Center, a Virginia Tech field station down the road from Mountain Lake, has no contact with the UVa facility.
"It may be the only incident where VPI and UVa cooperate," Wayne Angleberger joked.
Now that the summer is winding down, activities are dwindling at Mountain Lake. Soon, students will begin coming to the station on weekends. And a handful of scientists will return throughout the fall, winter and spring to keep up with their research.
The Anglebergers already have returned to Augusta County. Wilbur will be back in Charlottesville to teach during the fall semester. Only a caretaker who lives on the property remains year-round.
But the hustle and bustle will begin again next summer.
LENGTH: Long : 193 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. Biological Station Director Henry Wilbur holds up aby CNBsalamander he found near the artificial habitats set up for his
research. Wilbur, a University of Virginia professor, is examining
the interaction between salamanders in streams and forests. His
studies have shown there are natural boundaries between habitats.
color ALAN KIM STAFF
2. Erin Kennedy (left) and Andy Stoehr are field assistants who are
working with two Indiana University professors on a research project
that explores parental behaviors in dark-eyed junco birds. In the
photo, the field assistants are measuring the body sizes of juvenile
birds and banding them before releasing them back into the forest.
color
3. In the aquatics laboratory building (left), Peter McIntyre, a
Harvard University senior from College Station, Texas, works on his
senior thesis project on trout-salamander interaction . Built in
1995, the building features a computer room, woodworking shop,
controlled environment rooms, and offices. color
4. At the Walton Pavilion (above), high school seniors Rob
Lineweaver (left), Dan Birdwhistell and Daniel Wilinski discuss
their project on forest ecology. They were enrolled in a 2-week
camp for high school students conducted by Duke University.
colori
5. Colin Anotonovics (below), 6, of Durham, N.C., rings the dinner
bell. His parents, Duke University research botanists, have been
coming to the research station for 18 years to study plant
diseases. color ALAN KIM STAFF
6. Mary Ann and Wayne Angleberger, a husband and wife team, have
worked in the biological station office together every summer for
more than 24 years and are the unofficial keepers of the station's
history. Wayne is the business manager, while Mary Ann is the office
secretary. Both are school teachers in Augusta County during the
year. ALAN KIM STAFF
7. Architecture of the main laboratory building and surrounding
grounds at Mountain Lake Biological Station is inspired by designs
on the UVa campus. color ALAN KIM STAFF Cover photo.