Lauren Ruane and her students at Christopher Newport University conducted very detailed experiments documenting trait variation and its functional consequences across the geographic range of Clarkia xantiana ssp. parviflora, which is a primarily selfing plant. Floral and mating system variation in selfing taxa is often ignored and assumed not to have important consequences. Our results … Continue reading Lauren Ruane and Dave publish paper on mating system variation across the range of a primarily selfing plant

Amanda worked with the Tiffin lab, especially Tuomas Hamala, to analyze transcriptomes from across the north-south extent of the geographic range of common ragweed. They identified loci bearing footprints of local adaptation, and then use genotype-expression mapping and co-expression networks to infer the connectivity of the genes. The results indicate that the putatively adaptive loci … Continue reading Amanda’s ragweed population genomics paper published in PLoS Genetics!

Taz received a 3-year fellowship from NSF to pursue her research on the contribution of genetic and environmental factors to the assembly of foliar endophyte microbiomes in Clarkia xantiana. Congrats Taz!!

John William received a highly-competitive postdoctoral fellowship from NSF. John will continue his work on the evolution of geographic range limits with Topher Weiss-Lehman and Ruth Hufbauer, using experimental evolution to test fundamental theoretical models.

PNAS Front Matter included an article about our recently-published paper in the American Naturalist synthesizing studies on local adaptation to abiotic and biotic environments. Includes photo of the charismatic, Clarkia xantiana!

Shelley Sianta started as a postdoc with the Brandvain and Moeller labs to work on evolutionary theory and population genomics of plant speciation. She comes to UMN from UC Santa Cruz where she completed her PhD in Kathleen Kay's lab. Her dissertation examined adaptive divergence and speciation in the California serpentine flora.

Ryan, Amanda, and Dave worked with other UMN collaborators on a synthesis of local adaptation that compares the strength of local adaptation to abiotic versus biotic environments. It also examines the latitudinal variation in the strength of the effects of abiotic and biotic environments on fitness. It combines a quantitative meta-analysis of published datasets with … Continue reading Meta-analysis published in American Naturalist

The second chapter of John's dissertation uses a reciprocal transplant experiment combined with the manipulation of biotic interactions (herbivory and pollination) to examine the extent to which biotic interactions determine fitness inside and beyond the geographic range of Clarkia xantiana. This paper follows up on his previous paper on this topic, which was published in … Continue reading John’s paper on biotic interactions and geographic range limits in press at Evolution

Amanda Gorton conducted a common garden study in Minnesota of 26 populations of common ragweed spanning a latitudinal range from Minnesota to Louisiana. She was particularly interested in how populations responded to future patterns of rainfall predicted under climate change. She simulated both an increase and decrease in rainfall across her experimental site using rainout … Continue reading Amanda’s paper on adaptation to climate change in press at Oecologia

Each year, the U. of Minnesota awards the Hamm Memorial Scholarship to one graduate student in the latter phases of their PhD. This is the most prestigious award in the plant sciences at UMN. This year the committee could not decide between Amanda and John and so awarded the scholarship to both! Incredibly proud of … Continue reading Amanda and John BOTH receive the prestigious Philip C. Hamm Memorial Scholarship!