This week Carolyn Flower defended her masters thesis, titled “Food Plant Biogeography of the Sonoran Desert”. She is the lab’s first ASU student to graduate. Carolyn’s work focused on human impacts on plant dispersal and biogeography, as seen through the lens of food uses. She has shown that in the Sonoran Desert, many edible species…

A few weeks ago our lab participated in ASU’s Open Door outreach event, sharing our research with families and children throughout the region. Here are a few photos of our team in action! Our biggest draw was our leaf tensiometer, which we use for studying the mechanical properties of plants (like force to tear). We…

This week was the ASU School of Life Sciences’ annual undergraduate research symposium. Last year, my first at ASU, I attended the event and was surprised by the limited amount of field ecological research being showcased. This year, thanks to a lot of dedicated mentoring effort by lab members Courtenay Ray and Dr. Luiza Aparecido,…

(Written by lab postdoc Lars Iversen) In nature, males’ eager attempts to mate with females can be so extreme that they will harm females. Such negative impact of mating interactions has been shown to promote the emergence of new species. This week, in Proceedings B, we publish a study exploring an alternative scenario in which…