Research update: January 2017

Happy New Year and welcome to year #6 of my research blog. I think it’s going to be an interesting but different year as I transition from conducting research as a graduate student scientist to… well, a regular scientist! For one thing, I won’t have any of the typical field work during the summer that I’ve always had in the past. I’m sure I’ll still get out on the green roofs now and then but just without all the data collection. Instead, I’ll be doing a lot more data analysis to determine what all of my past data mean and I’ll be writing a lot about my conclusions. That, and applying for a new job where I can continue to do even more research in the future!

 

A new year means it’s time to clean out old samples from the freezer and make way for the new ones. Say goodbye to thousands and thousands of little bits of now useless DNA.

 

In January, although the plants on the green roofs weren’t covered in snow for even a single day (in Chicago – can you believe it?), I still spent all my research time indoors. I spent most of my time writing. Specifically, I worked on manuscript revisions for an article I’m writing about the data I collected on the green roofs in Germany back in 2013. After writing this article last summer and submitting it to a journal for review, I received comments back from the scientist reviewers. I needed to make a lot of little changes and a few big ones before the journal would consider publishing it in a special issue about green roof ecology. It was a lot of work to complete all the changes and defend some of my methods to the reviewers, but I’m happy to say that all the effort was worth it and the manuscript has been accepted for publication! Now I wait for the editorial process to continue. I hope the special issue of the journal is complete and published by this spring. It seems like these things can sometimes take a very long time.

Aside from the manuscript revisions, I’ve also been writing little sections of four other manuscripts that I have yet to finish and submit. Each of these papers is a chapter of my dissertation. They are all in various stages of completeness. When I decided to become a botanist I didn’t realize just how much writing was involved. Now I have to set reminders on my watch just to remember to get up from my desk and take writing breaks every couple hours. It’s a different kind of work from the data collection but it really helps me solidify my thoughts and explain the results of my experiments. I’m looking forward to meeting my weekly writing goals and completing more manuscripts in the future.

I was one of the keynote speakers at the dinner for the Presidential Fellows at Northwestern University in January.

In the middle of the month, I took a break from writing to prepare and give a presentation at a dinner held for the Presidential Fellows at Northwestern University. This group of scholars comes from all of the departments in the graduate school so the audience has a wide variety of backgrounds; both science and non-science. It’s a different kind of presentation to give because I needed to talk about the merits of my research but in a way that anyone could understand. It was a little nerve-wracking but it went very well and I’m glad it’s over!

It worked! I look at the height of some blue peaks on the computer screen that help me determine the genetic makeup of all my plant samples. It feels so good when all the machines work and I actually get some data.

And finally, January was also filled with some lab work. (No surprise there!) I’ve been having some troubles getting some of the equipment to work so in January, I re-ran a lot of my samples through the genetic sequencing machine. I never have 100% success but I was able to collect a little more data for some of my samples. Over the next couple months, I’ll keep trying to get a little bit more and a little bit more but by the end of March I think I’ll just have to make do with what I have. Hopefully next month I’ll have some good news to report on this part of my research. Fingers crossed!

Research update: September/October 2016

The prairie grasses are in flower on the green roofs – it must be fall!

Fall is here once again and the plants on the green roofs are getting ready to face another tough winter. I, on the other hand, am getting ready to face a winter of lab work, data analysis, and writing. I’m happy to say that over the past couple months I’ve finished collecting all my data from my outdoor green roof experiments. After carrying out some experiments for 4 years, it was kind of bitter-sweet to see this step come to an end.

The nodding onion plants that had pollinators on them last month are now bursting with seeds. I can’t wait to see if there are lots of new seedlings next year!

I finished collecting all of my temperature probes in September.

I’ve collected a lot of temperature data from the green roofs over the past 2 years. Now I’m trying to make sense of the trends that I’ve found.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In September, I collected all of the remaining temperature probes from my plots. This was a little tricky in some plots where the vegetation is now almost 5 feet tall! I compiled all the data, which was actually a big task – I’ve been recording temperature every 3 hours for over 2 years on over 60 probes.I’ve started to look at trends in these data and so far it looks like there is little difference between my different treatments in the winter but larger differences between the native prairie plants and the non-native succulent sedum plants during the summer. As you might expect, the succulent plants provide more cover and shade, so they tend to keep the soil cooler than the soil that’s exposed to the full-sun conditions. I’ll spend more time analyzing these data over the winter and will be writing my conclusions in my dissertation this spring.

Finding the temperature probes – only about the size of a dime – was a little tough in some of my plots where the vegetation was so tall. Eventually, I found them all!

I’m growing quite a collection of name tags from guest lectures and speaker events. It’s always fun to talk to people about my research.

I was also invited to give a couple guest-lectures in October, including at an Economic Botany class at the Morton Arboretum and during a tour of the Chicago Botanic Garden by the Northwestern University Women’s Board. It’s always fun to teach people about green roofs, urban ecology, and the unique opportunities I have as a graduate researcher in a joint program between two remarkable institutions.

The prickly pear cactus is one of the only native species that survived two harsh years in the green roof trays.

Fall has arrived on the green roofs! I’m happy that my research plots are really starting to look like prairies.

Other than finishing field work and guest lectures, I’ve mostly been organizing and analyzing data, mentoring students in an online program called Planting Science, preparing job applications, and getting lab work done (when all the equipment has been working… which seems to be a rare event). I finished extracting the DNA from all of my samples and have very slowly been making progress with my paternity study. I’m hoping that next month will be a big one for lab work success. I’ve got my fingers crossed!

 

The green roof trays are ready for another winter as the colors of fall creep in.

Big bluestem grass is flowering in my green roof plots. See you next spring, prairie plants!

Finally, I’ve been working on writing a short article about a unique plant that found its way to a green roof in London. The story should be published next month – stay tuned!

 

Research update: June/July 2016

Well, as you can see, my “monthly” research updates are a little bit behind and this post is extra long. It seems like with all the work to be done outdoors and out of town, it’s been hard to sit down to write about it all. But as I look back at June and July it’s exciting to remember all that has happened.

Ratibida pinnata (gray-headed coneflower) blooms beautifully in one of my green roof plots.

First, I am happy to say that an article I wrote about biodiversity on green roofs was published in Wild Seed Magazine, a publication from the Maine-based non-profit Wild Seed Project. I won’t say too much about the article, other than you should click HERE to read it and if you should click on the link above if you want to get a copy of the whole magazine (which includes an article from the amazing naturalist Doug Tallamy and is really good).

The Dalea purpurea (purple prairie clover) was blooming on the green roofs in June and attracting pollinators!

As far as research goes, June started out with data collection on the green roofs. I’m continuing to measure the plants in the prairie mixes that I planted back in 2012 and at the beginning of the summer, things looked a little sparse but promising. After a pretty rainy summer, some of the same plots are actually pretty lush and there are many species of plants that are flowering in beautiful displays of yellow, white, and purple flowers. It’s impossible to capture them all with my cell phone’s camera, but believe me when I tell you that they are lots of pollinators coming to visit my plants too! When I’m back to more indoor work in the fall I’ll analyze the data to look for significant patterns. So far, it looks like the species from the prairies that are most similar to green roofs are the ones that are growing the best. It’s really exciting for me to know that when I stop collecting the data for this experiment, there will be some little prairies on the green roofs for years to come.

I’m continuing to measure the amount of water that the different plant combinations capture and hold throughout the day.

I continue to measure the growth of the plants in my green roof prairie plots that I originally planted back in 2012.

My experiment measuring water capture continues as does my collection of weeds from the green roof trays to determine how good the prairie plants are at resisting weeds compared to succulent plants. Everything is going well with those experiments except for the fact that a surprise thunderstorm messed up some of my data and I have to do one part of the experiment over again. I’m not happy about that, but that’s just how botanical research goes sometimes. I’ve got my fingers crossed for some rain-free days in early August.

Weighing the weeds continues. So far it looks like the succulent Sedum plants are the best at preventing weeds.

 

Back to the ground – I finally found the Penstemon plants I was looking for in the shortgrass prairies. It’s fun to go back to the sites that I’m trying to replicate on the roof and appreciate how special these habitats are.

Pollinators are visiting my plants on the green roofs! It’s exciting to see evidence of the ecological relationships that I was hoping to support.

In addition to the green roofs, I also went to a couple prairie remnants southwest of Chicago to collect some plant tissue. I’ve been putting my lab work on pause for the summer, but if you remember, one of my experiments is to measure pollen movement between green roofs using a paternity study. Well, I’m finding that it’s really hard to distinguish one “dad” plant from another because the dads have very similar DNA. I think this is because the nursery where I got the experimental plants wasn’t using a diverse mix of parental plants but I want to make sure that the plants you’d find in nature would actually have more diversity in their DNA. To do this, I need DNA from plants in their natural habitat – and this is what led me to collect leaves from the shortgrass prairies on a steamy Friday in June. I was hoping to find three whole fields full of my target species of Penstemon plants but, after hours of searching, I only found two small patches. For now, I’ve collected the leaf tissue and it’s drying in the lab. I’ll get back to that when it’s time to get back to the lab in the fall.

Lespedeza capitata (roundhead bushclover) blooms beautifully in one of my plots on a green roof.

It’s actually hard to believe that I was able to collect so many data when I look at all the times I was out of town, talking about research rather than actually conducting it. But through these experiences, I met a lot of wonderful people that are also interested in plant and animal conservation, urban ecology, and science education & communication – my favorite things! At the beginning of June, I was thrilled to be selected as a participant in ComSciCon in Cambridge, MA. This is a graduate student-run conference for other graduate students in science who are interested in engaging with non-scientific audiences. The fellow attendees I met are involved in some amazing endeavors, including documentary filmmaking, graphic design, afterschool programs, and policy advocacy. I could go on for many paragraphs about how awesome these folks were, but I’ll just summarize by saying that I was truly inspired. I started writing a piece about green roofs to be submitted to a children’s magazine while I was there and I’m hoping to get it published this year – stay tuned.

After my trip to the East coast, I headed out west to Colorado Spring to participate as a botanist mentor in a workshop called Digging Deeper. As a mentor, I got to meet high school teachers that teach their students about plants together with plant scientists in a program called Planting Science. As a previous high school science teacher and current scientist, it was really fun to try and figure out the best ways to teach teenagers about plants in an exciting and engaging way. In the fall, I’ll be a mentor to a couple student groups and through video conferences and email messages, we’ll help them design their own experiments to learn about botany – how cool is that?

A spontaneous Penstemon plant (the one I’m studying in a different experiment) has germinated and flowered in my experimental green roof trays. I’m glad to see that this native species does so well on green roofs.

I had a couple more trips a little closer to home too. The first one was to Michigan to share my research and meet the new cohort of Northwestern University Presidential Fellows. Wow. More amazing people doing some fascinating research from applications of nanofluids and deciphering the genetic code to impacts of affirmative action on hiring practices in the NFL. The second trip was to Wisconsin to give a presentation at the North American Congress of the Society for Conservation Biology. I’m pleased that my presentation about my green roof research was well received and I even got to meet some other professional from the Chicago area that work with trees, wildlife, and the human-nature connection. As I finish the last year of data collection for my dissertation, it’s really helpful to start thinking more about the broad applications of my research and how the things I’ve learned so far might be applied to other fields when graduate school is complete.

As a final note, in addition to the research and trips, I also got married in July! Did you notice the new name of the site? I may have a new name but the research is still pretty much the same – I don’t think the plants noticed at all!

Up next month: Field work, lab work, data analysis, writing, and even maybe a TV appearance!

 

 

Research update: January 2016

Winter = writing & lab work. After a few years as a botanical researcher I’m beginning to really understand this seasonal work pattern. So that’s what my January looked like. I spent time making revisions to a research report that I’ve been working on for a while now. This particular report keeps getting better little by little but it is quite a process to take years’ worth of work and write a technical yet brief summary of what it all means and why it all matters. It’s getting there!

Tiny seeds on agar plates experience simulated spring in an incubator.

I spin the small tubes filled with DNA and chemicals in a centrifuge to separate the layers and help purify the DNA

Lab work has also taken on some different forms and was in full swing in January. In one part of the lab, I washed soil off of the roots of weeds collected from my green roof plots. The clean weeds were then dried in an oven and weighed to compare how much weedy plant tissue (called “biomass”) grows in traditional succulent green roofs compared to my prairie-style green roofs. In another part of the lab, I continued to extract DNA from some tiny plant seedlings for a different experiment. This DNA will later be used to measure how pollen moves between green roofs.

I use this computer hooked up to a fancy machine to determine if my DNA primers are working to make lots of copies of the DNA from my plant seedlings.

In a different part of the lab, I took some of my seeds already set out on agar plates from a refrigerator where they were experiencing simulated winter and moved them to an incubator where they are now experiencing simulated spring. I’ll later get all of their DNA too. And in still another part of the lab, I continued to work with something called “primers” which are used to help make many copies of small quantities of DNA. I know what you must be thinking: “Just how big is this lab?” Luckily, pretty big!

I weigh the dried plant tissue to determine how “weedy” my different treatments are.

Aside from the writing and lab work, this month I also got to be in a research-related mini photoshoot of sorts. Remember that children’s activity book about green roofs that I wrote and published last year? Well, the Chicago Botanic Garden is going to be featuring the book in a small article published in their quarterly magazine. I got to feel like a celebrity for a few minutes while I got my picture taken for the article. Of course I’ll share the article on the blog when it comes out – maybe as soon as next month!

Smile! I had fun participating in a mini photo-shoot related to my green roof activity book.

And finally, in case you’re interested in the more technical side of some of the research I’ve worked on in the past, my “Publications” page has been updated with downloadable full text versions of many of my research papers.

Happy New Year!

Research update: September 2015

It’s fall once again in Chicago and you can really begin to tell on the green roofs. They’re still looking good, but most of the plants are starting to turn brown, shed their seeds and get ready for their long, cold winter up on the rooftops. It almost getting too chilly for this roof top botanist to enjoy collecting data outdoors so it’s a good thing that the work is starting to gradually move indoors.

It’s fall on the green roofs. The plants aren’t dead, they’re just beginning to go dormant for the winter.

To start off the month, I spent a weekend in Michigan with the other Northwestern University Presidential Fellows. This group of outstanding grad students from a wide variety of departments in the graduate school is doing some amazing research! As one of the fellows, I got to share my research with the others in a relatively informal presentation. I really liked learning about what other graduate researchers are doing and I loved getting to answer some difficult questions about the motivations behind my own work. I’m looking forward to more presentations with this group in the future during my next 2 years as a fellow.

In a more formal setting, I also shared some aspect of my ecological research through a new course I’m teaching. Twice a week, 45 undergraduate students at Loyola University and I learn together about the environmental issues that impact us and the world we live in. As a former high school teacher and undergraduate instructor, this is something that I really enjoy doing! I get to teach the students a little bit about the ecological benefits of green roofs but also learn about some of the bigger picture concepts, like the importance of water conservation, right along with them. With a motivated and enthusiastic group of students, it’s looking to be a pretty good semester!

As I take a last look at my green roof plots this fall, I make a note of any new growth. This little native cactus started off with just one pad (the one on the left) and now it has two. Good luck over the winter little guy!

In terms of research, I started to conduct my last “checkups” on the green roofs. These checkups involve collecting data from the temperature probes that I have buried there and resetting the probes to collect data all throughout the winter. I also collect all remaining weeds from the green roof trays so I can clean, dry, and weigh them back at the lab over the winter. I fix anything that’s broken and make any final notes about the plants. After the final checkups at my 5 research sites, I won’t be back until April or May. So I cross my fingers that all the plants and probes are still there when I come back in the spring.

As the outdoor work winds down, the indoor lab work and writing start to take up more of my time. I’m now working on figuring out a new procedure for getting as much DNA as possible out of the tiny little seedlings that I was growing in the spring. In September I tried two new procedures and unfortunately neither of them really worked. So now it’s time to try procedure #3 – hopefully I’ll have some good successes to report in next month’s research update. Wish me (and the little seedlings) luck!

Small tubes full of plant tissue heat up as I try to develop new methods for getting DNA out of tiny little seedlings.

Research update: August 2015

Once again, August was a busy month, filled with field work, lab work and even a conference! It’s fun to look back and see what I was able to accomplish.

One lonely pinnate prairie coneflower blooms in my green roof prairie plot. It’s trying to attract some pollinators – go little coneflower, go!

The month started with completion of the vegetation surveys that I was conducting on 3 of the green roofs in the Chicago area. These vegetation surveys allow me to measure the height, coverage and reproduction ability of the various plants that I planted on the green roof. With the rainy summer we’ve been having in Chicago, most of the plants are doing quite well and my little plots continue to look like mini-prairies. Originally, August was supposed to be the last time that I had to take these measurements. But my mini-prairies are looking so good (and I’m such a botanist!) that I want to come back next year and measure them again. We’ll see if that’s still the plan come 2016.

Funny hat? Socks hiked up over my pant legs? It must be time for data collection in the prairie!

Speaking of prairies, I also visited an actual prairie for my research (on the ground this time, as opposed to a rooftop). Two interns from the Chicago Botanic Garden and I took a trip to a large prairie in central Illinois to collect leaf tissue from the same species of plant that I’m studying on the roofs. I am looking at how pollen movement in this species can help increase the genetic diversity of green roof populations. But I wanted to know what the genetic diversity of this species is like in natural populations, in real prairies. So we collected leaf tissue from a natural population, extracted the DNA from the leaf cells, and are now working in the lab to measure the diversity. This is a work in progress, so stay tuned for the results. If anything, it was neat to see the plant species I’m working with in its natural habitat.

Interns from the Chicago Botanic Garden help me collect leaf samples from the natural prairie population.

In addition to collecting lots of data, I was also fortunate to be asked to present some of the overall findings of my research so far. I’m still working on collecting some more data from internet sources and analyzing my results but I am beginning to find some trends with the data that I collected back on the green roofs in Germany in 2013. It seems like there are very few patterns that predict which plant species colonize green roofs and survive on them over time. It looks like each green roof is a unique place with its own community of plants and animals that live there. I was able to share these results (and others) at a special green roof session of the Ecological Society of America’s annual meeting in Baltimore, MD. And not only did I get to present my research, but I got to attend lectures and workshops where I learned about other people’s research too. It was a busy week in Baltimore and even though I came back tired, I was also inspired and excited to keep making discoveries with my own research.

The hotel at the Baltimore Convention Center had a green roof. A great inspiration view as I prepared to give a presentation about my green roof research at the ESA conference.

And finally, in August I started to work in the lab again to continue work that I’ve been doing for about a year now. The lab was super busy with summer interns but toward the end of the month things quieted down a bit and I could claim some work space back. I’m ready to continue the work I was doing back in the spring. It’s time to find out if I can determine the father plants of all the seeds that I collected last fall and grew up into little seedlings over the winter. It’s going to be a lot of work but I’m looking forward to being a bit of a botanical detective!

Research update: June 2015

I was as busy as a bee in June. Just like this carpenter bee I saw on one of my green roofs. It’s too big to get in this flower’s opening so the bee is actually poking holes in the flower with it’s mouth to drink the nectar. So smart!

Summer, summer. The busiest and probably the most fun time of the year in terms of research. There’s lots to do out on the green roofs now that all the plants are growing and the pollinators are flying, but this is what I look forward to all winter long when I’m in the lab or working on my computer.

 

My green roof plots are starting to look like shortgrass prairies! I’ll keep measuring them with my big 100-square grid.

 

I was happy to talk about the benefits of green roofs with the many visitors that came to the World Environment Day celebration at the Chicago Botanic Garden

This past month, I visited all five of my green roof research sites. I measured all the plants to see which ones had survived the winter and how much taller they were since last year at this time. I’m happy to say that there were a lot of survivors. Many of the plants are starting to bloom and some are bigger than last year. My prairie plots are actually starting to look like short grass prairies! After working on them for years, it’s quite nice to see!

I add the same amount of water to all my green roof trays when I measure their transpiration rate.

This month, I also continued to work on some experiments with my green roof trays. I measured the transpiration rate in the experimental trays again – that’s a measurement of how fast water evaporates from the growing media and leaves the plants through their leaves. So far it looks like the prairie mixes in the trays are able to hold on to water in the same way that trays planted with non-native succulent plants can. This is a good sign because it means that native plants would still be useful for green roofs that are designed to hold rainwater.

My summer volunteer, Mike, and I clean the soil from the roots of the weeds we found growing in the green roof trays. It’s a good project to do in the lab on a rainy day.

Some people think that using the non-native succulent plants will help prevent unwanted weeds from growing on a green roof, so this summer I’m measuring that too. It’s not too difficult but a little time consuming to measure this. Basically, I just pull out all the weeds, wash the soil from their roots, dry them in an oven and weigh the dried plant tissue. So far it looks like the common idea holds true – the trays that have succulent plants have fewer weeds. I’ll keep measuring this over the summer so I can make sure this trend is supported all year long (or maybe not… we’ll see).

And in June I also added a new experiment to see if pollinators are moving between my plants of interest on the roof and gardens on the ground. To do this, I placed some potted plants called Penstemon hirsutus or “hairy beardtongue” (I know – what a funny name!) on a green roof and at the base of the building on the ground. Then I painted the flowers on these plants with a powdered fluorescent dye. I returned to the plants at the end of the day with a UV light that helps me see even small specks of dye to see if any dye has been moved from the ground to the roof or vice versa. So far, there’s no evidence that this has happened but I’ll keep looking. If I see that the dye has been moved then I’ll know that a pollinator has been to both of my hairy beardtongue populations. I’ve got my fingers crossed!

This little syrphid fly visited this plant right after I finished painting the flower with florescent dye. I didn’t find any red dye on the other populations from this little guy but I’ll keep looking.

Research update: May 2015

It’s hard to believe that spring has already come and gone. Yep, May is over and summer is officially here. It’s been a good past month for research with a lot of chances for me to collect more data on the green roofs and spread the word about the importance of native plants in cities.

The experimental green roof trays at Loyola University are looking good!

Early in the month, I wrote a blog post of a different kind for the main blog at the Chicago Botanic Garden, describing different ways in which botanists like me can share their research with a wide variety of people. About a week later I was also able to “walk the walk” as they say, and give a presentation to the Will County Audubon Society about how native pollinators can be supported by using native plants in urban gardens like the green roofs I study. The audience was very attentive and had some great questions – they even built their own “bee condos” which are homes for native mason bees. Later in the month, I was an audience member myself at an event hosted by the West Cook County chapter of WildOnes, an organization that promotes awareness of native plants and animals. At their annual Native Plant Conference, I was able to hear Dr. Doug Tallamy speak – he is a real champion of native plants and both his presentation and his book, Bringing Nature Home, were really inspiring!

 

The temperature probes have all been read and are now buried in the green roof soil again. A little lady bug was also interested in my data!

The native plants on the green roofs are still small but looking pretty good!

Out on the roofs, my research plants are looking good. For the most part. Of the 5 locations where I planted prairie plants, 4 of them are going strong and the other one… well… about 90% of the plants are dead. It’s a bit disappointing but that’s science for you. Not to worry though, I still have plenty of projects to keep me busy. In May, I finished collecting all of the temperature probes from the green roofs so I now know just how cold it got on all the roofs this past winter (very cold, in case you’re wondering!). I started recording data on all the plants that survived the winter and how much they’re grown since last summer. I’ll continue to gather these data for the rest of the summer, so stay tuned.

 

To record all the temperature data, I bring a computer up to the roofs. And then I cross my fingers that it doesn’t rain.

I collected some interesting data about the evaporation rates in the green roof trays.

This past month, I also started a new experiment, where I’m measuring the rate of water capture and evaporation from my experimental trays. I think that the trays with native prairie plants and the ones with the non-native succulent plants will be able to capture rainwater at the same rate. It is important for all green roofs to keep rainwater on the roof so it doesn’t run into already-stressed stormwater/sewer systems in the city. It’s also important for the green roofs to be able to release this water slowly in warm weather because this evaporation helps keep buildings cool. I measure evaporation rate by weighing wet trays every few hours. This was a great way to collect data but I learned that it’s also very physically demanding! Each time, you bend down to pick up a heavy (about 25-30 pounds) tray,  bend down to put it on the scale, bend down to pick it up, and bend down again to put it back in its place. Multiply that by 40 trays and 6 rounds of measurements in 24 hours… well you do the math on that. Let’s just say that there’s no need to go to the gym on these evaporation measurement days!

I carefully took about 600 tiny seedlings out of their petri dishes and put them into small test tube. I’ll extract the seedlings’ DNA soon.

To get a break from the outdoor work, I also finished the task of germinating the seeds for my paternity experiment. I was hoping that the seedlings would get a bit bigger but they were just growing in this jello-like substance and they didn’t have the nutrients they needed to grow anymore. So I took about 600 of the seedlings, put them in tiny test tubes, and put them in a very cold freezer. I’m hoping that on rainy days this summer I’ll be able to start extracting their DNA and determine if pollen is moving between green roof to produce seedlings with parents from more than one green roof. There will be a lot more work involved with this experiment in the future.

And finally, this month I was officially inducted as a Northwestern University Presidential Fellow! I am honored to be part of an incredibly amazing group of graduate students and am really looking forward to learning from them as well as sharing my research with this talented group of fellows.

Research update: March 2015

Could it be? Has spring finally sprung in Chicago? In the beginning of March it seemed like winter might hang on forever, but as the month went on, the weather started to turn and there are now even a few little flowers in bloom around Chicago. This is an exciting time for any botanist because it means that very soon, there will be all kinds of leaves, stems, flowers and fruits for us to enjoy.

I’m continuing to work on my DNA paternity analyses. This is still going to take many more months before I have collected all the data I need.

There were signs of life for my indoor work too. I’ve been continuing my lab work for the paternity tests that I’m doing, which is tedious but moving along. The seeds that I’ve had in the incubator all winter are starting to germinate, or wake up from their winter dormant period and grow. You can see from my picture that they’re not very big yet, but over the next couple of weeks they’ll gradually get bigger and bigger until they have enough tissue for me to extract their DNA and hopefully determine which plant was each seed’s father. This will involve a lot more time in the lab (months and months) but it’s nice to know that at least this part of my experiment is heading in the right direction.

My seeds have germinated and are starting to grow now that they’re in the warmer incubator.

It was exciting to attend the Climate Change Conference at Loyola University

In March, my research also took me in a couple unique directions. The class I was helping to teach came to an end and I completed the course in population genetics that I was taking, so I had a little time to get away from my home campus. This allowed me to attend the Climate Change Conference that was held at the Institute for Environmental Sustainability at Loyola University. The speakers were very interesting and my favorite part was learning about how some universities are choosing not to invest their money in companies (for example oil companies) that harm the environment. As a botanist and someone who cares about plants and the environment, this “divestment” (taking money out of an investment and putting it somewhere else) seems like a good idea although it can be tricky.

In March I traveled to Guatemala to talk to tenth grade students about the environmental benefits of green roofs.

In addition to this local conference, my research took me far away to Guatemala, where I gave a presentation to 10^th grade students about the environmental benefits of plants on green roofs. As a culminating activity, all the students had to design their own green roof. I can tell you, there were some very unique designs that included potato plants, compost, sunbathing areas and even hen houses. It makes me excited that young students are so creative and are able to think outside the box when it comes to making cities greener, more environmentally-friendly places that incorporate more plants. I think there may have been some future botanists in the group!

And as the month closes, I’m now on my way to Pittsburgh for some more presentations, so be sure to come back and read my April update.

Research update: January 2015

This is the cover of the children’s activity book I just published about my green roof research.

This month’s research update is starting with something quite different! I am very proud to share that I am now the coauthor of a published book! It may not be a very long one (24 pages) but it’s on sale on Amazon.com, so I figure that’s pretty official. As part of an outreach project to share my plant research with people other than scientists, my friend and fellow botanist/educator Olyssa Starry and I wrote a children’s activity book about the benefits of green roofs in cities. The book was beautifully illustrated by Ryan Patterson, who did a fantastic job bringing our ideas to life. Now children everywhere (and grown-ups kids too) can learn about green roofs while completing activities like a word search, coloring, reading temperatures, stepping-stone game, roof design, and bug hunt, just to name a few. There is even a part at the end that guides the reader through designing and carrying out a green roof research project, so if you’re interested, you too can bring botany to action in your city. Olyssa and I have been talking about this idea for years now and it’s really exciting to have come this far. Our goal is to be able to provide books to environmental education programs wherever there are green roofs – which is pretty much all over the world! I added a new page to this blog site with more information on how to get a free digital copy if you’d like.

Winter weather means lots of lab work for botanists like me!

This plate with nearly 100 little wells is filled with liquid and then used to help me separate my parental plants according to their unique DNA.

As far as my research progress goes, I’ve been spending a lot of my time in the laboratory, working on my genetic paternity experiment. I’m making sure that my plant seeds are all “hibernating” in their winter-temperature incubator, and I’ve been performing a lot of tests to try and figure out how to sort out all of my individuals according to their DNA. Unfortunately, most of the plants I used in the experiment have very similar DNA because they all came from the same plant nursery. I’ll only be able to find a unique DNA “fingerprint” or DNA sequence for each individual if I keep looking at more sections in each plant… so I’ll keep looking.

In addition to writing and lab work in January, I also started taking a class about “population genetics” – this is the study of how organisms spread their genes or DNA over time. It’s a really tough class, but it will be useful when it’s time for me to explain how pollinators move pollen (which has plants’ DNA) between the rooftop populations of my test plants. I’m also helping to teach a class about statistics, which is the fancy math that plant biologists use to describe the relationships that we see between plants and their environment. Together, the population genetics information and the statistics will help me find the trends in my data once I’ve collected them all. So as the winter continues to move on, I’m continuing to gather little pieces to help solve my plant research puzzles.

I’ve loaded tiny little wells in this gel with my DNA samples and a blue dye. I’ll run electric current through the submerged gel to see if my experiments worked.