Beyond climate? Factors determining fruiting and flowering phenology across a genus over 117 years

Kelsey is very happy to have published her article on flowering and fruiting phenology across the entire genus of Leavenworthia, a taxon with some very highly-endemic species! Moreover, her research has been highlighted by the American Journal of Botany, and featured in a mini-documentary and a press release by Washington University in Saint Louis! To …
Continue reading Beyond climate? Factors determining fruiting and flowering phenology across a genus over 117 years

Matthew Austin’s phenology work featured in multiple news outlets, including USA Today!

Matt’s findings that climate change has induced not only a change in phenology but also a change in reproductive strategy from more to less selfing in the common blue violet, Viola sororia, has been featured by not only USA Today, but also St. Louis’s FOX2 TV and Washington University in Saint Louis’s Climate Change Program! …
Continue reading Matthew Austin’s phenology work featured in multiple news outlets, including USA Today!

The decimation of Madagascar’s rainforest habitat

It is honestly with sadness that I announce our new publication on the fate of Madagscar’s rainforest habitat in Nature Climate Change. Modeling deforestation assuming the lowest rate of deforestation across the period 2000-2014, I could only get the rainforest to last to the 2070s… and the highest rate of loss occurred in 2018, outside …
Continue reading The decimation of Madagascar’s rainforest habitat

NSF Advances in Biological Informatics

Awesome news! We were just informed that the National Science Foundation will fund our proposal to use pollen, genetic, and distributional data to estimate the spatial dynamics of how trees migrated poleward after the last glacial maximum.  This is a collaborative project with Sean Hoban (Morton Arboretum), Andria Dawson (Mount Royal University), John Robinson (Michigan …
Continue reading NSF Advances in Biological Informatics

Phenotypic distribution modeling

Our latest paper in Global Change Biology on modeling intraspecific phenotypic variation has gotten great press!  Combined, the news outlets covering our research reach ~78 million people and included The San Francisco Chronicle, The Seattle Times, US News and World Report, The Topeka Capital Journal, The Manhattan Mercury, and numerous other regional newspapers, radio stations (e.g., KWMU 90.7), TV …
Continue reading Phenotypic distribution modeling

A Perfect Storm of Threats

Just out: a new analysis by Haydee Hernández-Yáñez and 7 other students at the University of Missouri-Saint Louis and myself on the threats that affect all known rare plants of the US! This is a reprise of the analysis by David Wilcove and colleagues from 1998.  We already got coverage on NPR and Inside Science! …
Continue reading A Perfect Storm of Threats