As we roamed last week’s Botanical Society of America’s newsletter, we quickly noticed that TWO Rothfels Lab rockstars were featured! Here’s PhD Candidate, Carrie Tribble and PostDoctoral Fellow, Dori Contreras, scholaring it up at the 2018 Botany Conference in Rochester, MI.
Highlights from the visit include a lengthy discussion on how DNA and morphology data can sometimes have conflicting signals in support of certain evolutionary relationships. Oh, and not to forget these two awesome questions:
“So what was the first plant… and I dont mean the first LAND plant!?”
“How do you get permission to actually get the plants into the US from the field?”
We thank Charmin, Phoenix, Mingus and Rafa for stopping by the lab and sharing their excitement for science!
Carrie and Mick went to the 2018 Evolutionary Quantitative Genetics Workshop at Friday Harbor in early June to learn from our phylogenetic heroes Marguerite Butler, Josef Uyeda, Brian O’Meara, Emília Martins, and of course, Joe Felsenstein.
The awesome location afforded them to see a “whale,” “catch” snakes, take a selfie with Joe (not pictured), learn a ton, row across an island, and make Carl proud!
Carrie is embarking on a national herbarium tour to hit all of the major collections of Bomarea (Alstromeriaceae). While visiting, she is taking note of the morphological variation as well as collecting leaf samples for DNA extractions for her population genetics study of Bomarea edulis. Pictured here with newfound botanical friends in the Arid House, a bust of Linneaus himself. Check out the morphological variability with Bomarea edulis!!
Today the Misher lab is hosting a teatime party to wish our friend and colleague GaHun Boo a warm farewell!
Gahun is heading back to his home country this weekend for a break before beginning his new adventure as a PostDoc Fellow at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris! His project title is “Mitochondrial genome diversity and biogeography of the red alga Gelidiella acerosa complex in tropical seas”.
The entire Rothfels Lab and Botany Crew wish you the best of luck!
Image by GaHun Boo
Today we wish Carl a HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! Thanks for bringing donuts guys!!
Last Friday, Forrest delivered a smashing talk focusing on his collaborative works with Will Freyman and Carl Rothfels! This project focused on tracing the best evolutionary model to explain corm lobation character transitions on the phylogeny. We all learned a ton about Isoëtes. Turns out that the most informative characters may lie below the surface #cormlobation.
Mick and Dr. Jeff Doyle (Cornell) gave guest lectures at Reed College in the Genetics course taught by Prof. Jeremy Coate who advised Mick during undergrad and who was himself advised by Jeff at Cornell. Together they study the young allotetraploid complex of wild soybean (Gycine subgen. Glycine) and are always keen on inspiring young botanists! Three generations of plant scientists!
We wholeheartedly congratulate Ingrid Jordon-Thaden on her new position as the Director of the Botany Greenhouse at University of Wisconsin-Madison. We thank you for all of your incredible contributions to the Rothfels Lab and we wish you success in your new gig!!
We welcome several new lab members to the Rothfels lab! Introducing undergraduate researcher, Jonathan Qu (Left2), first year graduate student, Maryam Sedaghatpour (Left3) and two IB PhD candidates, Carrie Tribble (Right3) and Joyce Chery (Right1). We’re excited to integrate all of our interest in plant evolutionary biology! Missing and/or hiding: Sraavya, Alan, and Abby. We’ll get them next time! And really missing: Ingrid!