PhD Student, Fall 2020 – Present
B.S. – University of Florida, 2016-2020
Contact: dtadelhelm@berkeley.edu
Hi! My name’s Davis Adelhelm.
I’m interested primarily in how a plant’s niche evolves following spontaneous genome duplication, a phenomenon commonly known polyploidy. I hope to understand this concept better through the lens of ecology, population genetics, and phylogenetics by studying a plant lineage with a rich history of polyploidy, ferns.
I’ll be coming to Berkeley straight from the University of Florida, where I completed my undergrad majoring in Botany. While at UF I had the privilege of working with multiple research groups starting from my sophomore year all the way to graduation. Most of my lab work was split between the labs of Dr. Emily Sessa and Dr. Stuart McDaniel, where I first got indoctrinated to fern and moss biology. Some projects I was involved in include: Genealogy of Flagellate Plants (GoFlag), Community Assembly of South African herbs and Forbs, Population Genetics of Aulacomnium and Hylocomium, and Geometric Morphometrics of the North American Dryopteris Hybrid Complex. In the future I look forward to teaching, outreach, research and spreading the good word of Pteridology.
Field work in South Africa with the Sessa Lab