For the past
year, I have been working closely with Dr. Andrea Weeks toward understanding
the phylogeography and population genetic diversity of a small but charismatic
semi-parasitic plant native to the United States and Canada, Melampyrum lineare. I find M. lineare to be a very elusive species
at this point in my research. Its morphology can vary greatly but, oddly enough,
it does not fit cleanly into subcategories known as a species variety. There
are also competing hypotheses as to how this plant made its way to the eastern
United States over geological time. A biologist in the 1930’s predicted that
this plant might have found refuge in the southern Appalachians when the last
glacier covered the top half of the United States (about 20,000 years ago),
whereas the research of a GMU graduate student suggests that M. lineare may have actually resided in
western Canada before it made its way to our neck of the woods in Virginia.
If that’s not
enough of a reason to peak into the genetics of this plant to see what’s really
going on, then this is: comparatively, parasitic plants are poorly understood
despite their important role in the ecology of their residing ecosystem and the
answers they hold in their genome to the current global crisis of a changing biosphere.
Understanding the phylogeographic movement of M. lineare will give us a better sense of how it responded to the
changing climate during the last glacial period and in turn help us make more
accurate predictions on how similar parasitic and interdependent plants will
respond to today’s changing climate and forest compositions. In conclusion,
this little plant with flowers the size of a fraction of your pinky fingernail
is a pretty big deal.
As an OSCAR URSP
student turned OSCAR research assistant, I have worked, studied, and mingled alongside
some of the most incredible scientists in my field. My work with Dr. Andrea
Weeks has given me insight into the professional world of a plant scientist, an
invaluable experience at this early stage of my career. This past July, I was
awarded a travel grant to present my research at the largest and most cohesive North
American plant science conference, Botany 2015. Subsequently, Dr. Weeks and I
went on a weeklong botany hunt for Melampyrum
lineare in Alberta and British Columbia provinces in Canada to bring back
to the lab at GMU. Since the start of the 2015-2016 academic year, we have been
working hard in the lab towards collecting and sequencing mass data from the chloroplast
and nuclear DNA of almost 300 individuals of M. lineare. Contingent on the flow of grant money needed to obtain
sequence results, we expect to have this study ready for publication just in
time for my graduation from George Mason.
