University
of California, Irvine
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
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| Research Interests |
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| In
the past few years my interests have shifted to new ideas and a new
experimental system, wild mustard (Brassica rapa). Plant Tolerance to Herbivory: Although a few plant species recover completely from seemingly devastating herbivore attack, most do not. We are using an artificial evolution protocol to see if the evolution of improved tolerance comes at the expense of reduced general growth performance. This work is in coloration with Dr. Ellen Simms at University of California Berkeley. Evolution of Flowering Time: When the shift from vegetative growth to reproduction occurs too early, plants have few resources to make progeny. When the shift is too late they do not have enough time to mature their progeny. My lab is investigating this trade-off using local B. rapa populations that have evolved different flowering times. My collaborator, Dr. Gretchen LeBuhn of San Francisco State University, and I are especially interested in the role of assortative mating—early bloomers tend to mate with early bloomers while late mates with late—in the maintenance of local adaptation. Crop/Weed Hybridization and the Escape of Transgenes:
Some crop species are grown in proximity to their weedy wild relatives.
This creates the danger of an engineered gene moving into the weed
population. Along with Dr. Michael Hochberg of the University of
Montpellier II, in France, I am working on models to assess the
relative importance of factors that can determine the rate of spread
for resistance transgenes into natural populations. This theoretical
work is coordinated with experiments on hybridization between B.
rapa and Canola (Brassica napus). |
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Degrees |
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B.A. in Philosophy, 1974. DePaul University,
Chicago, IL. |
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Honors and Awards |
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| Excellence
in Teaching Award, School of Biological Sciences, University of California,
Irvine. 1995. Certificate for Excellence in Teaching, Northern Illinois University, 1988. National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, 1981 1982. |
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Current Graduate Students |
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Allan Ellis, B.Sci., University of Cape
Town, South Africa |
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Current Post-docs |
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Recent Courses Taught |
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| BioSci
94 — Diversity of Life BioSci 96 – Processes of Ecology and Evolution BioSci 184 – Plant-Animal Interactions BioSci 205 – Graduate Core Course in Ecology BioSci 221 – Seminar in Quantitative Genetics |
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Links |
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Recent Papers |
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Richter, K.S., and A.E. Weis. 1995. Differential
abortion in yucca. Nature 376:557-558. |
