How does native eelgrass (Zostera marina L.) affect its own spatial distribution? Organisms modify their biotic and abiotic environments. If large enough, these modifications may feed back to regulate the organisms’ own population and community dynamics. Native eelgrass (Z. marina) is a common marine angiosperm which grows in patches or continuous meadows in estuaries. It spreads by clonal branching or by seed. Previous studies have suggested that eelgrass facilitates its own spread by ameliorating local water motion (waves and currents). Currently, I am manipulating eelgrass stem density and gap size to measure flow, sediment erosion, susceptibility to removal disturbance in winter storms, and changes in eelgrass morphology and demography. With these and future data, I hope to develop a spatially-explicit model of eelgrass population dynamics with and without environmental modification by eelgrass itself. Understanding natural mechanisms of population maintenance or demise is useful for eelgrass conservation. Eelgrass acts as important habitat for many animals, it protects shorelines from erosion, and it is unfortunately declining worldwide.
My research aims result from my interests in biomechanics, functional morphology, ecology, botany, and mathematical biology. In the past, I have worked on a variety of projects including, host-specificity of mycorrhizal fungi with a mycoheterotrophic plant, cell wall expansion mechanics in tip-growing cells (such as pollen tubes), dispersal and colonization of a frugivore-dispersed plant on Mount Saint Helens, and flow modification by aggregations of an intertidal macroalga. I am currently co-advised by Janneke Hille Ris Lambers and Jennifer Ruesink.
Here is a news story about my projects.
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