Using plant silica to unravel the origins and significance of Neotropical grasslands
By: Elena Stiles (Stromberg Lab)

Revision of the genus Styxosaurus (Sauropterygia, Plesiosauria) and relationships of the Late Cretaceous elasmosaurids of the Western Interior Seaway
By: Elliott Armour Smith (Sidor Lab)

Gap Junctions in the Freshwater Cnidarian Hydra vulgaris
By: Joshua Swore (Bosma Lab)

Exploring light responsive enhancers in plants
By: Jackson Tonnies (Queitsch Lab)

The evolution of seed dispersal strategy, insights from the melic grasses and their relatives
By: William Brightly (Stromberg Lab)

Many plant species rely on animal frugivores to disperse their seeds. Understanding the value of frugivore-mediated seed dispersal depends upon comprehending the interaction between animals’ foraging behaviors and the patterns of seed dispersal services they provide.

Phylogenetics has found its way into many different subdisciplines of biology, and has made lasting impacts in fields as disparate as community ecology and medicine. In evolutionary biology, the recent trend of phylogeny-oriented studies has been toward “scaling up”, and looking for very broad patterns in character evolution and diversification in attempts to make generalizations about the tempo and mode of evolution. This scaling up does come with a cost, in that we spend less time trying to understand how evolutionary processes work at the whole-organism level.

Tropical woody plants store ∼230 petagrams of carbon in their above-ground living biomass. These stocks are currently growing in primary forests at rates that have decreased in recent decades. Droughts are an important mechanism in reducing forest carbon uptake and stocks by elevating tree mortality, increasing autotrophic respiration, and promoting wildfires. With continued climate change, the intensity and frequency of droughts will likely increase, with land-use change intensifying their effects.