PlantPeople

PLANT // PEOPLE

Pondering plants and the people who study them.

A lot more like Veep than House of Cards

6/30/2017

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I was invited to write a blog post for the Ecological Society of America about my recent experiences in Washington, D.C. with my fellow Graduate Student Policy Award winners. I had an amazing time and wanted to share my post with you. -Anna

[Anna writes...] As a fifth year Ph.D. student, I spend a lot of time thinking about my future. I adore science and have loved being a part of the ecology community, but working as a researcher has always left me wanting something more. While conducting my graduate research, I’ve come to value my distractions in teaching biology to non-majors, volunteering at science outreach events, and writing for public audiences. I’ve found that I both enjoy and excel at communicating science to diverse audiences, and I hope to make a career of it. I applied to the ESA GSPA in hopes of getting my feet wet in a new sector of science communication: science policy. I joked to my friends that this 3-day DC visit would be the deciding factor for whether my career ambitions would lie in policy rather than a more traditional public science outreach role. I was not disappointed.
Read more at ESA.org
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Demystifying speciation

6/12/2017

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Carina Baskett is a Ph.D. candidate in Michigan State University's Department of Plant Biology and Program in Ecology, Evolutionary Behavior, and Biology. I've wanted to write a speciation post for some time, and decided it would be more fun to ask an evolutionary biologist! Learn more about Carina's work at her website or follow her on Twitter @carinaplant. -Anna

[Carina writes...] There are
over 22,000 species of trees in the American tropical forests. In just 15 patches of forest, each about the size of two football fields, scientists catalogued over 1,000 tree species in Yasuní National Park in Ecuador, more than the 620 tree species native to all of the US and Canada.
​

These are the numbers that blow my mind and get me excited about trying to understand the origins of biodiversity, especially in the tropics. I have good company— I think about 30% of ecologists and evolutionary biologists start talks with a slide full of colorful, beautiful organisms, and say that the ultimate goal of their research is to understand where all this diversity comes from.

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Petty about Miley

6/12/2017

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Damian is a graduate student in Michigan State University's Department of Plant Biology. I invited him to write this post after hearing his plant-related Miley Cyrus lamentations... and am absolutely thrilled with the outcome. Enjoy. -Anna

​[Damian writes...] Ok, so I’m about to get REAL petty– and yes, this is going to sound totally inconsequential, but hear me out.
 
I get it, there are far greater perils facing humanity at the current moment (read: the US federal government just walked away from the world’s first and, at the moment, best global initiative to combat CO2 emissions– one of only three nations to do so on Earth). Regardless, since she’s recently careened back into the limelight, I need to take a moment to acknowledge the country-born, tongue-flailing, cultural-appropriating elephant in the room… that is, our very own Saturday-morning-starlet-turned-wrecking-ball, Miley Cyrus. Yet, despite what initially appears trivial, in reality, may be a matter that threatens the well-being of plant communities EVERYWHERE!

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