Blog

Each semester, our lab provides mentored research experiences for undergraduates. These often occur through Biology 151/152 independent projects or independent research course credit (Zoology 299 or 699). If you are interested in working in our lab for Fall 2017, please email Dr. Laura Ladwig (Damschen Lab Postdoc) at lmladwig@wisc.edu to determine if there are openings available and if there is a good match between your interests and the work in our lab. Please include the following in your email:

• Name, campus address, phone number, and email
• Year in school
• Major and expected date of graduation
• Course schedule in Microsoft Word grid format
• Formal resume – include any previous lab experience
• A statement indicating why you are interested in working in the Damschen Lab

Students must be self-motivated, able to work independently, keep open communication with other lab members about progress and problems, and seek creative solutions to challenges that arise. Basic knowledge of Microsoft Excel is helpful. We are especially interested in working with students who have career interests (or potential career interests) in ecology, botany, or related fields.

This summer has been a wonderful chance to work together and celebrate projects coming to fruition.

New papers led by Jesse Miller on how different flowering guilds respond to landscape spatial structure and the relationship between plant and consumer richness in the Ozark glades are coming out. Wonderful group of undergraduates in the lab measuring gazillions of functional traits. Incredible team sampled long-term change in our plant community assembly and restoration plots across the southeast.

Saw amazing flora and fauna – including gopher tortoises and the largest mosquitoes we have ever seen.

Was wonderful to have the whole lab together in the southeast. Dill Pickle potato chips kept us going in 100+ F, humid conditions! And, we built an impromptu plant press out of cutting boards. We love field work!

 

 

New paper out by Shannon Grover (former undergrad) and Jesse Miller (former Ph.D. student). Spatial habitat structure affects plant diversity, which in turn, affects pollinator diversity in the Ozark glades.http://castaneajournal.org/doi/full/10.2179/16-108 

We have a new postdoc opening to study the assembly and limitations to recovery of longleaf pine understory plant communities. This project is in collaboration with John Orrock (University of Wisconsin) and Lars Brudvig (Michigan State University), and with funding from the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP). Full application details here: serdp-postdoc-ad-2017

Our special feature about habitat fragmentation is now out in Ecography! Thanks to Jean Clobert and the Station for Theorical and Experimental Ecology (SETE) for bringing together the working group that led to this exciting work.