My name is Adriana and I am…well I am a number of things, including being a PhD candidate at UBC working with trees and genetics. I also enjoy translating science to the non-scientific community and that is why I decided to create this blog series.
Hello everyone! My name is Adriana and I am…well I am a number of things, including being a PhD candidate at UBC working with trees and genetics. I also enjoy translating science to the non-scientific community and that is why I decided to create this blog series. I am grateful to Beaty for being on board with this and I hope you will enjoy my posts.
Let me start by explaining how a Colombian from the Andes, lived in the Canadian prairies for three winters, and now is working with poplars. After finishing my undergraduate in Colombia I received a scholarship from the University of Winnipeg to work with Sara Good. During my Masters I experienced winters with -40C, which was kind of fun. Maybe I managed to forget painful memories? My survival strategies included biking, running and enjoying getting my eyelashes frozen (aka Manitoban mascara).
My research focused on exploring plants at the genetic and ecological level, to test if human disturbance (for example agricultural fields) affected populations. I worked with chokecherry trees and found that in small sites surrounded by agricultural fields, trees tend to produce less fruits compared to those in large continuous forests. We found that pollen is a key player and it is limiting fruit production in small sites. This finding was surprising, since chokecherry is common and widely distributed. Our work showed that even common species, believed to be resilient to disturbance, are affected by habitat loss. Want to know more?
After finishing this project I came to UBC, where I’m working with Carl Douglas. My goal is to understand how trees survive to different environments by looking at their genes and I will elaborate on that in my next post so stay tune. Can’t wait? Read this post.
Photo Credits: [banner] Flickr user Sharon Mollerus.