Botany 2019

Johnson Lab Talks/Posters at Botany 2019.

It’s July, which means the annual Botany conference is just a few weeks away! It is a milestone for the Johnson Lab as we will be represented by multiple speakers in six talks this year! We will be making the short 9-hour drive from Lubbock to Tuscon (moving out West changes our definition of “short drive”!). Joining us will be:

• Ph.D. student Yanni Chen, who will be speaking about her project looking into the phylogenetic signal of seed traits in shortgrass prairies. Restoration managers like to pick seeds by size and germination rate, but will doing so impact phylogenetic diversity?
• Lab Manager Haley Hale, who will be speaking about strategies to reduce per-sample costs in targeted sequencing studies, including the use of herbarium specimens. Where can corners be cut to make target capture datasets for 100s of samples feasible?
• Undergraduate Zach Bailey, who will be presenting a poster on gathering stomatal density data from 50-year-old herbarium specimens. Should we be making different predictions in plants’ responses to increase carbon dioxide based on the species life history strategy?
• Undergraduate Madeline Slimp, who will be presenting a poster on the success of Angiosperms353 to generate population-genomics scale data on 50-year-old herbarium specimens. What sort of genetic diversity is present in Angiosperms353 genes for 24 species from Guadalupe Mountains?
• PI Matt Johnson, who will be giving two talks: one on the status of the Kew PAFTOL project to generate a family-complete phylogeny of flowering plants with Angiosperms353, and another using sequence capture for phylogenetic systematics in the moss family Funariaceae.

It’s especially exciting as none of the other lab members have attended a Botany conference before! Follow along with our experience on Twitter.