Zach Presents at URC!

Zach Bailey, an undergraduate working in the herbarium, presented his research in a poster at the Undergraduate Research Consortium. Zach is a junior in the Texas Tech Honors College, and worked this year to catalog our collection of herbarium specimens from the Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Zach found that collection, made by TTU botanists Northington and Burgess, contains over 2000 specimens from more than 500 plant species. It represents a snapshot in botanical time from when the National Park first opened in the 1970s.

Zach found over 40 species for which we have 7 or more specimens, making it a candidate for future research into the conservation genetics of plant species found in the high desert environment. He was most excited to find a number of species for which there are no recorded specimens from the Guadalupe Mountains area, increasing the botanical value of the collection.

In the future, Zach will begin botanical research using the collection to learn about the Guadalupe Mountains plant ecosystem. His database of the Guadlupe Mountains specimens will be valuable for kickstarting genetics and physiology research using herbarium specimens.