The lab has several field projects in progress this summer, and their all in full swing.

For sunflower, we’re growing ~900 plants to map the genetic basis of natural variation in the daily timing of when florets in the sunflower disk put out new pollen and open their stigmas. The crew has filled all the buckets, we’re nearly through our staged plantings, and the first flowers have opened for us to begin taking time lapse image series.

For monkeyflower, we’re collaborating with Jay Sexton’s group to run high and low elevation garden plots in the Sierra Nevada to look at the genetics of adaptation to altitude by Mimulus guttatus (yellow monkeyflower). 

Postdoc Jack Colicchio, with the help of undergrad Cameron Yuki (pictured), has started collecting data at his high elevation site for MImulus laciniatus (lobed-leaf monkeyflower), where he is looking at the impact of population and parental temperature on many traits in the field.