EEB Tuesday Seminar Series

with Rose Brinkhoff, EEB Postdoctoral Fellow
"Carbon fluxes and climate change in mountains"
PREVIEW: The ability of the biosphere to sequester carbon is an important determinant of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and hence has implications for future climates. Photosynthesis and respiration represent the largest fluxes of C between the atmosphere and the terrestrial biosphere, but the responses of these temperature-dependent physiological processes to warming remain a source of uncertainty in Earth system models. Climate warming impacts ecosystem-scale carbon fluxes through the direct influence of temperature on the rates of photosynthesis and respiration of individual plants, and also through changes in the species composition of plant communities. Examining how these direct and indirect effects of increasing temperatures on ecosystem C fluxes interact is crucial to predict the capacity of ecosystem-scale C storage under future climatic conditions. Here, we use a multi-year factorial warming x dominant species removal experiment in montane meadows at two elevations in the Rocky Mountains, Colorado to examine the abiotic and biotic drivers of C fluxes over a period of eight years.

& with Holly Scheer, MCDB PhD Student
"Enhancer Function and Evolution in Drosophila Pigmentation Variation"
PREVIEW: Morphological diversity is one of the most fascinating aspects of biology. One source of variation in morphology across species is the differential expression of patterning transcription factors that activate downstream cell type-specific genes. The patterns of expression of these transcription factors can change over evolutionary time. My goal is to understand the cis- and trans-regulatory components of differential gene expression and their implications for evolution as a whole. In my study, I compare two different species of fruit flies and their different body color patterns to get mechanistic insight into this evolutionary process.