Current Projects:

Investigation of the recent California agricultural invasions of Palmer amaranth and waterhemp:

The most agriculturally problematic species in the weedy plant genus Amaranthus are A. palmeri (Palmer amaranth) and A. tuberculatus (waterhemp), which have both rapidly evolved resistance to a variety of different chemical classes of herbicides.  Palmer amaranth is native to the Southwestern U.S., and waterhemp is native to the eastern U.S., and both have recently started becoming common invaders in Central Valley agroecosystems.  Read more…

Digitization of the Fresno State Herbarium:

Read more about this project, and a new associated project on Central California ethnobotany, on the Herbarium page.

Population genetics and species delimitation in the native California genus Fritillaria: 

We are interested in California species of the northern temperate genus Fritillaria (which have the largest known genomes in angiosperms, with up to 83 Gb of DNA) because two species, F. atropurpurea and F. pinetorum, are very difficult to distinguish using morphology alone in the southern Sierras.  We are experimenting with genomic methods to further investigate species delimitation, population genetics, and phylogenetics in this group.  Read more…

Students presenting their research at recent scientific conferences!