Profile

• Time Zone

  Central

  
  
• Organization

  Auburn University

  
  
• Role

  Scientist Mentor: I will mentor teams of students online

  
  
• Research Interests (300 words)

  I am interested in understanding how in-common mechanisms control flower develop across distantly related plant taxa. Specifically, I work on understanding flower development in the sunflower family!

  
  
• Profile Question 1

  What is best about being a scientist?

  
  
• Answer the question you selected for profile question 1 here (300 words):

  The best part about being a scientist is getting to problem solve everyday! Each day is different with a new research problem to overcome. This makes my job very exciting and keeps me very much engaged in what I do.

  
  
• Profile Question 2

  When and why did you decide to go into a science career?

  
  
• Answer the question you selected for profile question 2 here (300 words):

  I didn't decide to go into science until I was already in college. I took a Botany class in my first year and fell in love with the subject. Plants fascinate me and when I found out that I could have a job where I just learn more and more about plants everyday there was nothing else I wanted to do!

  
  
• Profile Question 3

  What is your favorite plant? Why?

  
  
• Answer the question you selected for profile question 3 here (300 words):

  My favorite plant is Sunflower. The "flower" part is actually what is known as an inflorescence and is made up of hundreds of small flowers. The inflorescence of sunflower is called a head (or capitulum) and acts a single flower to attract pollinators but has the benefit of making a lot of seed while using less energy to do so! At first glance, the head inflorescence seems unique, but actually every species in the sunflower family have this characteristic and the sunflower family is the largest flowering plant family on Earth. Once you make this connection, you will start seeing head inflorescences everywhere!

  
  
• Availability

  I am NOT available, please temporarily remove me from the available mentor list

  
  
• Capacity: How many teams at a time are you comfortable working with?

  1

  
  

Recent Posts

fchslashspring2021 project 4 Daniel Scott Jones Apr 26, 2021

Thank you all for letting me be a part of your project! I hope you got to learn a lot about pollen and flowers and even more about science and designing experiments! 

I wish you all the best!

Daniel

fchslashspring2021 project 4 Daniel Scott Jones Apr 19, 2021

Hi Annabelle,

Great to hear you all have some interesting results! From these data, do you think you could conclude that sucrose helps pollen germination in your conditions?

It is interesting that germination decreases from 10% sucrose to…

more

Hi Annabelle,

Great to hear you all have some interesting results! From these data, do you think you could conclude that sucrose helps pollen germination in your conditions?

It is interesting that germination decreases from 10% sucrose to 15% sucrose, especially since it goes back up at 20% sucrose. Can you think of a way you could test whether this was by chance or if the total number of pollen in each condition affected your results?

Many times when running an experiment like this, I use replication to provide confidence in the results. This means I will repeat the same experiment multiple times (like germinating multiple rounds of pollen on the same exact set of sucrose concentrations) and compare the results of each. If the results are consistent, then I have more confidence in interpreting the affect I'm seeing from my experiment. If the results vary a lot, than there may be some uncontrolled factor affecting my results. I know you all don't have a lot of time to focus on this one experiment, but with this in mind, how could you go about testing if the unexpected effect you see at 15% sucrose was reproducible and is a result you could have confidence in?

Looking forward to hearing what you think!

Daniel

fchslashspring2021 project 4 Daniel Scott Jones Mar 29, 2021

McKenna and Lauren,

I'm very happy to hear you're looking at growing pollen tubes under the microscope! Pollen tubes are amazing! They grow very quickly and have the important role of transporting male gametes to ovules for…

more

McKenna and Lauren,

I'm very happy to hear you're looking at growing pollen tubes under the microscope! Pollen tubes are amazing! They grow very quickly and have the important role of transporting male gametes to ovules for fertilization to occur.

Growing pollen tubes in solution can be a little tricky. I think looking at the effects of different sucrose concentrations on pollen germination is an excellent experiment! Sounds like you all have a sucrose solution you already used. Since only one pollen germinated, I would use the sucrose concentration in this first solution you tried as one of the lower percentages if your prediction is that higher levels of sucrose will increase germination.

Something to think about is how will you determine pollen germination differences across your solutions? Will you just count the number of pollen tubes you see? Will pollen grains that start to make a tube but fail to make a long pollen tube count? I would encourage you to define this before starting the experiment as this will influence what you actually measure. I would also suggest counting percentages of successful pollen germination or pollen tube formation in order to account for different total numbers of pollen in each solution. Pollen are small and it would be very difficult to get the same exact number of total pollen grains each time!

Let me know what you decide or if you have any questions! Good luck with your experiment!

Daniel