Profile

• Time Zone

  Eastern

  
  
• Organization

  US Department of Agriculture

  
  
• Role

  Scientist Mentor: I will mentor teams of students online

  
  
• Research Interests (300 words)

  At the USDA, I work at the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to prevent the spread of pests of and diseases in international food trade.
  
  
  
  As a teacher, I try lots of different activities and projects to help inspire students to care about maintaining and increasing biodiversity, especially in urban areas.
  
  
  
  My recent research centers on urban ecology. I am working with the U.S. Forest Service to determine how the Philadelphia urban forests will respond to the invasion of the emerald ash borer. I am also studying how lichen distributions respond to different urban conditions in the Phildelphia-Camden Urban Matrix. In my dissertation research, I studied how soil lichens influence soil structure, chemistry and biological communities.

  
  
• Profile Question 1

  What is your favorite plant? Why?

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

  Frullania eboracensis:
  It is my favorite plant because barely anyone knows it's a plant! It's an epiphytic liverwort that grows all over the trees of the northeastern US and under a microscope, you can see it's a spectacular ladder of liverwort leaves making delicate traces across the bark.

  
  
• Profile Question 2

  What is the coolest thing you have discovered or learned about plants?

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

  That a plant-fungual mutualism might have been involved in the plant transition to the land!

  
  
• Profile Question 3

  What was the first science experiment you ever designed? How did it turn out?

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

  I was trying to study the state of a lichen community on a polluted mountainside; I thought there is no way I can learn to identify all these lichens, and do so much repetitive data collection, but then I did, and we found out there was a lichen community recovery underway, which was really exciting!

  
  
• Availability

  I am currently available for mentoring, please send me team match invitations

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

  1

  
  

Recent Posts

SES Team 5 Natalie Madeleine Howe Apr 5, 2017

So glad to hear you've got plants growing in most of the pots! I was worried maybe something was wrong with the seeds you were using, but after all, they seem fine. It will be neat to see whether the pot 3 plant growth…

more

So glad to hear you've got plants growing in most of the pots! I was worried maybe something was wrong with the seeds you were using, but after all, they seem fine. It will be neat to see whether the pot 3 plant growth rate changes with the worms present!

SES Team 5 Natalie Madeleine Howe Mar 15, 2017

Looks good! What plants will be growing in the pots?

And do you have enough pots and worms to copy the experiment (make replicates)? I mean, can you make a setup with 3 pots with no worms,  3 pots with worms in them for weeks 0-2, then move…

more

Looks good! What plants will be growing in the pots?

And do you have enough pots and worms to copy the experiment (make replicates)? I mean, can you make a setup with 3 pots with no worms,  3 pots with worms in them for weeks 0-2, then move the worms to 3 other pots for weeks 2-4, then move the worms to the last 3 pots for the end of the experiment (12 pots total)?

It's good to have these copies (replicates) in case something bad happens, like one of the pots gets knocked over, or some of the worms die. If you just have one pot with worms in it for that period, you don't know if the results are accidental.  

SES Team 5 Natalie Madeleine Howe Mar 15, 2017

Looks good! What plants will be growing in the pots?

And do you have enough pots and worms to copy the experiment (make replicates)? I mean, can you make a setup with 3 pots with no worms,  3 pots with worms in them for weeks 0-2, then move…

more

Looks good! What plants will be growing in the pots?

And do you have enough pots and worms to copy the experiment (make replicates)? I mean, can you make a setup with 3 pots with no worms,  3 pots with worms in them for weeks 0-2, then move the worms to 3 other pots for weeks 2-4, then move the worms to the last 3 pots for the end of the experiment (12 pots total)?

It's good to have these copies (replicates) in case something bad happens, like one of the pots gets knocked over, or some of the worms die. If you just have one pot with worms in it for that period, you don't know if the results are accidental.