Profile

• Time Zone

  Eastern

  
  
• Organization

  Cornell University

  
  
• Role

  Scientist Mentor: I will mentor teams of students online

  
  
• Research Interests (300 words)

  Botanists like myself are fascinated with the different ways plant can mate because it explains why some groups of plants have lots of species of plants and why there are other groups with very few species.
  
  Similar to how you have a family tree of your relatives, I am looking at the pineapple family tree (phylogeny) to compare how closely related species of pineapples mate in different ways. To describe these differences, I look at flower shape traits (e.g., flower size, where floral organs are positioned in the flower) to see if those explain why closely related species of pineapples mate in different ways.
  
  
  The more other scientists and I learn about how plants mate, we can use the knowledge to save plant biodiversity, especially for plants that cannot make seeds with their own flowers. In the case of these plants, conservation efforts will have to include intervention during pollination to make sure plants can produce seeds.

  
  
• Profile Question 1

  What is your favorite plant? Why?

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

  Without a doubt, my favorite plant is the common mullein (Verbascum thapsus). It was the first plant that captured my heart, and because it's a widespread cosmopolitan weed, I've been fortunate enough to come across it all over the United States! Mullein can grow up to 6-7 feet tall, so whenever I encounter a mullein plant that's about my height, I try to get a picture standing next to it. I'm always on the hunt for the tallest mullein!

  
  
• Profile Question 2

  Can you describe your attitude toward science when you were in high school?

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

  I had a love-hate relationship with science in high school. While I enjoyed physics and biology, I really struggled both academically and mentally with chemistry. When I took chemistry in 10th grade, the challenges I faced in the class almost led me down a different career path than becoming a scientist. However, I then took biology the following year and fell in love with the subject. In my senior year, I took an environmental science class and was engrossed by the idea that there are scientists who work outside! From that point onwards, I knew I wanted to pursue a career that revolved around biology and field-based work.

  
  
• Profile Question 3

  What is best about being a scientist?

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

  The best part of being a scientist is getting paid to ask questions about the natural world around us! Along with asking questions, being a scientist means that you're part of a community of individuals who share your passion for asking questions, brainstorming ideas, and exploring new thoughts and hypotheses.

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

  1

  
  

Recent Posts

Plant Busters Josh Felton Nov 18 at 07:11pm

Hi Plant Busters, Thanks for sharing your hot and room-temperature trials! I am looking forward to your cold trial results. Is it possible to make the y-axis for the oxygen percentage smaller? It seems like it hovers around 16-18 degrees, and I…

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Hi Plant Busters, Thanks for sharing your hot and room-temperature trials! I am looking forward to your cold trial results. Is it possible to make the y-axis for the oxygen percentage smaller? It seems like it hovers around 16-18 degrees, and I wonder if you could see fine-scale differences. 

it is interesting that co2 peaked around 8 hours into the hot trial. I wonder if the plant was trying to find homeostasis or was heat stressed, but then around 6 hours in, it was able to then photosynthesize. I wonder if you would get similar results if you ran the trial again!

keep me in the loop with yalls updates. I am going to a plant retreat tomorrow until friday but i will have my laptop and will be checking my emails!

take it easy,

josh 

Plant Busters Josh Felton Nov 7 at 06:43pm

Yo! That is awesome to hear that yall are starting this experiment on Monday! The heater for the warm group sounds like a solid plan, and it sounds like yall have found a pretty good scheme for keeping the cold group cold while preventing cold…

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Yo! That is awesome to hear that yall are starting this experiment on Monday! The heater for the warm group sounds like a solid plan, and it sounds like yall have found a pretty good scheme for keeping the cold group cold while preventing cold shock for the plant. 

Let me know how the experiment goes, and I’m looking forward to seeing what you learn/ decide to implement in future tests

Cheers!

Plant Busters Josh Felton Nov 5 at 03:10pm

Hi Noah an Oliva, 

The setup for your experiment sounds great. How do you plan to keep the ice bath and heated temperature constant throughout your 24-hour time trial? Massive temperature fluctuations could affect your results. 

In…

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Hi Noah an Oliva, 

The setup for your experiment sounds great. How do you plan to keep the ice bath and heated temperature constant throughout your 24-hour time trial? Massive temperature fluctuations could affect your results. 

In regards to your hypothesis - i wonder if instead of 59 degrees that photosynthesis my slow down once the temperature gets near freezing and that potentially, above 93 degrees, the plant might be having more cellular respiration (releasing more co2 instead of oxygen)... maybe in the heat trial, photosynthesis might not be interrupted but rather is being balanced out by the extra co2 being introduced. 

Regardless, I am excited to see what your results look like. I guess one last question I have is how often do you plan to take data from the probes?