2013 Mentors and Projects

Project: Flora of Missouri. David Bogler currently manages the Research Experiences for Undergraduates Program and botanical laboratory at MBG, overseeing staff, students, and visitors using the anatomy, molecular, microscopes, and SEM equipment. Currently there are three ongoing projects available:

1) DNA Barcoding the Plants of Shaw Nature Reserve. An exciting new development in plant systematics is the rise of DNA barcoding -...

Project: Invasive species impacts on tree seedling recruitment. Located in the heart of the St. Louis metropolitan area, just 10 miles west of downtown St. Louis, the 34-acre study Litzsinger Road Ecology Center (LREC) encompasses a rich variety of habitats including bottomland forest, restored prairie, and an urban creek. The LREC prairie was part of a larger prairie in pre-settlement times. The area was used for agriculture, but since 1988 it has been the site a pr...

Project: Species delimitation based on continuous morphological characters. Delimiting species is essential for elucidating the processes driving the origin and maintenance of biological diversity, as well as for basic and applied research in many areas of biology. Yet, how one goes about delimiting species has been a controversial issue in systematics. A broad consensus seems to be growing around the notion of recognizing species as separately evolving segments of m...