Community Phylogeny
MSc Research, 2014 – 2016
Advised by Benjamin Baiser and Emily Sessa
For my Master's research I reconstructed the evolutionary relationships between species found in the pine rockland flora. Using the Institute for Regional Conservation Floristic Inventory of South Florida as our guide, we set out to collect as many plant species found in this globally critically imperiled ecosystem as possible. Using a combination of newly collected plant material and existing herbarium specimens I extracted and sequenced DNA from over 500 species and generated a community phylogeny that represented about 92% of pine rockland species.
Relevant Publications:
Advised by Benjamin Baiser and Emily Sessa
For my Master's research I reconstructed the evolutionary relationships between species found in the pine rockland flora. Using the Institute for Regional Conservation Floristic Inventory of South Florida as our guide, we set out to collect as many plant species found in this globally critically imperiled ecosystem as possible. Using a combination of newly collected plant material and existing herbarium specimens I extracted and sequenced DNA from over 500 species and generated a community phylogeny that represented about 92% of pine rockland species.
Relevant Publications:
- Trotta, Lauren B., Benjamin Baiser, Jennifer Possley, Daijiang Li, James Lange, Sarah Martin, and Emily B. Sessa. 2018. “Community Phylogeny of the Globally Critically Imperiled Pine Rockland Ecosystem.” American Journal of Botany.
- Trotta, Lauren B., Zachary A. Siders, Emily B. Sessa, and Benjamin Baiser. 2021. "The role of phylogenetic scale in Darwin’s Naturalization Conundrum in the critically imperiled pine rockland ecosystem." Diversity and Distributions.
Historic Vegetation Plots in
Urban Miami-Dade Fragment
PhD Research, 2017 – Present
Advised by Benjamin Baiser
I resampled 19 historic vegetation plots in urban Miami-Dade pine rockland fragments. Established as part of a larger sampling effort in 1994, these plots have now been revisited at least three times. I am interested in leveraging this one-of-a-kind data set to understand how fire and land use as well as fragment level abiotic and biotic factors have shaped plant diversity over the past 25 years. This project was in collaboration with team of phenomenal South Florida botanical experts.
I am also interested in bringing the historic data set back to life so that it is more accessible to both land managers and scientists in the future. More on that soon...
Advised by Benjamin Baiser
I resampled 19 historic vegetation plots in urban Miami-Dade pine rockland fragments. Established as part of a larger sampling effort in 1994, these plots have now been revisited at least three times. I am interested in leveraging this one-of-a-kind data set to understand how fire and land use as well as fragment level abiotic and biotic factors have shaped plant diversity over the past 25 years. This project was in collaboration with team of phenomenal South Florida botanical experts.
I am also interested in bringing the historic data set back to life so that it is more accessible to both land managers and scientists in the future. More on that soon...
TREC Pineland
2017 – Present
The University of Florida Tropical Research and Education Center (TREC) is home to an 8 acre pine rockland habitat fragment. The TREC pineland is an excellent representation of the variety of habitats that can be found across the range of other urban pine rockland fragments. Within this single fragment there are three distinct habitats: 1) pine rocklands habitat that has been well maintained by prescribed fire. 2) Pine rockland habitat that in the absence of fire has succeeded into a hardwood dominated hammock. 3) Pine rockland habitat that was previously disturbed and subsequently scraped to the limestone bedrock in an effort to restore the native plant community.
The goal of this long term project is to restore the TREC pineland and monitor it's progress using repeated vegetation samples. During 2017 we established one National Ecological Observatory Network-style vegetation monitoring plots in each of these three habitat types and began collecting community data. In June 2018 a collaboration between UF and The Nature Conservancy resulted in the TREC pine rockland receiving a prescribed fire. Check out this video for more: UF IFAS Restoring Pine Rockland Ecosystems with Fire.
The University of Florida Tropical Research and Education Center (TREC) is home to an 8 acre pine rockland habitat fragment. The TREC pineland is an excellent representation of the variety of habitats that can be found across the range of other urban pine rockland fragments. Within this single fragment there are three distinct habitats: 1) pine rocklands habitat that has been well maintained by prescribed fire. 2) Pine rockland habitat that in the absence of fire has succeeded into a hardwood dominated hammock. 3) Pine rockland habitat that was previously disturbed and subsequently scraped to the limestone bedrock in an effort to restore the native plant community.
The goal of this long term project is to restore the TREC pineland and monitor it's progress using repeated vegetation samples. During 2017 we established one National Ecological Observatory Network-style vegetation monitoring plots in each of these three habitat types and began collecting community data. In June 2018 a collaboration between UF and The Nature Conservancy resulted in the TREC pine rockland receiving a prescribed fire. Check out this video for more: UF IFAS Restoring Pine Rockland Ecosystems with Fire.