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Kathryn Turner
Ph.D. Student
kgturner (at) interchange.ubc.ca
What makes a plant species become invasive? Plant species are constantly being transported to new habitats, largely through human activity, but only some species survive, and only relatively few pose serious threats to their new habitats. My doctoral work will address this fundamental question by examining possible molecular mechanisms underlying the evolution of invasiveness using one of North America’s worst weeds, diffuse knapweed, as a model. If we can identify genetic changes associated with invasiveness, then we can better predict which plants pose the most threat, and better target prevention and mitigation efforts.
My previous experience has been cosmopolitan, including the study of intron splicing in yeast mitochondria, high-throughput genotyping looking for selective sweeps in a hybrid sunflower species, population studies of birds in central Texas, management of invasive salt cedar, adaptive radiation of seed oils in common sunflower, and the phylogenetics and evolution of a member of the mint family on the Canary Islands.