Highlighted Members
ESA – Plant Population Ecology Early Career Highlight
February 2025
Maddie Wallace
Maddie is a PhD student at the University of Arizona, working in the lab of Dr. Rachel Mitchell. Maddie was one of the recipients of the 2024 PPE Student Travel Awards, to attend the Annual Meeting in Long Beach. There, she presented on her research into how transgenerational plasticity in response to drought affects functional traits of Plantago patagonica.
Can you tell us a bit about your graduate research?
My research explores how climate change drives vegetation changes in arid ecosystems, spanning from plant population dynamics to community-level shifts, and how this information can be used to inform climate-resilient ecological restoration and land management decisions. Most recently, I am wrapping up a project that focuses on Plantago patagonica, a priority restoration species for the Bureau of Land Management’s Colorado Plateau Native Plant Program. P. patagonica is a small annual forb with a very wide range, stretching across North America, parts of northern Mexico, and parts of South America. Here in the Sonoran Desert, it’s a familiar sight in late winter and early spring. It has a distinct woolly texture, and its dense, cylindrical flower spikes, tipped in white and yellow, capture attention in March and April despite its modest size. It often forms mats across the desert floor. It’s one of my favorite late winter annuals to spot! It’s also a favorite in restoration projects—it rapidly germinates and establishes well, and can build a resilient seed bank, making it a valuable species for large-scale restoration efforts.
In the past, restoration practitioners have subscribed to the idea that “local is best”, assuming that locally sourced seed will outperform nonlocal seed in restoration projects. However, as many ecosystems experienced rapidly accelerating changes in their climate, some practitioners have begun to explore sourcing seed outside of their local ecoregions to enhance the resilience of future plant populations. With its extensive natural range and widespread use in seed mixes across the west, P. patagonica serves as an ideal model for exploring questions about climate resiliency in plant materials.
There is growing evidence that suggests that the conditions a parent plant experiences can affect the traits of their offspring through a process called transgenerational plasticity. This may be one way species can adapt to a rapidly changing climate. Understanding how much these transgenerational effects matter, especially when it comes to drought resilience, could help guide restoration practitioners in choosing climate-resilient seed.
In my research, I use eleven populations of P. patagonica from across a climatic gradient in the Southwest to investigate how parental environmental conditions affect offspring phenotype and fitness. More specifically, I examine if drought exposure in the parental generation changes how offspring plants respond to drought, and if this response is adaptive. Our results suggest that drought exposure in the parental generation can confer some drought resilience in offspring. We also found that the environmental variability of the seed source location modulated these responses. We are currently working on a manuscript of these results and hope to have them published soon!
What are your career goals?
In the long term: I’m interested in careers that integrate research, community engagement, and land management! I’d like to continue studying how plant populations and communities respond to climate change and then use that information to help inform land management decisions. One of my favorite things about being in the natural resources field is that most projects don’t happen in a vacuum. There’s always a social dimension to land management and incorporating diverse perspectives from both inside and outside academia makes our projects a lot stronger. I’m looking forward to a career full of collaboration, engagement, and curiosity!
In the short term: finish my PhD! The next chapters of my dissertation will explore how plant composition and diversity have shifted over the past few decades in response to climate and land use on the Santa Rita Experimental Range (https://santarita.arizona.edu), a working rangeland. After that, I’d love to find a postdoc where I can use my research skills to work collaboratively with natural resource managers.
What is one unexpected pleasure you’ve derived from working in plant population ecology?
I really appreciate the wide variety of experiences I’ve had since starting grad school! I’ve spent a summer in the greenhouse, another summer and fall out in the Sonoran grasslands for my dissertation, a couple of weeks in the Chiricahua mountains teaching high schoolers about science and the environment, some time in Northern Arizona helping my lab mates study the dry Ponderosa pine forests, and so much more. I feel really lucky to have spent so much time exploring so many different ecosystems. Also, young Maddie would be thrilled to know she spends a lot of her time wandering around outside looking at plants!
Past Highlighted Young PPE Member of the Month
Click here for past interviews
Grant Yu Liu, January 2022 Charlotte Brown, February 2019 Becky Dalton, December 2018 Karin Burghardt, June 2018 Georgia Fredeluces (Hart), January 2018 Josh Lynn, December 2017 Aubrie James, November 2017 Rachel Spigler, June 2017 Matt Tye, March 2017 Nicole Rafferty, November 2016 Anny Chung, October 2016 Robert K. Shriver, September 2016 Martina Treurnicht, June 2015 Roberto Salguero-Gomez, January 2015 Eugenio Larios Cárdenas, December 2014 Gerardo Arceo Gomez, November 2014 Billie Gould, 2013 Scott McArt, 2013