Rooted in Research

Holding Water

Due to climate change and rising global demand for tequila and mezcal, the biodiversity of agave plants is now threatened. Adjunct assistant professor Hector Ortiz is developing new methods for agave cultivation that draw from the ancient agricultural practices of Indigenous peoples in Mexico. For thousands of years, Indigenous communities have used agave plants for food, textiles and fermented drinks. When faced with arid conditions, they developed the first dryland farming systems for agave — drought-tolerant systems that focus on precipitation retention in soil. “My research looks to lessons left in history by ancestral people — lessons that can both benefit Indigenous communities and help us develop new agricultural practices for the future of agave,” says Ortiz.  

An Endangered Family Tree

As a graduate student at Northwestern, Olivia Grace Murrell ’23 MS studied the nearly extinct corpse flower. She traced the lineages of corpse flowers held in living collections around the world to evaluate how current management practices have affected the species’ genetic diversity. Now a doctoral student at Manchester Metropolitan University and a conservation scholar at Chester Zoo in the U.K., she is applying the same approach to study threatened tropical pitcher plants, a group of carnivorous plants that eat spiders and insects. 

Canopy Life

Grad student David “Max” Jones ’24 studies animals living in the canopies of forest fragments — stands of trees that have been separated due to land development, such as pineapple plantations and cow pastures — in the Panama Canal watershed. Jones is collaborating with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and a researcher at Germany’s Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior to monitor these canopies using wildlife cameras. “We’re seeing way more species that rely on these … very isolated little patches of forest than we ever would’ve dreamed,” says Jones, who hopes his introductory survey serves as a call to protect forests. 

Fossil Frenzy

Adjunct professor Patrick Herendeen ventured to Mongolia in 2011 in search of fossil evidence of flowering plants from the Early Cretaceous period. Instead, he and his team found a diversity of gymnosperms — plants that produce exposed seeds — including relatives of pines and ginkgo, and an array of extinct gymnosperms that have no living relatives. “That is the way paleontology works. You go looking for one thing and end up finding something else,” says Herendeen, who last visited Mongolia in 2019. His research team continues to examine fossil collections from past field trips. 

That’s Not My Name

Botanic gardens are havens for endangered plants. But plants in these gardens sometimes lack proper identification and documentation. Grad student Luciana Naftal Piniely’s research focuses on Tanzanian cycads — an ancient group of seed plants — that have been misidentified or mislabeled. Piniely, who grew up in Tanzania, uses DNA barcoding (a molecular identification method) to confirm the plants’ identities and determine their geographical origins. The goal is to improve conservation efforts and facilitate restoration. 

Learn more about Northwestern’s Program in Plant Biology and Conservation.