I am excited to announce that I have recently been given the rank of Shodan (1st degree black belt) in the art of Shin Shin Toitsu Aikido, by David Shaner Sensei, Erik Harrell Sensei, and Mark Stone Sensei. I would like to thank Case Sensei, Tarry Sensei, Clifford Sensei, McGrath Sensei, and Parsons Sensei at […]
Response of bluebunch wheatgrass to invasion: differences in competitive ability among invader‐experienced and naïve populations. Gibson, Nelson & Atwater I am very excited to have been a part of this publication, in which Alexis Gibson, once a fellow graduate student with me at the University of Montana, investigated evidence of evolutionary responses of bluebuch […]
This past week I had the great pleasure of attending the 4th annual Andina workshop in Bariloche, Argentina, organized by Mariana Chiuffo (Inibioma Conicet), Roger Cousens (U. Melbourne), Kay Hodgins (Monash U.), Ingolf Kuhn (UFZ, Halle), Brendon Larsson (U. Waterloo), Martin Nunez (Inibioma Conicet), and Bruce Webber (CSIRO, Perth). We enjoyed spectacular scenery in the […]
I am extremely excited to announce that I will be joining Earlham College, as an Assistant Professor of Biology, in July 2018. I admire the strength of the Biology Program at Earlham College and its dedication to the education of the next generation of global thinkers, leaders, and citizens, and I am honored to have […]
Our recently published paper documenting shifts in the climatic niches of introduced species has been featured in an Editorial published in Nature today. A link to the article can be found here!
Climatic niche shifts are common in introduced plants. Atwater, Ervine, Barney (link) (pdf) I am very excited to announce that our paper has just been accepted for publication by Nature: Ecology & Evolution. In it, we show that almost 1000 invasvie plant species occupy much different climates in their introduced range than in their native range. […]
Competition and propagule density affect sexual and clonal propagation of a weed. Atwater, Kim, Tekiela, Barney This study was pioneered by Wonjae Kim, an undergraduate student at Virginia Tech who designed and executed it on a grant from the Fralin Life Sciences Institute. Wonjae confirmed that Johnsongrass establishes readily both from seed and from buried […]
Ecotypic diversity of a dominant grassland species resists exotic invasion Yang, Callaway, Atwater In this study, Lixue Yang showed that bluebunch wheatgrass (Pseudorogneria spicata) populations with greater within species diversity were pound-for-pound more resistant to invasion by spotted knapweed (Centaurea stoebe) than populations with less species diversity, by an order of magnitude. Dr. Yang attributed this […]
Evidence for fine-scale habitat specialization in an invasive weed Atwater, Fletcher, Dickinson, Paterson, Barney (pdf) In previous studies, we found evidence for striking genetic and phenotypic differentiation in Johnsongrass (Sorghum halepense) populations collected throughout the United States. Here, we report that Johnsongrass may be adapting to local habitat variation. Johnsongrass from non-agricultural populations competed better in […]