Undergraduate award winners @ Botany 2019
/Accolades for Ranft and Fauskee in Tucson, AZ
Edgar T. Wherry Award — Hannah Ranft
We are delighted to share that undergraduate researcher Hannah Ranft received the Edgar T. Wherry Award for best contributed paper in the Pteridological Section at the 2019 meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Tucson, AZ. Ranft, currently an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University, is conducting research at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History alongside members of the Grusz and Schuettpelz labs. During her undergraduate research project, Ranft collected data on spore size and reproductive mode (sexual vs. apomictic) from specimens of Pteris housed at the National Museum of Natural History (US). Combining these data with an updated molecular phylogeny, Ranft examined the geographic and phylogenetic distribution of reproductive mode across the genus worldwide.
Young Botanist Award — Blake Fauskee
Recent University of Minnesota Duluth graduate Blake Fauskee (BS Biology, 2019) received a Botanical Society of America Young Botanist Award at the 2019 meeting for his work exploring genotypic diversity in the geographically widespread apomictic fern Myriopteris lindheimeri. Fauskee presented his results at Botany 2018 in Rochester, MN and at the 2018 Evolution meetings in Montpelier, France (Fauskee et al. in prep.).
