Looking at Flowers Closely: The Delight in Unexpected Findings
Date + Time: March 22nd, 7 PM ET
Location: Zoom
Join Bird Club for our first talk of the season with Joan Edwards. The talk will commence online via Zoom. Please email Bird Club if you need any assistance with the link above.
Flowers with close to 400,000 species provide a kaleidoscope of diversity. Each flower with its own story begs exploration. In this talk, Joan will share some unexpected findings often only seen by taking a second look, through chance observation, or by speeding up or slowing down time. She explores plant behaviors using both time-lapse and high-speed cameras. Then by examining the plants in their native habitat she explores why these extraordinary behaviors might have evolved or how these behaviors might benefit the plant.
Joan Edwards is a botanist with a special interest in understanding the biomechanics and adaptive significance of ultra-fast plant movements—plant actions that are so quick they occur on the order of milliseconds. Looking closely at plants and using high-speed video (up to 100,000 fps) she studies the evolutionary significance and biomechanics of fast movements including the trebuchet catapults of bunchberry dogwood, the vortex rings of Sphagnum moss, the splash cups of liverworts and the “poppers” of wood sorrel. Her early fieldwork was on the impact of moose on plants in the boreal forests of Isle Royale National Park. She continues to research plant-animal interactions from herbivory to pollination. Her current studies on pollination focus on the evolution and conservation of flowers and their pollinators, which is critical to understand in the face of global pollinator decline and loss of species worldwide.
Joan Edwards is Professor of Biology at Williams College where she has been a faculty member since 1979. At Williams she teaches courses in Ecology, Plant Systematics, Biology and Social Issues and Conservation Biology. She completed her Ph.D. in Botany at the University of Michigan where she also did her undergraduate studies. She is the Samuel Fessenden Clarke Professor of Biology and is also a faculty member in the Environmental Studies Program at Williams.
