Biology Education lecturer, Rebecca Kartzinel, was in the field this past summer in Yellowstone National Park as part of an ongoing research collaboration among the Brown University Herbarium, Tyler Kartzinel's Conservation and Molecular Ecology lab in EEOB, and biologists with the National Park Service. Also accompanying them were two undergraduate students as SPRINT|UTRA recipients studying field ecology and botany, Diandra Polt and Eliza Atwood. Other members of the Brown team this summer included EEOB Ph.D. student Hannah Hoff and EEOB/IBES postdoc Bethan Littleford-Colquhoun. The Yellowstone Ecology SPRINT|UTRA opportunity provides real-world experience to undergraduate students, where they work side-by-side with National Park Service (NPS) staff to assess the diets of large herbivores in Yellowstone National Park. Program participants work with the park botanist to collect and prepare herbarium specimens and secure plant tissue samples for DNA analysis, and the park bison biologist to collect samples from migrating large herbivores at long-term habitat monitoring sites. Their work supports building a plant DNA reference library to evaluate large herbivore diets.

More information on the Herbarium can be found here: https://www.brown.edu/research/projects/herbarium/

More information on the project can be found here: http://www.kartzinellab.com/research.html