Team Echinacea seeks a MS student who is enthusiastic about prairie conservation and research and wants to get a jump start on their thesis during the summer 2025 field season before matriculation into the fall 2025 program. This student would be advised by Dr. Wagenius in the Plant Biology and Conservation program at Northwestern University.
We seek someone who is broadly interested in working on ecology, evolution, or conservation biology of plants or insects in fragmented prairie habitat. The opportunity provides summer funding to conduct fieldwork, lead projects, and build on existing infrastructure to develop a research project at our study site in western Minnesota.
The questions that motivate Team Echinacea are both applied and fundamental. We ask questions about how we can better conserve prairie plants and pollinators with goals of generating concrete answers for stewards, managers, practitioners, and policymakers. Our project also addresses some very fundamental research questions and contributes to better basic scientific understanding of biological processes. Our lab centers mental health, work-life balance, and values diverse perspectives; we foster a stimulating, supportive atmosphere for lab members to learn from and teach one another.
Potential Projects include:
- Effects of habitat fragmentation on common native long-lived perennial plants
- Effects of hybridization of a non-local plant species with a local native species
- Trade-offs between current pollination and future reproductive effort in Echinacea
- Conservation ecology of rare plants in fragmented prairie habitat
- Ecology & propagation of plants that do not establish well in restorations
- Population size of native bee populations in small prairie remnants
Requirements Undergraduate degree in relevant field
Desired qualifications Competitive candidates will have training in community ecology, ecosystem ecology, restoration ecology or conservation biology. Candidates with strong field experience, evidence of leadership, communication skills, evidence of outreach and collaboration, and dedication to making science more welcoming to underrepresented groups will be viewed favorably.
Application materials and instructions If you are interested in this position please see the PBC website for more information on how to apply and contact Stuart. Applications for the program are due February 15th.
Current graduate students
Dissertation title: The role that parasitic plants play in prairie communities
Thesis topic: How burning affects species diversity and richness of plants in the Asteraceae family in remnant and restored prairies
Thesis title: The Burns and the Bees: a landscape-scale fire experiment on bee nesting
Former graduate students
Thesis title: Heritability of fire-stimulated flowering in a long-lived perennial
Dissertation title: Investigating impacts of prescribed fire on flowering phenology and reproduction in grassland perennials
Thesis title: Where do bees build their nests? The influence of land-use history and microhabitat on nest presence of ground-nesting bees
Dissertation title: Investigating fitness consequences of pollen movement and its dependence on spatiotemporal isolation
