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Ervin Lab REU Student Projects |
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2006 Students
John Gordon (University of Delaware)
John's work initially attempted to follow up on Erica Althans-Schmidt's project from 2005, but then expanded to look at alligatorweed across the entirety of Bluff Lake. The result was a nice lake-wide survey of aquatic plants and water quality that suggested lake-scale effects of the alligatorweed infestation.
Kristen Ostermann (Mississippi State)
Kristen's project was more lab-based than most of the REU projects, but was a nice piece of work looking at mycorrhizae in cogongrass and its neighbors. As with Brittany Garvin's project, the results were somewhat surprising.
Devin Yeatman (Pennsylvania State University)
Devin is a geography student from Penn State, so he was interested in large-scale patterns of plant distribution. His project focused on spring-fed wetlands of the Tombigbee National Forest, just south of the MSU campus. He found some interesting influences of soil properties on the distribution of ferns in the forest.
2005 Students
Brittany Garvin (South Carolina, Upstate)
Brittany was interested in terrestrial invasive plants, and worked with cogongrass (Imperata cylindrica) to determine whether some areas along its invading front might be more susceptible than other areas of MS to invasion. This work involved growing cogongrass from rhizomes in soil from three areas of MS.
Erica Althans-Schmidt (Western Washington)
Erica's interest in wetland ecosystems led her to study the effects of alligatorweed (Alternanthera philoxeroides) on a suite of water quality parameters. Her project was conducted on Bluff Lake at the nearby Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge.
2004 Students
Melissa Smothers (Humboldt State) and Cori Anderson (Birmingham Southern)
These students were interested in whether degree of invasibility (or relative abundance of invasive plant species) differed among wetlands of different types. Their project was conducted throughout the state of Mississippi, using spring-fed wetlands (east-central MS), depressional wetlands (north half of the state), littoral zone wetlands (central MS), riverine wetlands (north half of the state), and flat seepage wetlands (coastal areas of MS).
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