Bob Handelman
What happens when, every single day, you’ve been watering a greenhouse filled with Mimulus guttatus—a plant that can survive in a wide range of environments—and then you abruptly stop the flow?
A group of Yale faculty, postdocs, and undergraduates did just that for a recent study funded by the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies. They collected sample plants from across the US, Mexico, and Canada and grew them in the greenhouse shown here, on the fifth floor of the Yale Science Building. “We kept the soil fully moist. Then we cut them off,” notes Professor Erika Edwards. “Some died right away, and others were still hanging on, which is what we wanted.” The team, led by Jenn Coughlan, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, is studying drought response. (Edwards is at the back; postdoctoral associate Vanessa Tonet is in the foreground.)
“Now we have a ton of data we need to collect, and so much more data processing to do,” says Edwards, director of Yale’s Marsh Botanical Garden and—by extension—the greenhouse on the fifth floor. And she wonders: “How much drought can they withstand?”
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