Mikel Vaughan-Coston
Pronouns: He/Him
Research Mentor(s): Regina Baucom
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology / LSA
Program: UROP
Session: Session 6 (3:40pm – 4:30pm)
Authors: Mikel Vaughan-Coston, Grace Zhang, Regina Baucom, Regina Baucom
Abstract
Understanding the Impact of herbicide resistance on plant evolution has been a well researched topic. However, looking at both resistance and tolerance is less studied. We asked how Ipomoea purpurea (the common morning glory) demonstrates the costs and benefits of resistance to the herbicide glyphosate after exposure. We set up a common garden field experiment with four treatment environments: glyphosate+/insecticide- glyphosate-/insecticide- glyphosate+/insecticide+ glyphosate-/insecticide+ , where the + indicates the presence of each treatment. We collected seed counts from the four treatments to measure the costs in fitness and its relationships with glyphosate resistance. To further estimate fitness among I. purpurea , we collected weekly flower counts. We are using R to analyze the data we have to look for relationships between resistance and fitness. This work will allow us to deepen our understanding of how herbicide resistance may impact I. purpurea evolution over time.
