Marx Lab

We are fortunate to live on a diverse planet. To understand biodiversity we first need to document how species are distributed across space. I have been cataloguing and describing floristic diversity for my entire scientific career. This work has taken me across the Pacific Northwest, the French Alps, New England, and the Sonoran Desert.

I am particularly interested in alpine ecosystems, but always seek new opportunities to expand my botanical horizons. Below, I briefly highlight a few of my recent expeditions.

Southern Rocky Mountains, CO/NM

For the past five years my lab group has been working to document baseline biodiversity of high-alpine ecosystems in the southern Rocky Mountains. We have collected >1,500 voucher specimens representing the diversity of vascular plants on 22 different mountain summits. These collections cataloged the distribution of around 200 different species and are currently being used by my team to understand the ecology and evolution of these specialized plants.

Sawtooth National Forest, ID

My love for alpine plants began in the Sawtooth Mountains in central Idaho. During 2012 and 2013, I collected alpine plants from different peaks across the Sawtooth, White Cloud, and Pioneer Mountain ranges for my PhD dissertation research on alpine community assembly. This work was possible with a Stillinger Herbarium Expedition Grant through the University of Idaho, some adventurous friends-turned-field-assistants, and the Sawtooth Mountain Guides, who were incredibly patient with my alpine botanizing. I collected voucher specimens for over 500 plants, many representing the first documentation of biodiversity in these remote areas.

French Alps

I moved to Grenoble, France in January 2014 to work for a year studying alpine plants at the Laboratoire d'Ecologie Alpine in collaboration with Dr. Sébastien Lavergne. Besides establishing life-long collaborations, I was able to participate in fieldwork in the French Alps. This included high-alpine floristic surveys in the Écrins National Park, and sampling leaf tissue for RNA-seq at the Lautaret Alpine Botanic Garden.

Harvard Forest, MA

For my postdoctoral research at the University of Arizona, I sampled leaves from a plant community at Harvard Forest throughout the growing season to quantify plasticity to environmental change at the functional genomic level. This was my first encounter with the flora of New England, and I was amazed by the diversity of ferns and deciduous trees!