Museum nest specimens are botanical time capsules containing invaluabl e historical information about the plants from a specific place and time wh en they were built. Plants identified from historical nests can unlock new information about the ecology of extinct habitats.
In this talk, Sant a Clara University Biology Professor Justen Whittall describes his research on century-old nest specimens. For example, surrounding the San Franc isco Bay estuary were transitional habitats - the ecological gradient betwe en the tidal marsh and the upland. These habitats were lost during the 1900 s due to human-caused land use changes, and consequently, very little is kn own about this former native plant community. In attempts to improve our un derstanding of this endangered habitat, Dr. Whittall and his team sampled ~ 100-year-old song sparrow and savannah sparrow nests collected along the ma rgins of the San Francisco Bay estuary from natural history collections acr oss the country. They were able to successfully extract DNA, perform PCR (P olymerase Chain Reaction, a laboratory technique for studying DNA) and cond uct DNA sequence analysis on over 200 total nest samples. From this, they h ave confirmed the identity of some previous plant species from the transiti onal habitat and added several new residents to this list.
From the se investigations, it is clear that historical nest materials can be used t o reconstruct lost habitats thereby contributing essential information to h elp guide ongoing restoration efforts.
Learn more by reading Dr. Whit tall’s proof of concepts paper in PLOS ONE from 2021, online at journal s.plos.org/ plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0257624. Dr. Whitta ll co-authored the paper with Alex Rinkert, Ben Carter, Tracy Misiewicz, Ka tie LaBarbera and Dan Wenny.
Dr. Justen Whittall was born and raised in San Jose’s Blossom Valley. He took a field botany course at Santa Clara University and discovered that learning could be done outside the classroom . He then studied conservation genetics of endangered monkeyflowers an d columbines, particularly their spur lengths and flower colors, in light o f their pollinators. He is a professor at Santa Clara University where alon gside undergraduate research assistants, he studies plants – their flower c olor, conservation, restoration and genomics.
Zoom registratio n: www.cnps-scv.org/npls-2 0250130
Museum nest specimens are botanical time capsules containing invaluabl e historical information about the plants from a specific place and time wh en they were built. Plants identified from historical nests can unlock new information about the ecology of extinct habitats.
In this talk, Sant a Clara University Biology Professor Justen Whittall describes his research on century-old nest specimens. For example, surrounding the San Franc isco Bay estuary were transitional habitats - the ecological gradient betwe en the tidal marsh and the upland. These habitats were lost during the 1900 s due to human-caused land use changes, and consequently, very little is kn own about this former native plant community. In attempts to improve our un derstanding of this endangered habitat, Dr. Whittall and his team sampled ~ 100-year-old song sparrow and savannah sparrow nests collected along the ma rgins of the San Francisco Bay estuary from natural history collections acr oss the country. They were able to successfully extract DNA, perform PCR (P olymerase Chain Reaction, a laboratory technique for studying DNA) and cond uct DNA sequence analysis on over 200 total nest samples. From this, they h ave confirmed the identity of some previous plant species from the transiti onal habitat and added several new residents to this list.
From the se investigations, it is clear that historical nest materials can be used t o reconstruct lost habitats thereby contributing essential information to h elp guide ongoing restoration efforts.
Learn more by reading Dr. Whit tall’s proof of concepts paper in PLOS ONE from 2021, online at journals.plos.org/ plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.02 57624. Dr. Whittall co-authored the paper with Alex Rinkert, Ben Carter , Tracy Misiewicz, Katie LaBarbera and Dan Wenny.
Dr. Justen Whittall was born and raised in San Jose’s Blossom Valley. He took a field botany c ourse at Santa Clara University and discovered that learning could be done outside the classroom. He then studied conservation genetics of endang ered monkeyflowers and columbines, particularly their spur lengths and flow er colors, in light of their pollinators. He is a professor at Santa Clara University where alongside undergraduate research assistants, he studies pl ants – their flower color, conservation, restoration and genomics.
Zoom registration: ww w.cnps-scv.org/npls-20250130