- Graduate and undergraduate students stike a pose next to their exhibit tables.
The Botany Department continued its tradition of participating in the Darwin Day festivities February 13, 2010.
The Botany exhibits for Darwin Day were truly a collaborative effort among faculty, staff, and 22 graduate and undergraduate students.
The day provided a number of local youngsters the chance to make models, tiny gardens and see insects and other animals on display.
See: Pictures from Darwin Day.
The day included exhibits such as:
Dr. Ken Cameron presented a talk on Charles Darwin and Orchids: Confessions of 201 Year-Old Orchid Fanatic. Cameron’s lab also demonstrated videos of some of the mechanisms by which orchids achieve cross-pollination, along with a poster showing phylogenetic relationships among the five subfamilies of orchids.
- Insects and other arthropods on display during Darwin Day.
Dr. David Baum’s lab engaged kids in hands-on molecular biology work, teaching how to perform DNA extractions from wheat germ, and also on evolutionary concepts, using a board game to show how pieces of DNA can be moved between different species to understand morphological evolution.
Dr. Eve Emshwiller’s lab created a table where visitors could guess the origin of their favorite plant foods. Some of the most popular plant foods were chocolate, vanilla, apples, soy, coffee and even pizza.
Dr. Linda Graham’s lab presented samples of green, red and brown algae and attendees used microscopes to see some algae. The lab also displayed edible algae such as the dried sushi wrap and a plastic giant kelp.
Drs. Tom Givnish and Ken Sytsma’s lab exhibited a variety of adaptations for nutrient acquisition and spore dispersal found in fungi, including Nematode-trapping Arthrobotrys, phototropic Pilobolus, various lichen-forming fungi, and a variety of other local and economically important species.
Dr. Joy Zedler’s lab exhibited and helped with some of the activities on convergent and divergen evolution of organisms.