Biodiversity Research Seminar Series (BRS)
BRS Chris Muir: Space, place, and pace: three tales from the mouths of plants
November 5, 2025, 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
Passcode: Ly69lt9*
host: Amy Angert
Title talk: Space, place, and pace: three tales from the mouths of plants
Abstract: Biodiversity comes in many forms. In this seminar, I will focus on variation in stomata, the mouths of plants. Stomata are pores on leaf surfaces that control the amount of CO2 available for photosynthesis and water lost through transpiration. I’ll discuss variation in stomatal density and size (space), distribution on the leaf surface (place), and kinetics (pace) through an evolutionary lens.
Short biography: My lab in the Department of Botany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison uses empirical and theoretical approaches to study adaptive evolution in plant ecophysiology. I began my career doing a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology at Indiana University, followed by a Biodiversity postdoc at UBC, and faculty position at the University of Hawai’i.