I am excited to announce my lab has been awarded a major grant from the Oak Spring Garden Foundation to fund our ongoing Post-Baccalaureate Fellowship program. We are delighted to have Shelby Meckstroth (C’17) join us this year as a post-bac fellow. Shelby graduated last year as an Ecology and Biodiversity major and conducted Honors research with me examining how physiological integration and phenotypic plasticity allow the dune plant, Hydrocotyle bonariensis, to ameliorate the effects of grazing and sand burial. She was a participant in the 2015 Field Study in Belize program and spent a semester studying abroad in Chile. As part of her Fellowship under this grant, she will be assisting with plant conservation initiatives across the state in association with the TN Plant Conservation Alliance. She will also be involved with my collaborative research project on the spatial genetic structure of Hillcane on the Cumberland Plateau. Shelby will be based in the Herbarium and will help oversee the NSF-funded digitization of our collection.