Joanna Buswell

Email: Joanna.Buswell[at]vuw.ac.nz

Phone: +61 2 9385 8606

Evolution & Ecology Research Centre
School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of New South Wales
NSW 2052, Sydney
Australia


I am currently completing my masters in ecology at Victoria University of Wellington and the University of New South Wales, supervised by Angela Moles.

The research I am doing for my masters looks at rapid evolution of exotic plants in Australia and New Zealand.

Although we have many examples of rapid evolution occurring in introduced plants and animals in the literature, very few studies are of more than one species. This makes it difficult to assess how often a plant will evolve on short timescales when exposed to new environmental conditions. Knowing this is important for understanding:
  • How plants will respond to climate change
  • Whether evolution is an important part of the invasion process
Angela Moles and I are using herbarium specimens to examine change through time in leaf traits and height in plants introduced to both Australia and New Zealand. This novel approach allows us to look back in time at how multiple species introduced to these environments are changing simultaneously.