Organismal Biology & Ecology Department Receives NSF Grant

Associate Professor of Organismal Biology and Ecology (OBE) and Southwest Studies Dr. Rachel Jabaily and her two students Magdalyn Rowley-Lange ’26 and Cricket Mohring ’28, are conducting research this summer on how plants in the pineapple family respond to nitrogen. The team’s study is funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant.

Jabaily, Rowley-Lange, and Mohring are hoping to develop the tropical bromeliad family, which has over 3500 species, as a model group for understanding how nitrogen scarcity can influence physiology, growth and nitrogen cycling through ecosystems. They are conducting experiments on ten species in the CC Greenhouse in the Barnes Science Center, varying the amount of nitrogen received by the different species. The plants’ growth, development, and decay rate are carefully tracked over time. Ultimately, this project will help provide a more detailed framework for understanding the evolution of plant diversity.

Dr. Karolina Heyduk of the University of Connecticut (UConn) spent the last week of June at CC, working with Jabaily and her students in the CC Greenhouse. Some of the research took place at dawn, dusk, and at night, as some of the plants perform parts of photosynthesis at night, which Jabaily says is rare.

The three-year NSF grant that’s funding this study began in December 2024 and is expected to last until November 2027. This interdisciplinary team is made up of scientists and students from UConn, New York Botanical Garden, and CC, with the goal of training a new generation of scientists in collaborative greenhouse-based research. The team will also be doing outreach activities with high school educators and students later in Florida, where some of the plants are native.

While OBE majors Rowley-Lange and Mohring are the only two full-time research students working on the project this summer, many others have been and will be involved, Jabaily says.

This is Rowley-Lange’s second summer working with Jabaily. She says that she knew she wanted to do research with Jabaily after taking Field Botany as a first-year student.

“Dr. Jabaily has always believed in me and supported me as I learn and make mistakes, helping me to feel as though I belong,” says Rowley-Lange. “I loved the sense of place that studying native flora provided me and have sought out every opportunity available to learn more! I am currently obsessed with the grass family, Poaceae, and with photosynthesis!”

Last summer Rowley-Lange and Jabaily began planning her thesis project, which Rowley-Lange says weaves into Dr. Jabaily’s work with the grant.

“Ever since taking Biology of Plants as a first-year student, I have been fascinated by photosynthesis and I was really interested to learn that the Bromeliads Dr. Jabaily works with for her grant all live along a spectrum of C3 to CAM photosynthesis,” Rowley-Lange says. “CAM is an adaptation of the ancestral C3 photosynthesis that some plants have. In Bromeliads we often see CAM evolve in dry, or arid, environments because it gives the plants a higher water use efficiency. CAM plants save water because they open their stomata (little pores in their leaves) at night when temperatures are lower, meaning less water evaporates into the air while the necessary gas exchange of CO2 and O2 occurs. I am most interested in the plants who live in the middle of the C3 to CAM spectrum, often called constitutive CAM plants. These plants can often also be ‘facultative’ if they upregulate the amount of nocturnal CO2 assimilation in response to drought stress. This makes CAM a really interesting plastic trait that is, in part, environmentally controlled.”

Rowley-Lange is working with two species involved in Jabaily’s grant research: the CAM Billbergia brasiliensis and the C3 Puya mirabilis. She has been growing time cohorts of these species since last summer, so her oldest cohort is a year old and her youngest is about three months.

Rowley-Lange says her classes at CC have prepared her well for this research experience, as she’s been able to learn the process of CAM photosynthesis in-depth, using knowledge from her Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry classes.

“I have also been able to apply R studio skills from my Biostatistics class and an understanding of plants from my Biology of Plants, Evolution, and Plant Ecophysiology classes.” Rowley-Lange says. “Using all this information has made the past three years of hard work feel worth it because I get to use so many different skills I’ve learned by applying them to something I care a lot about!”

While Rowley-Lange is enjoying all aspects of her research experience, she says her favorite part about research this summer has been the community.

“Working on a grant makes me feel like I am one small piece of a much greater whole and every time I have a question, there is someone in another state who knows exactly how to answer it,” Rowley-Lange says. “The level of care and support was really salient when Dr. Heyduk very generously visited us and taught me how to use the LI-COR to measure photosynthesis in real time! Dr. Heyduk also taught me an additional protocol with titrations to measure the concentration of malic acid in leaf tissue which is another indicator of CAM. Dr. Heyduk and Dr. Jabaily also gave me really thoughtful and helpful advice for navigating the upcoming conference and thinking about my future in botany!”

Rowley-Lange adds that she is grateful for Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Dr. Eli Fahrenkrug, who helped her modify and expand upon the titration protocol to work well for CC’s facility and tools. Additionally, she had the opportunity to work with Dr. Brad Oberle at the New York Botanical Garden, who is also on the grant with Jabaily.

Mohring was also inspired to do research with Jabaily after taking her Biology of Plants class. “I really enjoyed her teaching style, and how she not only taught me many new things about the world of plants, but inspired me to do my own research, and pursue things that I found interest in,” says Mohring, who plans to minor in Studio Art and is looking forward to combing their love of art with their passion for scientific research, possibly through the discipline of scientific illustration.

Throughout the last academic year and into the beginning of the summer, Mohring primarily worked in the CC Greenhouse.

“I measured all of the plants that are in our research grant, now around 80 plants in total, tracking their growth, reproduction status, and relative life history,” Mohring says. “We have begun to see significant differences between our two treatments of plants, one being fertilized with a high nitrogen solution, and the other with a low nitrogen solution. Many of the plants using high nitrogen are reproducing asexually much faster, making flowers and baby plants, whereas the lower nitrogen treatment plants are significantly lighter green in color, reproducing slower, and not producing as many babies as those with the opposite treatment!”

Recently, Mohring has created slides using the same plants that Rowley-Lange has been doing her thesis research on. “During this tedious but wonderful process, I have taken samples of each of the plants, placed them in a fixative solution, and have been taking them through gradients of ethanol and Citrisolv, in hopes of dehydrating the tissue to properly see each cell,” Mohring says. “They are then soaked in Paraplast Plus, or a wax-like solution, for up to two weeks, and finally set in a block of solid wax. After all of this, we are able to slice thin sections of each of these blocks, place them onto a glass slide, and measure the thickness of each cell in the tissue!”

Through this process, the team is hoping to observe the relationship between cell size and compare the anatomy of C3 photosynthesis plants and CAM plants. Mohring says that while most of their time this summer is spent taking data from their plants in the greenhouse and working with their tissue samples to make slides, they really enjoy their time working with their peers on the research grant at the New York Botanical Garden and UConn. The team meets every Monday to talk about their separate research and, occasionally, will all read a paper and talk through prior research so that they can all understand what is going on in their field as a whole and how it relates to the plant world.

Mohring says that one of their favorite things this summer is how much this grant has helped them pursue their own interests.

“Although I am working on this research, all focusing on one goal, Dr. Jabaily has really emphasized that this is not only for scientific research, but for the mentorship of young students like me,” Mohring says. “I am so lucky to have this opportunity to be a part of something larger, and something that has significant value, all while I am still young! Starting this research really helps me get perspective on my future, and I hope to work under Professor Jabaily throughout my life here at Colorado College. Working alongside such talented and driven people has been incredibly inspiring to me, and it gives me hope to continue down this path of botany.”