Dena – Associate Professor of Botany
I am interested in how plant-environment interactions generate and maintain plant diversity, and the processes underlying the origin and extinction of species. I primarily use the California flora to address these questions because of its astonishing variation both among and within species. In particular, I focus on the members of Phrymaceae which display a wide variety of flower types, mating systems, range sizes and habitat specializations making them ideal for investigating evolutionary and ecological processes that generate diversity.
I received my Bachelor’s degree in Botany in 1999 from University of Washington where I had my first research experience mentored by Doug Schemske and Toby Bradshaw. I was lucky to work as a field botanist in the Pacific Northwest and the Yosemite region from 2000-2008 and received my Ph.D. in Population Biology from UC Davis in 2013 with Maureen Stanton. I did postdocs studying mating system evolution at University of Minnesota with Yaniv Brandvain and at Washington State University with Jeremiah Busch. I was hired as a tenure track faculty member in the Department of Biology at Cal Poly in 2017. dgrossen[at]calpoly.edu
Masters
Rachel Friesen is a second year graduate student researching the impacts of climate change on alpine plant communities in Yosemite National Park. She is resurveying over 60 historic subalpine and alpine vegetation monitoring plots in Yosemite’s backcountry. She is also installing new monitoring plots in the park that will be more sensitive to detecting plant community turnover. Since finishing her undergraduate degree at UC Davis, she has worked with American Rivers, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the National Park Service on a variety of ecological restoration and vegetation monitoring projects.
Magdalene Lo is a graduate student investigating speciation in California plant taxa through the lens of ecology. Previously, she studied Castilleja species delimitation in the Sarah J. Jacobs Lab at the California Academy of Sciences, focusing on pollen morphology, chromosome counts, fieldwork, and phenomic data collection from herbarium specimens. She also participated in vegetation and soils surveys in California chaparral and Great Basin sagebrush habitats for the Bureau of Land Management after receiving her undergraduate degree at UCLA.
Undergraduates
Brooke Wallasch Alpine plant community shifts in Yosemite 2022-present
Maddie Windsor Alpine plant community shifts in Yosemite 2023-present
Ben Sherwin Alpine plant community shifts in Yosemite 2023-present
Ewan McColl Alpine plant community shifts in Yosemite 2023-present
Molly Waddington Flower color evolution on harsh soils in Leptosiphon 2023-present
Emily Statts Flower color evolution on harsh soils in Leptosiphon 2023-present
Amy Ormiston Oak leaf heritability 2022-present
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Alums
Annie Zell completed her master’s work in 2023, exploring the evolution of plant life history and reproductive strategies at two different scales. At the microevolutionary scale she studied habitat and life history divergence between sympatric populations of the seep spring monkeyflower complex (Erythranthe guttata) here in San Luis Obispo. At the macroevolutionary scale, she tested whether island colonization globally is predicted by plant traits including breeding system and life span. This project was in collaboration with Boris Igic, and involved a team of Cal Poly undergrads who helped curate geographic and phenotypic data on more than 3000 species across more than 100 plant families around the world.
Dena Paolilli completed her master’s in 2021, assessing change in Californian alpine plant communities. She resampled >100 historic alpine plots in Kings and Sequoia National Parks, established in the 1980s. This resulted in a massive dataset involving identification of >300 high elevation species, complex logistics, intensive data management and analyses. Dena won honorable mention for her talk on this work in 2019 at the California Botanical Society Graduate Symposium. dena.paolilli[at]gmail.com
Ella Abelli-Amen completed her master’s in 2021, exploring the world of parasitic plants, asking what drives patterns of host occupancy in oak-mistletoe, Phoradendron villosum. These unusual plants have incredibly sticky seeds that are bird dispersed. She’s specifically tested whether host infection patterns were driven by local adaptation to hosts at the Santa Margarita Ranch here on the central coast of California
Undergraduate Alums
Nemo Buchmiller Oak leaf heritability (2022)
Taylor Jacobsen Serpentine seep monkeyflower local adaptation (2022-2023)
Abby Salisbury Serpentine seep monkeyflower local adaptation (2022-2023)
Ruby Sibul Alpine plant community shifts in Yosemite (2022-2023)
Olivia Ross Alpine plant community shifts in Yosemite (2022 )
Anneliese Barton Demography of the rare Chorro Creek Bog Thistle (2022)
Kyle Sucky Demography of the rare Chorro Creek Bog Thistle (2022)
Kira Diorio Island biogeography and plant mating system evolution (2022-2022)
Ford Brookes Island biogeography and mating system evolution (2022-2022)
Weston Gonor Island biogeography and mating system evolution (2022-2022)
Tommy Melillo Island biogeography and mating system evolution (2021)
Erin Francisco Island biogeography and mating system evolution (2021)
Caitlin Robertson Island biogeography and mating system evolution (2021-2021)
TJ Samojendy Alpine cushion plants (2021-2021)
Elena Forster Island biogeography and mating system evolution (2021-2022)
Katie Thomas Alpine cushion plants (2021)
Bridget Lee Island biogeography and mating system evolution (2020-2021)
Allie Wright Island biogeography and mating system evolution (2021-2021)
Charlott Miranda Island biogeography and mating system evolution (2021-2021)
Victoria Land Island biogeography and mating system evolution (2021)
Nicole Uyemura Island biogeography and mating system evolution (2020-2021)
Desiree Hale Island biogeography and mating system evolution (2020-2021)
Anushka Iyer Island biogeography and mating system evolution (2020)
Amanda Gersoff Island biogeography and mating system evolution (2020-2021)
Annie Meeder Island biogeography and mating system evolution (2020)
Cori Dech Island biogeography and mating system evolution (2020-2021)
Anna Chi Island biogeography and mating system evolution (2020-2021)
Leah Makler Flower color evolution in monkeyflowers (2019-2021)
Karen Bach Alpine plant community shifts in Kings Canyon (2019-2020)
Rachael Auer Flower color evolution in Phlox (2019-2020)
Brittany Goldston Climate niche evolution in tropical gingers (2019-2020)
Chloe Knowd Oak – arthropod mutualisms (2019-2020)
Erin Coltharp Oak – arthropod mutualisms (2019-2020)
Jennifer Apland Diversification in tropical gingers (2017-2019)
Molly Vanderlip Speciation and flower color evolution in monkeyflowers (2017-2020)
Ella Abelli-Amen Alpine plant community shifts in Kings Canyon (2018-2019)
Charles Gibbons Alpine plant community shifts in Kings Canyon (2018-2020)
Courtney Tuskan Alpine plant community shifts in Kings Canyon (2018-2019)
Austen Ford Harsh soils and flower color evolution in Leptosiphon (2018-2018)
Claire Rowan Flower color evolution in monkeyflowers (2018-2019)
Calaminh Tran Ecological causes of aggression in ants (2017-2018)
Hayley Dougan Plant community shifts in Yosemite alpine habitats (2017-2018)
Sam Alvarez Pollen evolution in monkeyflowers (2017-2018)
Erik Timsak Genetics of UV flower pigmentation in monkeyflowers (2018)
Emily Panovich Speciation in monkeyflowers (2017)
Anna Cowan Speciation in monkeyflowers (2017)
Max McCollum Plant community shifts in Yosemite alpine habitats (2017)
Kate Miller Plant community shifts in Yosemite alpine habitats (2017-2018)
Drew Burke Plant community shifts in Yosemite alpine habitats (2017-2018)
Nora Bales Updating the monkeyflower phylogeny and pollen evolution (2017-2018)
Cecelia Girvin Evolution of tree architectures (2017-2018)
Annie Ayers Plant community shifts in Yosemite alpine habitats (2017-2019)
Grossenbacher Lab 