Some plants move so quickly their movements occur faster than the blink-of-an-eye. Ultra-fast plant movements have evolved in plants as diverse as liverworts and mosses to flowering plants. This lecture first explores these ultra-fast actions by using high-speed video to slow down the movements and define the biomechanics of the motion. Then by examining the plants in their native habitat we explore how these fast movements are evolutionarily adaptive benefitting the plant.
 
About the Speaker:

Joan Edwards is a botanist with a special interest in understanding the biomechanics and adaptive significance of ultra-fast plant movements—plant actions that are so quick they occur on the order of milliseconds. Using high-speed video (up to 100,000 fps) she studies the evolutionary significance and biomechanics of fast movements including the trebuchet catapults of bunchberry dogwood, the vortex rings of Sphagnum moss, the splash cups of liverworts and the “poppers” of wood sorrel. Her early fieldwork was on the impact of moose on plants in the boreal forests of Isle Royale National Park. She continues to research plant-animal interactions from herbivory to pollination. Her current studies on pollination focus on the evolution and conservation of flowers and their pollinators, which is critical to understand in the face of global pollinator decline and loss of species worldwide. Joan Edwards is Professor of Biology at Williams College where she has been a faculty member since 1979. At Williams she teaches courses in Ecology, Plant Systematics and Conservation Biology. She completed her Ph.D. in Botany at the University of Michigan where she also did her undergraduate studies. She is the Samuel Fessenden Clarke Professor of Biology and is also a faculty member in the Environmental Studies Program at Williams.  
                   
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