Plants have myriad ways of coping with their environment, and two of the environmental factors I’ve investigated are abiotic stress and herbivores.  With irises (Iris hexagona), I examined the role of salinity stress in altering plant life history traits, including growth, sexual and asexual reproduction, and maternal effects.  Using the common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), I also studied the ways plant resistance to herbivores changes following damage by other herbivores.  Currently, I am using a comparative approach to unite my previous research topics by testing plant theories that predict herbivore resistance traits of plants in different environments.  You can read more about these topics below, or by reading the papers that have come from this research.