Jack Sytsma is a master’s student in Dr. Johnson’s lab at Kansas State University. In 2020, he graduated from Central College in Pella, Iowa with a BA in Biology focusing on tallgrass prairie restoration and ecology. Since then, he began work with Dr. Johnson’s lab studying drought effects on tallgrass prairie. He works with big bluestem across the Midwest in reciprocal garden sites to understand mechanisms of adaptation to rainfall. On top of his studies, he enjoys bird watching, baking, exploring State Parks, and reading in his free time. As a native to Iowa, he grew up rooting for the Cyclones, but K State has converted him: Go Wildcats!
Eli Hartung
Eli received my undergraduate degree from Utah Valley University where his research focused on the recruitment characterization of Arctomecom humilis (dwarf bear poppy). During my time in undergrad, he fell in love with the grasses of Utah which motivated him to come to the grasslands of Kansas for his Masters. Here at K-state, his work focuses on plant-microbe interactions between Andropogon gerardii (big bluestem) and its local soil microbes. Plant local adaptation in terms of abiotic factors has been well studied. However, the impact of biotic factors, like the role of soil microbes on plants, is much less understood. He hope my work will contribute to a more complete understanding of local adaptation and overall aid to improve conservation efforts for grassland species.
Jake Alsdurf is from Rapid City, South Dakota and has an M.S. degree in Integrative Genomics from Black Hills State University where his primary research was on epigenetic inheritance of stress tolerance in alpine perennial plants. Currently Jake is working with Andropogon gerardii,the ecologically dominant grass of the tallgrass prairies with five objectives: 1) to identify the distribution of phenotypes; 2) quantify genetic diversity and population structure; 3) identify SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) outliers under selection from climate; 4) strengthen species distribution models using genotypic and phenotypic data and apply to future climate scenarios; 5) transcriptome analysis identifying differential regulation due to drought stress. Ultimately, research into these questions will combine ecological and genomic approaches to “find the genes that affect evolutionary fitness in natural environments and populations” in particular, genes involved in the adaptive response of a dominant grass to drought.Jake is currently taking a hiatus from research and gaining practical experience with sequencing genomes and bioinformatics at Ceva, in Kansas City.
Originally from Hutchinson, KS, Matt received his B.S. in biology from Kansas State University. As an undergraduate he worked in the Johnson Lab investigating phenotypic variation in big bluestem across the Great Plains climate gradient. After graduating, Matt chose to complete a Master’s degree in the Johnson lab with the benefit to expand upon his undergraduate work by including genomic characterization of ecotypes by determining the underlying genomic variation controlling phenotypic differences and to quantify the outcome of long term selection in big bluestem. This has lead to receiving a Graduate Research Fellowship for his graduate work. His major research interest falls in utilizing next generation genomic methods to unravel the genetic controls of organismal response to changing climates in non-model organisms. Matt is currently writing papers and getting teaching experience at Ft Hays State University.