Multi-User Analytical Equipment for the Plant Ecology Program at UM-St. Louis

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This proposal requests funds for multi-user analytical equipment for the University of Missouri-St. Louis plant sciences program. Five investigators require this equipment to enhance their current research programs and for future research. These researchers work in the areas of plant population genetics, plant-herbivore interactions, and plant life history. Research in these diverse areas gains a common focus through the investigators' interest in determining the selective environmental factors influencing plant development, growth, and reproductive success. The equipment requested would provide the resources for faculty and students to study patterns of plant resource allocation, plant responses to environmental variation and stress, water relations, photosynthesis, and secondary compound chemistry. Specific research projects requiring this equipment include: comparative analysis of resource allocation and growth patterns in different microhabitats in Quercus species, assessment of genotypic variation in Piper arieanum defense and tolerance resistance to herbivory, documentation of resource allocation across canopies of tropical forests and between developmental stages of seedlings in Missouri forests, resource availability in fleshy fruits and assimilation efficiencies for common understory fruit-eating bats and birds, and determination of the genetic basis of reproductive costs in Solidago. The requested equipment includes an elemental analyzer, a fluorometer and photosynthesis system, water relations instruments, environmental monitoring equipment and computer, plant growth chambers, a gas chromatograph, and an ultracold freezer.