The main focus of my research is integrated mechanisms by which plants exist as organisms, as individuals, in the real world. At one point, thinking that acronyms were impressive, I labeled this interest the "Control and Integration of Resource Acquisition and Allocation in Plants" (a.k.a. CIRAAP, or crap). The biology of the integrated individual, interestingly enough, is the one level which is absent from all introductory textbooks, and even "Form and Function" texts don't deal with it fully. If one looks up "organismal biology" on the web, what usually pops up are links to animal behavior, so even the idea of plants acting as organisms has been pretty much overlooked.

Where did it go if no one else pays attention to it? For some reason, texts think that everything up to cells and tissues in plants is important, along with physiology and biochemistry. From there, the next level is populations, then communities, then ecosystems. But all of the physiology and biochemistry needs an environmental context. All of the molecular biology needs environmental control. And populations are made up of individuals... if the individuals don't manage to get their act together, the populations don't exist.

So that is what I do. Along these lines, I try to go to "the field" as often as possible, in addition to doing laboratory studies. The field is found everywhere. In Central Illinois, the problems facing individuals are different from those in tropical mangroves or Florida sand hills, but real nevertheless. Here's just a brief, current snapshot.

For the last 6 years, a central focus of my research has been the biology of mangroves with field sites in Belize and Panama. Our foci have included photosynthesis (including the control of photosynthetic capacity, the control of Rubisco activity, and environmental relations), phenolics and phenylpropanoid metabolism (associated with the extreme accumulation of tannins in red mangrove leaves), oxidative metabolism (especially the generation and consumption of H2O2), and with a number of colleagues throughout the US, on nitrogen acquisition, especially through atmospheric sources. The photo here shows graduate student, Hiro Takemasa, making photosynthesis measurements under swamp conditions in Belize.

A relatively new project is centered on the metabolism of H2O2 in non-mangroves, especially plants that grow near the UIUC campus. Shown here is Creeping Charley (Glechoma hederacea), a notorious weed, that manages to maintain a relatively low level of peroxide, regardless of environmental conditions. By comparison, the highest levels we have found so far have been in Ohio Buckeye (Aesculus glabra) and soybeans.