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Dr. Jill Hamilton is the Director of The Schatz Center in Tree Molecular Genetics, and the Ibberson Chair of Silviculture Research in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management at Pennsylvania State University. The Hamilton lab studies the distribution of population genetic variation across the landscape, with the end goal of understanding adaptive potential of populations under climate change and related threats to species.
For one of the lab’s core projects, they’re collecting seed and leaf tissue samples for Fraxinus pennsylvanica, F. americana, and F. nigra for genomic analysis. They’re studying the relationships between genes and the environment across these species’ ranges, as well as developing resources to complement EAB-resistant breeding materials.
This summer, Ph.D. student Kyra LoPiccolo, in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy, led collections of leaves from ~1,000 trees across the three species and 60 U.S. locations. Sampling efforts will continue into the fall, aided by volunteers across the country recruited by Adventure Scientists. These range-wide leaf collections will allow LoPiccolo to study the genomic diversity of each species, characterize the structure of the genetic variation across each species range, and learn more about the trees’ adaptive potential.
>> Volunteer to help collect ash samples and learn more at the Adventure Scientists website.
LoPiccolo, alongside postdoctoral scholar Dr. Melissa Lehrer, is also starting to germinate black ash seed received last year from over 400 maternal trees across the U.S. and Canada. As the seeds come out of cold stratification, they’ll be used to establish common garden experiments, where genetically related trees are planted across a range of environments. This will allow her to study how the genes of the different ash populations interact with different environments.
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