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Sun Min
Director of Media Relations
Alyssa Vine
Associate Director of Media Relations
Hilary S. Callahan
Associate Professor of Biological Sciences
Hilary Callahan's integrative research examines many different features of plants — from roots to flowers to seeds. She seeks to understand how plant traits function in nature, including how external factors affect trait expression and how rapidly traits evolve. To link plant traits with plant genes, she frequently works with the genomic model Arabidopsis thaliana — the "fruit fly of botany." Her interest in how multiple traits are integrated uses Arabidopsis as well as longer-lived shrubs and trees growing in Barnard's greenhouse, at nearby botanical gardens, and at several experimental forests in the northeastern region. Her expertise is relevant to understanding how plant traits may change in response to anthropogenic global change. She receives funding from the National Science Foundation, and many of her students' research projects have been supported by Barnard's Hughes Science Pipeline Project. She teaches courses in Plant Evolution and Diversity, Applied Ecology and Evolution, Global Change Ecology, and Evolutionary Genetics. She oversees the living collections of the Arthur Ross Greenhouse on the roof of Milbank Hall and serves as an affiliated faculty member of Columbia's Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology.
Selected Publications
"Shade-Induced Plasticity and Its Ecological Significance in Wild Populations of Arabidopsis Thaliana" (with M. Pigliucci), Ecology 83 (2002)
"Phenotypic Integration and the Plasticity of Integration in an Amphicarpic Annual" (with D. M. Waller), Internat. J. of Plant Sciences 161 (2000)
"Light-Sensitive Plasticity Genes in Arabidopsis Thaliana: Mutant Analysis and Ecological Genetics" (with C. L. Wells and M. Pigliucci), Evolutionary Ecology Research 1 (1999)
"Developmental Phenotypic Plasticity: Where Ecology and Evolution Meet Molecular Biology" (with M. Pigliucci, and C. D. Schlichting), Bioessays 19 (1997)
212.854.5405
EDUCATION:
B.A., Yale University
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison
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SPECIALIZATION:
Ecological genetics