Calvin Professor, Student Get Grants to Study Invasive Shrub

May 24, 2007 == MEDIA ADVISORY

Summary: A Calvin College professor and a Calvin sophomore each have received
$3,000 grants from a local program to study an invasive species called the
autumn olive.

Full story see http://www.calvin.edu/news/releases/2006-07/autumn-olive.htm

A Calvin College sophomore and a Calvin biology professor recently received
$3,000 each from the Undergraduate Research Grants for the Environment (URGE)
program.

Kelly Edwards, 19, a biology and Spanish major from Grand Blanc, Michigan,
will partner with biology professor David Dornbos for a 12-week stint from now
to August, studying the autumn olive.

They will work out of the Pierce Cedar Creek Institute biological field
station and research just what it is that makes the autumn olive so invasive.

The shrub, native to eastern Asia and brought to North America for ornamental
use in the 1800s, is aggressively colonizing large areas of both woodland and
meadow at the institute and throughout Michigan, running roughshod over the
native species.

Dornbos and Edwards hope to figure out what makes the shrub invasive at the
physiological level and through that understanding learn both how to restore
infested areas and keep the weed out of un-infested areas.

Photosynthesis may be key to autumn olive’s aggression, Dornbos believes.

“Behaviorally it’s an awful lot like buckthorn," he says, "which we
struggle to eradicate on the Calvin campus. We know from the two years of work
with buckthorn that once it gets going, nothing else keeps up with it
photo-synthetically. What we’re trying to do is figure out how fast the
autumn olive does photosynthesis compared to native competitors."

Edwards is living and working at the institute, located southeast of Grand
Rapids near Hastings, with 15 other URGE grant recipients from area colleges
and universities, including Aquinas, Cornerstone, Grand Valley and Hope.

A pre-med student with her eye on the mission field, Edwards eventually hopes
to do AIDS research, although she also finds the plant world fascinating.

Contact Dave Dornbos at Calvin at 616-526-8578
Contact Maribeth Groen at Pierce Cedar Creek at 269-721-4472

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Received on Thu May 24 09:30:27 2007