What a day! The first scientific paper from my PhD research, and my first first-author scientific paper, has been published!
It’s all about this incredible carnivorous plant Drosophyllum lusitanicum, which is endemic to the western Mediterranean region of Europe. It’s also considered an “ecological rarity”, as one of the few carnivorous plants to grow in seasonally dry soils.
We used stable isotope techniques to figure out how successful these plants are at getting nitrogen (an essential element) from insect prey. Spoiler alert: they’re super good at it!
You can read the paper in Annals of Botany, or check out this blog post by BotanyOne for an easy-to-digest (get it!?) summary and mini-interview!
Big thanks to my wonderful co-authors on this paper, to the amazing lab technicians who helped me out in Germany, and to all of you for your support. Just a couple more papers to go, and I’ll have a thesis!