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Show Relationships of Wild Sunflowers, Balsamroots & Mules Ears Department of Biology & Utah Museum of Natural History with Curator Michael Windham I am doing research on two closely related groups of plants in the sunflower family (Asteraceae). The sunflower family has many well-known plants, including sunflowers, lettuces, daisies, marigolds, thistles, dandelions, and knapweeds. With 23,000 species, it is the second largest family of plants (only the orchid family is larger). The two genera I am studying in particular are the balsamroots, Balsamorhiza, and the mules ears, Wyethia. Balsamroots and mules ears grow throughout Utah as well as much of the West. My project is to discern just how the various species of balsamroot and mules ear are related. In order to do this, I sequence the DNA of the same region of each plant's genome. Then I compare the sequences and use the information about the similarities and differences between the sequences to determine the plants' relationships to one another. The "family trees" obtained from my data confirm that each species of balsamroot is more closely related to all of the other species of balsamroot than it is to any of the species of mules ear. However, the trees also show that, while most of the species of mules ear are highly related, two of the species fall outside of the main mules ear group. These two species are in fact as closely related to the balsamroots as they are to the other mules ears. One of these species, the rough mules ear (Wyethia scabra), grows in southern and eastern Utah. Abby Moore Assoc. Professor Lynn Bohs |
