Peter W. Schafran

6 October 2018

A busy summer concludes after field including traveling from Virginia to Louisiana, collecting Longleaf Pines in every state where it occurs natively. Through July and August, ODU undergrad Destiny Waag helped do nearly 1000 DNA extractions at the Smithsonian NMNH. August and September had me traveling, driving down the Appalachians from Virginia to Georgia, collecting quillworts along the way, and then on to Tallahassee to visit the Tall Timbers Research Station. Jay Bolin and I collected even more quillworts from the margins of Lake Fontana in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. A couple new papers were published along the way. Our poster for the upcoming Longleaf Alliance meeting in Alexandria, LA, is ready and posted online here.

15 May 2018

Musselman and Schafran return from a trip to Gulf Coast and East Texas collecting Isoetes and Longleaf Pine. We saw Isoetes texana in the coastal prairies of Calhoun Co., and discovered two new populations of Isoetes melanopoda, including a new county record for Newton Co.

8 May 2018

Schafran et al. publish "Low-copy nuclear markers in Isoetes identified with transcriptomes" in Applications in Plant Sciences.

30 March 2018

Several members of the Musselman lab present at the annual Southeastern Biologists meeting in Myrtle Beach, SC.

24 January 2018

Bolin et al. publish "Application of DNA Flow Cytometry to Aid Species Delimitation in Isoetes" in Castanea.

7 November 2017

After spending all summer traveling eastern North America collecting Isoetes, I'm back at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History on a predoctoral fellowship. We'll be sequencing DNA using the PacBio platform to infer parentage of polyploid species and identify patterns of formation.

28-31 March 2017

Musselman lab goes to annual meeting for the Southeastern Biologists. Isaiah Amos presents our work on Longleaf Pine at the Blackwater Ecologic Preserve.

8 Nov 2016

Schafran et al. publish a new species of Isoetes from Mississippi! Available from Phytokeys.

1 Nov 2016

Nick Flanders, Toni Dotterer, and I present our work at the 2016 Longleaf Conference. See our poster and learn more here.

13 July 2016

The Blackwater Ecological Preserve crew assists the Smithsonian's Global Genome Initiative collecting some of our rare plants.

20 April 2016

Virginian Pilot article on Bennett's Creek BioBlitz.

4 April 2016

ODU botanists win two prestigious awards at the 77th Annual Meeting of the Association of Southeastern Biologists. The Elizabeth A. Bartholomew Award was presented to Dr. Lytton Musselman. This award recognizes individuals who have distinguished themselves in professional and public service that advances our knowledge and appreciation of the world of plants and their scientific, cultural, and aesthetic values, and/or exceptional service to the Southern Appalachian Botanical Society. Doctoral student Peter Schafran won the SABS award for outstanding student oral presentation for his talk "Towards a phylogeny of Isoetes in the Southeastern United States".Read more.

17 March 2016

Thanks to efforts of grounds manager Chad Peevy, ODU earns 4th Tree Campus designation from Arbor Day Foundation.

23 February 2016

This Mace & Crown article highlights the activities of the Kaplan Orchid Conservatory and curator Marcus Jones.

13 January 2016

Grad student Peter Schafran wins Kirk Wetland Research Award to study mycorrhizae of native orchids of Virginia in conjunction with ongoing work at the Kaplan Orchid Conservatory. Read more here.