The Plant Press

From The Plant Press, Vol. 25, No. 3, July 2022.

Awards & Honors

Jun Wen is a recipient of the 2022 Research Grants Program of the Associate Director for Science and Chief Scientist (ADCS) at the National Museum of Natural History. A total of 16 highly competitive proposals representing the seven science departments at the museum were received and ranked by a peer review committee representative of NMNH science. Of the seven scientists to receive grants, Wen was awarded for her proposal, “Investigating the evolutionary history of temperate disjunctions across North America: a case study on grapes and hickories in the Mexican highlands.”

Wen and Research Associate Greg Stull will investigate a geographic connection involving plant populations disjunct between the southeast United States and the highlands of Mexico and Central America. Many plant species include populations disjunct between these geographic regions, suggesting a dynamic history of migration across North and Central America during the past ~5 million years. Many of these understudied disjunct populations might also represent distinct species. Using two angiosperm groups (grapes and hickories) as a case study, Wen and Stull will reconstruct the history of plant migrations between these regions and search for cryptic diversity in the Mexican highlands, setting the stage for a broader study of this potentially fundamental biogeographic pattern.