Research Symposium

BIO

Lana Fulmer is a first-year undergraduate student at Florida State University majoring in Biological Sciences on a pre-health track. She is passionate about scientific research and the study of biological systems. Her current work examines factors influencing sexual reproduction and biological fitness in the federally endangered plant species Conradina glabra (Apalachicola rosemary). Alongside her mentor, PhD applicant Josh Rowe, she has investigated potential differences in maternal investment between hermaphrodite and female morphs in this gynodioecious species, with the goal of improving future conservation strategies.

Beyond research, Lana enjoys working with animals and actively volunteers at Tallahassee Animal Services as a kennel attendant. She has a keen interest in the medical field and is exploring both human and veterinary medicine paths to see where her ambition to learn and desire to help others can best be applied. Lana hopes to build a career that blends science, empathy, and service, whether working with people, animals, or the broader ecosystems that connect them.

Is there evidence of maternal investment in a gynodioecious endangered plant?

Abstract

Sizes of viable seeds were compared from both hermaphroditic and female varieties of the gynodioecious Conradina glabra (Apalachicola rosemary) to study resource allocation. Listed as federally endangered, C. glabra is a mint endemic to Liberty County, Florida and was previously thought to be completely hermaphroditic. Given the evolutionarily unstable nature of gynodioecy, broader research is being conducted on known populations of C. glabra to determine the impact of a male-sterile (effectively female) morph of the plant. To this end, seeds collected from marked C. glabra plants at Torreya State Park were photographed under a microscope and measured using ImageJ processing software. Seeds were categorized by their size (large or small) and color (dark or pale). The length and area of each seed were measured in millimeters. Sizes of seeds taken from hermaphroditic and female plants were analyzed using a statistical regression to find that there was no significant difference in seed sizes. While this did not support our hypothesis that female plants would have larger seeds because of more resource availability to concentrate as maternal investment, the experiment shifted our focus to other seed characteristics, such as color and viability. Patterns among these characteristics could potentially serve as different indicators of maternal investment between the two sexes and contribute to future research to improve conservation methods for this species.

Keywords: gynodioecy, hermaphrodite, C. glabra