Liz Slauson
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Dr. Liz Slauson Links of Interest
A bat pollinating an agave flower
Dr. Slauson collecting data
A close-up of an agave flower |
Teaching responsibilities:
For more information on this class, follow the link above. For an old copy of Dr. Slauson's syllabus, follow the links below.
108 Syllabus (old version)
Background:
Plants are my passion! Although I have a B.S. in Nursing from Augsburg College and practiced nursing for 7 years, I always wanted to study plants! So after I moved to Arizona, I went back to school and obtained a M.S. in Horticulture and a Ph.D. in Botany from Arizona State. As a Master's graduate student, I studied the effects of mycorrhizae (a fungus that has a symbiotic relationship with plants) on the survival of a rare cacti that was reintroduced into its native habitat. This work showed that mycorrhizae improved the survival of transplanted cacti. For my Ph.D., I studied the pollination biology of two endangered bat-pollinated species of agave, or century plants. This study showed that the northern species of agave (Agave chrysantha--largely out of the bats' native range) had developed several floral characters that enhanced pollination by daytime pollinators to make up for the lack of bat visits. The other agave (A. palmeri) was thought to only be pollinated by the endangered bats, but my work showed that several native bees and moths could also pollinate this agave.
During graduate school and afterward, I worked at the Desert Botanical Garden serving as the Director of the Rare Plant Program, Curator of the Plant Collection, and finally as the Director of Research. During my 15 years there, I conducted research on rare plant species, agave systematics (who is related to who in the Agave Family), and the effects of fire on agave reproduction. My fieldwork took me throughout Arizona and West Texas. Currently, I am hiking the Arizona Trail (an 800-mile trail that traverses Arizona from the Mexican to Utah border) and writing a guidebook about the plants along the trail with my colleague Wendy Hodgson.
I have taught botany (BIO 108 Plants and Society) full-time at SCC since 2001. Before that, I taught part-time at night for several years. I enjoy teaching, and my personal goal is that all my students will see how important plants are to humans-especially in their own everyday life! I myself am an avid gardener, love to run, am married to a researcher for the Forest Service, and have two wild and crazy Dalmatians!
