Daniel Stanton

Why do some mosses form cushions? Why do some vascular plants, supposedly more complex and better at transporting water, form moss-like cushions? My research is aimed at why plants (and other organisms, such as lichens) grow and behave the way they do, and what consequences this has for their surroundings. We often think of plants as suffering the conditions imposed by their surroundings. While it is true that they usually cannot flee them, as animals might, the interaction between plants and environment is hardly one way. I am interested in how plants manipulate their local micro-environment through shape and physiology. For example, during my PhD I worked in at a site in the northern Chilean desert where temperate rainforest patches survive despite rainfall lower than any North American desert. By intercepting coastal fogs, which drip to the ground, the trees effectively transform their local environment from desert to wet forest. I am interested in better understanding this phenomenon at a range of scales, forest patches to the structure of individual mosses.