Associate Professor University of Houston-Downtown Research Professor, United States
Functional traits are clearly defined characteristics of plants that strongly influence their performance by affecting growth, reproduction or survival. We investigated functional traits of grasses that are associated with drought resistance. We focused on minimum leaf conductance and traits associated with it. We hypothesized that minimum leaf conductance would be associated with functional traits such as stomatal density, guard cell length, leaf width, or leaf mass per area. These functional traits were measured for multiple grass species by undergraduate students enrolled in an ecology course implemented as a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) at University of Houston-Downtown. Grasses were sampled from undeveloped land in Houston, Texas. Contrary to our hypothesis that minimum leaf conductance would increase with increasing stomatal density and guard cell length, we did not observe a correlation between these traits with minimum leaf conductance. Stomatal density decreased as guard cell length increased, which may explain the lack of relationship of either trait with minimum leaf conductance. Other functional traits such as leaf width were not strongly associated with minimum leaf conductance for the grass species we sampled. This ecology CURE course engaged students who otherwise might not have participated in authentic research during their undergraduate education.
