Group Tutorial: Vaccinium Herbarium Research

Course Description

Summary

Expanding the depth of a group research project that was formed in BIO4441.01, The Herbarium: Research, Art & Botany. The research project tracks the collecting habits of botanists in Hancock County, Maine from 1881-2019. The genus we focused on was Vaccinium, a genus of shrub within the Ericaceae Family. Vaccinium found in Hancock County include common species of blueberries and cranberries, as well as more rare alpine and bog species. We had two overarching research questions:

1. Can you documents shifts in flowering/fruiting phenology of vaccinium species in response to microclimate with herbarium specimens?
2. What types of collector bias are captured in this dataset? 

The motivation behind the project was to see if a genus of edible plant that is useful to humans displays unconventional patterns in collection over time (known as collector’s bias.) In the Herbarium course, we collected data from 183 specimens, and are hoping to expand our sample size as well as incorporate methods such as GIS mapping to visualize and refine our dataset. Through this tutorial, we hope to build our scientific research skills, and what it means to do research with the intention of academic publication.