Concordia University
Ph.D. candidate
Supervisor: Emma Despland
David F. Greene, Humboldt State University
Start: 2011-09-01
End: 2016-05-31

Project

Temporal variation in conifer seed production
Many plant species exhibit the phenomenon of masting, or mass seeding, which is the simultaneous production of extremely large numbers of seeds at intervals separated by years of very low seed production, over large, contiguous areas. My Ph.D. dissertation will focus on masting in conifers by proposing a new hypothesis for the evolution of masting in Picea glauca and other non-serotinous conifer species, and examining its proximate causes by manipulative experiments over a geographical scale previously unattempted.

Publications

1- Non-serotinous woody plants behave as aerial seed bank species when a late-summer wildfire coincides with a mast year
Pounden, Edith, David F. Greene, Sean T. Michaletz
2014 Ecology and Evolution

2- Emergence of morel (Morchella) and pixie cup (Geopyxis carbonaria) ascocarps in response to the intensity of forest floor combustion during a wildfire
Greene, D. F., M. Hesketh, E. Pounden
2009 Mycologia

3- Early establishment of conifer recruits in the northern Rocky Mountains as a function of postfire duff depth
Hesketh, M., D. F. Greene, E. Pounden
2009 Canadian Journal of Forest Research

4- The effect of collisions with vegetation elements on the dispersal of winged and plumed seeds
Pounden, E., D. F. Greene, M. Quesada, J. M. Contreras Sánchez
2008 Journal of Ecology