Dissertation Project

My general interests are in plant systematics, ecology, floristics and biogeography. My dissertation  centers on Scleropodium, a small genus of mosses. The genus is most diverse in coastal California and poses some interesting questions regarding cohabitation of niche space in sympatry, as well as demonstrating some puzzling examples of intercontinental disjunction within species. I am using molecular data to reconstruct the phylogeny of the group and also to examine phylogeographic patterns within species that have intercontinental distributions.

Contact:

bcarter at berkeley.edu

Other Research Projects

Diversity and richness of cryptogams in a long-term research plot: With several collaborators, I'm looking at how tree size, tree species, and the distribution of trees affect cryptogam community structure on the trees. For the project, we've censused the cryptogam communities on every tree (~8000) in a six hectare plot in Santa Cruz, CA. We're looking at cryptogam community structure as well as using the dataset to test general predictions of island biogeography and metacommunity theory.

Bryophyte flora of the California Channel Islands: I'm conducting a floristic inventory of the mosses, liverworts and hornworts of the Channel Islands. The project involves extensive fieldwork on the islands as well as examination and curation of historical herbarium specimens. The results of the inventory are being used to examine different effects of island size, topography and distance from coast on the diversity of bryophytes relative to the pteridophyte and angiosperm island floras