Lab News

We’re excited to share that Bridget K. Murphy, PhD student in the Ensminger Lab, has just published her first first-authored paper in Plant Physiology! Her work, titled “Contrasting effects of warming and drought on autumn phenology of photosynthesis and growth in white spruce,” investigates how climate change-related stresses impact photosynthetic activity and growth timing in white…

This summer, our team launched a field campaign to collect high-precision GPS data and manual tree height measurements at the Pickering experimental site — a critical step toward understanding how microsite variability influences white spruce performance. The campaign was led by Emilie Isasa (Postdoctoral researcher), with fantastic support from Grace (MSc student), and Adam and Tianqi (ROP students). Thanks to their hard…

Bridget, Anchalya and Noelle, rolled up their sleeves for a big spring reset at the site. The mission? Carefully removing the spruce seedlings from the Spruce Up project to clear the way for exciting new experiments. Armed with gloves, tools, and plenty of good spirit, they tackled the task under…

With longer days and warmer temperatures, we’re excited to launch our next round of experiments. The team is getting ready to head back into the field and the greenhouse to continue exploring plant growth, physiology, and resilience in changing environments.🌳🌳 Stay tuned, new data, discoveries, and updates are on the…

We had the chance to reconnect in person for our annual FastPheno meeting, this time hosted at Université Laval in Québec City, Canada. It was a fantastic opportunity to meet face-to-face, exchange ideas, and share the latest advances across the project. The team discussed progress on assessing adaptive traits, exploring contrasting…

We are thrilled to announce that Bridget Murphy has been awarded the Outstanding Student Presentation Award (OSPA) at the AGU 2024 conference for their exceptional poster presentation, “Contrasting Phenotypic Plasticity of Photosynthesis and Xylem Architecture in Response to Summer Warming and Drought in a Slow-Growing and Fast-Growing Family of Field-Grown…