Orchid research award
UConn grad student Kathryn Theiss is among twenty graduate students in environmental studies chosen from universities in California and New England to receive this year’s Switzer Fellowship from the Robert & Patricia Switzer Foundation, one of the nation’s most prestigious awards for early‐career environmental leaders. The award will help fund Kathryn’s doctoral research in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Her research has taken her to Madagascar six times and involves local stakeholders in the creation of conservation strategies for the native orchids. To gain a complete understanding of the threats to the native orchids, Kathryn combines field techniques such as demographic measurements and reproductive studies with genetic techniques in the lab. She is also involved in surveying orchid sellers in Madagascar to assess the economic incentives for harvesting orchids.
Erasanthe henrici
Before coming to UConn, Kathryn earned a B.A. at Willamette University in French and Biology where she studied abroad for a semester in Madagascar. She also worked as a research intern at the Chicago Botanic Garden monitoring rare plants, including two species of federally threatened orchids, around the Midwest.
You can read more about Kathryn’s work in a recent CLAS web post. Here’s a photo of Kathryn with some of her fellow researchers on one of her recent visits to Madagascar.
Working with orchids in Madagascar isn’t all fun and games. UConn Professor Kent Holsinger commented on the political situation in Madagascar – and how it has been hindering Kathryn’s visits – in a March 2009 entry on his blog Uncommon Ground.
