Susan Dudley, 2010 Women of Discovery Earth Award

"For your research, let your curiosity drive you, and for your personal life, don't rush to compromise on what you want, because you may be able to get it all." — Susan Aline Dudley

Associate Professor in Biology doing research in plant evolutionary ecology

Born: 1958-01-01

Hometown: Hamilton, Ontario, CANADA

Education: PhD in Ecology and Evolution

Achievements

Discoveries: Plant kin recognition. My research in how plants change their shape and biomass allocation in the presence of other plants led to asking whether the relatedness of those plants matters in the response

Expeditions: North America, in subarctic lichen woodland, eastern deciduous forest, alpine, Southwestern cold desert, and Great Lakes beaches

Biography

As an evolutionary ecologist, Susan Dudley is interested in how plants adapt to differing environments. Her particular interest is in plant traits that affect biomass acquisition. This interest has led her most recently to ask if plants could recognize their kin, by measuring how plant traits are affected by growing with relatives compared to strangers of the same species. Dudley did her Bachelor and Master’s degrees at McGill University, her Ph.D. at University of Chicago, was a postdoctoral researcher at Brown University, and has been employed at McMaster University first as an assistant professor and now as an associate professor. In her Master's, she studied physiological ecology of subarctic lichens. For Dudley's Ph.D., she brought together physiological ecology and evolution to measure natural selection on plant physiological traits in the field and genetic differentiation in the greenhouse for a species of plant that grows on Great Lake beaches. Her postdoctoral research in the deciduous forest examined adaptation to a different kind of environment, that resulting from the presence of other plants. It was well known that plants sense neighbors from the color of the light, and respond with elongated stems, but her team was able to show that in the natural environment, this response was adaptive. In her research at McMaster, her lab has further explored plant responses to other plants and to the abiotic environment. The main finding from the lab over the last six years is that plants recognize relatives in competition. For animals, the ability to recognize relatives is recognized as an important for the evolution of altruism and social interactions, but this is the first time kin recognition was found in plant competition. She has now found kin recognition in four species of plants, and three papers have been published. These revolutionary results change how competition among plants can be viewed. Her current goal is develop the study of plant kin recognition from an interesting phenomenon into an emerging new field of biology.

Fun Facts

Favorite Item to have in the field: If I bring a Swiss army knife, I will use it on something

Heroes: My postdoctoral supervisor, Annie Schmitt, who successfully combines excellence in research with being a fine and warm human being

Publications

http://www.science.mcmaster.ca/biology/faculty/dudley/dudley_publication...