Ramsey, Tara

• Ph.D., University of Washington 

• MSc., Botany, Miami University, Ohio

I am a plant biologist interested in vegetation that impacts public health, including the elemental hyperaccumulator plants found in Cretaceous-age marine sediments of the Great Plains (prince's plumes, goldenweeds, poisonvetches,etc.) and the poisonous plants found in forests and meadows of the Black Hills  (larkspurs, hemlocks, death camas, wolfbanes, baneberries, etc.). My research integrates field vegetation sampling with environmental measurements, analytical chemistry, and DNA sequence data to ordinate South Dakota plant communities and describe spatial distributions of toxic and poisonous plants -- the goal is to evaluate vegetation composition as an indicator of problem soils and toxic/poisonous plant abundances. To date, we have surveyed 140 study sites across western South Dakota, ranging from the North Dakota border to vicinity of Edgemont, SD, and ~700 - 2,200 m elevation. Key findings of the research include confirmation that most prairies on exposed marine sediments have high concentrations of trace elements (selenium, arsenic, nickel, copper, thalium, etc.); these soils vary in pH and physical properties but the toxic elements tend to co-occur with one another. Soil elemental profiles are statistically associated with certain species assemblages (hyperaccumulating forbs and C4 graminoids). More broadly, ordination reveals that geological landforms and climate factors (annual precipitation, annual mean temperature) are major factors influencing community assembly and phylogenetic diversity on the landscape. Poisonous plants are largely restricted to wet forest and riparian communities of the northern and central hills; exceptions include locoweeds and death camas, which have broad geographic distributions across grassland and open forest habitats. Future research will examine how trace elements enter the food chain via herbivory (consumption of hyperaccumulators by livestock, wildlife, insects) and erosion. I am also developing a DNA sequence library for the South Dakota flora for use by environmental researchers who perform community phylogenetic analyses as well as wildlife forensics.