Carrie Tribble

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Assistant Professor and Curator at University of Washington

Azolla is a genus of freshwater ferns that is economically important as a nitrogen-fixing biofertilizer, biofuel, bioremediator, and for potential carbon sequestration, but also contains weedy invasive species. In California, only two species are currently recognized but the actual diversity may include up to six species, with the discrepancy being...

Premise Pteridophytes—vascular land plants that disperse by spores—are a powerful system for studying plant evolution, particularly with respect to the impact of abiotic factors on evolutionary trajectories through deep time. However, our ability to use pteridophytes to investigate such questions—or to capitalize on the ecological and conservation‐...

The field of systematics is central to how we understand, classify, and discuss organisms and their evolution. Systematics directly or indirectly touches every branch of biology. Over the last 50 years, methods in the field have been continually reshaped by advancing technologies, transitioning from primarily relying on morphological data to utiliz...

Premise Azolla is a genus of floating ferns that has closely evolved with a vertically transmitted obligate cyanobacterium endosymbiont—Anabaena azollae—that fixes nitrogen. There are also other lesser-known Azolla symbionts whose role and mode of transmission are unknown. Methods We sequenced 112 Azolla specimens collected across the state of C...

The effects of single chromosome number change—dysploidy – mediating diversification remain poorly understood. Dysploidy modifies recombination rates, linkage, or reproductive isolation, especially for one‐fifth of all eukaryote lineages with holocentric chromosomes. Dysploidy effects on diversification have not been estimated because modeling chro...

Azolla is a genus of freshwater ferns that is economically important as a nitrogen-fixing biofertilizer, biofuel, bioremediator, and for potential carbon sequestration, but also contains weedy invasive species. In California, only two species are currently recognized but there may be up to six putative species, with the discrepancy being due to the...

Premise Competition from naturalized species and habitat loss are common threats to native biodiversity and may act synergistically to increase competition for decreasing habitat availability. We use Hawaiian dryland ferns as a model for the interactions between land‐use change and competition from naturalized species in determining habitat availab...

Azolla is a floating fern that has closely evolved with a vertically transmitted obligate cyanobacterium endosymbiont--Anabaena azollae that performs nitrogen fixation in specialized Azolla leaf pockets. This cyanobacterium has a greatly reduced genome and appears to be in the "advanced" stages of symbiosis, potentially evolving into a nitrogen fix...

Recent field research on the eastern slopes of the Andes resulted in the discovery of a new species of Bomarea from the Cerro Candelaria Reserve in the Tungurahua province of Ecuador. Bomarea pastazensis is the second smallest species in the genus and differs from the smallest by the presence of glutinous trichomes on the ovary, glabrous sepals, an...

Premise Competition from non-native species and habitat loss are common threats to biodiversity and may act synergistically to increase competition for decreasing habitat availability. We develop a workflow using Hawaiian dryland ferns as a model for the interactions between land-use change and non-native competition in determining available habita...

Identifying along which lineages shifts in diversification rates occur is a central goal of comparative phylogenetics; these shifts may coincide with key evolutionary events such as the development of novel morphological characters, the acquisition of adaptive traits, polyploidization or other structural genomic changes, or dispersal to a new habit...

Geological events such as mountain uplift affect how, when, and where species diversify, but measuring those effects is a longstanding challenge. Andean orogeny impacted the evolution of regional biota by creating barriers to gene flow, opening new habitats, and changing local climate. Bomarea (Alstroemeriaceae) are tropical plants with (often) sma...

The effects of single chromosome number change—dysploidy—mediating diversification remain poorly understood. Dysploidy modifies recombination rates, linkage, or reproductive isolation, especially for one-fifth of all eukaryote lineages with holocentric chromosomes. Dysploidy effects on diversification have not been estimated because modeling chromo...

The ChromEvol software was the first to implement a likelihood-based approach, using probabilistic models that depict the pattern of chromosome number change along a specified phylogeny. The initial models have been completed and expanded during the last years. New parameters that model polyploid chromosome evolution have been implemented in ChromE...

Premise: We present approaches used to generate long-read Nanopore sequencing reads for the Liliales and demonstrate how modifications to standard protocols directly impact read length and total output. The goal is to help those interested in generating long-read sequencing data determine which steps may be necessary for optimizing output and resu...

Identifying along which lineages shifts in diversification rates occur is a central goal of comparative phylogenetics; these shifts may coincide with key evolutionary events such as the development of novel morphological characters, the acquisition of adaptive traits, polyploidization or other structural genomic changes, or dispersal to a new habit...

Testing adaptive hypotheses about how continuous traits evolve in association with developmentally-structured discrete traits, while accounting for the confounding influence of other, hidden, evolutionary forces, remains a challenge in evolutionary biology. For example, geophytes are herbaceous plants—with underground buds—that use underground stor...

Complex geological events such as mountain uplift affect how, when, and where species originate and go extinct, but measuring those effects is a longstanding challenge. The Andes arose through a series of complex geological processes over the past c. 100 million years, impacting the evolution of regional biota by creating barriers to gene flow, ope...

In 2020 and 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic led to an abrupt overhaul of many academic practices, including the transition of scientific events, such as workshops, to a fully virtual format. We describe our experiences organizing and teaching online-only statistical phylogenetics workshops and the lessons we learned along the way. We found that online...

Statistical phylogenetic methods are the foundation for a wide range of evolutionary and epidemiological studies. However, as these methods grow increasingly complex, users often encounter significant challenges with summarizing, visualizing and communicating their key results. We present RevGadgets , an R package for creating publication‐quality f...

The evolution of major innovations in life history strategies (how organisms gather and store energy and reproduce) is a primary theme of biodiversity research. In one remarkable example of a life history innovation, certain plants --- geophytes --- retreat underground using underground storage organs (USOs), and thus survive extended periods of un...

Statistical phylogenetic methods are the foundation for a wide range of evolutionary and epidemiological studies. However, as these methods grow increasingly complex, users often encounter significant challenges with summarizing, visualizing, and communicating their key results. We present RevGadgets , an R package for creating publication-quality...

Herbaceous plants collectively known as geophytes, which regrow from belowground buds, are distributed around the globe and throughout the land plant tree of life. The geophytic habit is an evolutionarily and ecologically important growth form in plants, permitting novel life history strategies, enabling the occupation of more seasonal climates, me...

Many species from across the vascular plant tree‐of‐life have modified standard plant tissues into tubers, bulbs, corms, and other underground storage organs (USOs), unique innovations which allow these plants to retreat underground. Our ability to understand the developmental and evolutionary forces that shape these morphologies is limited by a la...

Many species from across the vascular plant tree-of-life have modified standard plant tissues into tubers, bulbs, corms, and other underground storage organs (USOs). Bomarea multiflora (Alstroemeriaceae) is a tropical climbing monocot with unique underground morphology, including tuberous roots. We take a comparative transcriptomics approach to cha...