Joseph Braasch

• Doctor of Philosophy
• PostDoc Position at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Premise: How the environment influences the distribution of trait variation across a species' range has important implications for seed transfer during restoration. Evolution across environments could influence fitness when individuals are transferred into new environments. Here, we evaluate the role the environment has had on the distribution of...

Premise of the Study Understanding how environment influences the distribution of trait variation across a species’ range has important implications for seed transfer during restoration. Heritable genetic differences associated with environment could impact fitness when transferred into new environments. Here, we test the degree to which the enviro...

Globally imperiled ecosystems often depend upon collection, propagation, and storage of seed material for use in restoration. However, during the restoration process demographic changes, population bottlenecks, and selection can alter the genetic composition of seed material, with potential impacts for restoration success. The evolutionary outcomes...

Globally imperiled ecosystems often depend upon collection, propagation, and storage of seed material for use in restoration. However, during the restoration process demographic changes, population bottlenecks, and selection can alter the genetic composition of seed material, with potential impacts for restoration success. The evolutionary outcomes...

Introduced species are a common feature of modern plant communities and experience environmental challenges alongside native species. Changes to the environment may reveal distinct species-environment relationships for native and introduced components of plant communities. Extreme environmental change, such as drought, is predicted to result in dec...

The margins of an expanding range are predicted to be challenging environments for adaptation. Marginal populations should often experience low effective population sizes (Ne) where genetic drift is high due to demographic expansion and/or census population size is low due to unfavorable environmental conditions. Nevertheless, invasive species demo...

Species introductions often bring together genetically divergent source populations, resulting in genetic admixture. This geographic reshuffling of diversity has the potential to generate favorable new genetic combinations, facilitating the establishment and invasive spread of introduced populations. Observational support for the superior performan...

The margins of an expanding range are predicted to be challenging environments for adaptation. Marginal populations should often experience low effective population sizes (Ne) where genetic drift is high due to demographic expansion and/or census population size is low due to unfavorable environmental conditions. Nevertheless, invasive species demo...

Species introductions often bring together genetically divergent source populations, resulting in genetic admixture. This geographic reshuffling of diversity has the potential to generate favorable new genetic combinations, facilitating the establishment and invasive spread of introduced populations. Observational support for the superior performan...

The influence of genetic variation on invasion success has captivated researchers since the start of the field of invasion genetics 50 years ago. We review the history of work on this question and conclude that genetic variation—as surveyed with molecular markers—appears to shape invasion rarely. Instead, there is a significant disconnect between m...

The influence of genetic variation on invasion success has captivated researchers since the start of the field of invasion genetics 50 years ago. We review the history of work on this question and conclude that genetic variation - as surveyed with molecular markers - appears to shape invasion rarely. Instead, there is a significant disconnect betwe...

As studies demonstrating attraction of natural enemies to synthetic herbivore‐induced plant volatiles (HIPVs) accumulate, it is becoming increasingly important to investigate how deployment of these compounds influences arthropod behavior and distribution in the field. There is currently an unexplained dichotomy in the literature regarding the dist...

Using herbivore-induced plant volatiles (HIPVs) to attract specific natural enemies in the field has proven challenging, partly because of a poor understanding of: (i) which compound(s) to manipulate to attract specific taxa, and (ii) the ecological conditions over which HIPVs are effective. To address these issues, we quantified the response of a...

Methyl salicylate (MeSA) is a herbivore-induced plant volatile that has shown potential in attracting natural enemies. Here, we conducted a meta-analysis to evaluate the magnitude of natural enemy response to MeSA in the field, and tested its attractiveness to insect predators in commercial cranberry bogs. Eighteen experiments from 14 publications...