Susan Mazer

Biography

Professor Mazer is an evolutionary biologist whose research focuses on the detection of the process and outcome of evolution by natural selection in wild and in experimental populations of terrestrial plants. She earned her B.S. degree in Biology and her Ph.D. in Botany, respectively, at Yale College and at the University of California, Davis.

Research

Professor Mazer and her research group use the statistical methods of quantitative genetics, comparative biology, natural and artificial selection, machine learning, image analysis, and evolutionary ecology to detect adaptive responses of plants to environmental stressors such as drought, short growing seasons, and climate change. Her current research comprises: (1) field work on wild populations of the California wildflower, Nemophila menziesii (Baby Blue Eyes: Boraginaceae) throughout California to evaluate its capacity to adapt to environmental change; (2) the analysis of hundreds of thousands of electronically available plant specimen records representing thousands of species to detect the sensitivity of their seasonal flowering times to geographic and temporal variation in climate; and (3) collaborative research with colleagues, graduate students, and postdoctoral associates on a variety of other species (in the genera Clarkia, Dithyrea, and Streptanthus) to identify their ecological and evolutionary responses to local environmental conditions.