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Small flowers focus of big climate research at Missouri Botanical Garden
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ST. LOUIS – The Missouri Botanical Garden is known for its beautiful plants and flowers, but that’s not where you’ll find ecologist Matthew Austin.
Most days, you’ll find the post-doctoral fellow with Washington University’s Living Earth Collaborative combing the stacks, not of a library, but of the garden’s Herbarium, one of the world’s best research resources for all things plants.
“The garden has plant specimens from across the globe and dating from today through back more than a century,” Austin said.
Austin’s research focuses on how changing environments are affecting biology. His subject of choice? One of the first flowers we see when spring rolls around, blue violets.
“I’m interested in the common blue violet because this is a fantastic model species for how climate change has affected plant reproduction,” he said.
Unlike other plants, blue violets have two distinct types of flowers. One is the pretty blue flower that blankets backyards. That flower reproduces with the help of pollinators. The other flowers remain tucked away at the base of the plant and never see a bee or butterfly. They self-reproduce.
“By studying how climate change has affected the production of these two different flower types in the common blue violet, we can study how climate change is affecting plant reproduction broadly,” he said.
Austin and his colleagues looked at this mixed mating process using violet specimens from the Herbarium dating from 1875 to the present and paired that with temperature and precipitation data. And what did they find?
“Across the past century, we’ve seen violets produce more of the open, showy flower relative to the self-fertilizing flower,” he said. “And this appears to be driven by increased precipitation that Missouri has experienced across that time.”
The findings also suggest climate change might not just affect how plants reproduce, but also when. Showy violet flowers bloom earlier in the spring than in the past. But those flowers depend on bees that may not have emerged yet.
“Violets have shifted the time of year that they are flowering. And if their pollinators have not also shifted the time that they occur, then this could throw violets out of sync,” Austin said.
Austin calls the carefully collected and preserved plant specimens at the Herbarium crucial to science
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JEFFERSON COUNTY, Mo. – Two people are behind bars after a man reportedly attacked a Jefferson County deputy with a screwdriver during an attempted arrest over the weekend.
Prosecutors have charged Nicholas Davis, 47, and Amanda Davis, 45, of Dittmer, Missouri, with felonies in the investigation.
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The alleged attack followed a traffic stop of a driver in the 9500 block of Jones Creek Road on July 7, though the driver was not Nicholas or Amanda.
According to court documents obtained by FOX 2, Nicholas reportedly came out of his nearby home, yelled at a deputy and started approaching him while holding a screwdriver. The deputy initially ordered Nicholas to back away, then used pepper spray.
Per court documents, the deputy attempted to arrest Nicholas, who then struck him in the chest with the screwdriver. Amanda reportedly approached the deputy and pulled him away from Nicholas before both ran inside their home.
The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office says the situation prompted an hours-long standoff involving negotiators, a SWAT team and a K-9 deputy. The situation led to Nicholas refusing warnings and being bitten by a K-9.
Nicholas and Amanda are both jailed in the Jefferson County Jail without bond. Nicholas is charged with first-degree assault on a special victim and armed criminal action. Amanda is charged with resisting/interfering with arrest.
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ST. LOUIS — The new St. Louis schools superintendent will be officially sworn into office today. Dr. Keisha Scarlett took over the job in July after the retirement of Dr. Kelvin Adams. She was assistant superintendent in the Seattle Public School District. The installation ceremony is at 6:15 p.m. before the regular school board meeting.
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ST. LOUIS — A gasoline tanker truck crashed into a Metro transit center near Riverview and Hall Streets early Tuesday morning and knocked over a power pole. The pole is leaning on other power lines. Police have the area blocked off here because there is a downed power line. Ameren and Metro crews are also on the scene.
The incident happened around 12:30 a.m. It’s still unclear exactly what caused the crash, but we do that there was a second vehicle somehow involved. The airbags on that second vehicle did deploy.
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Police at the scene have not been able to give us a lot of details. Metro officials tell FOX 2 that the transit center here is operating this morning for passengers and buses. Access to certain areas will be limited here as clean up unfolds.
A Metro spokesperson says half of the station isn’t being used right now because of safety issues. It isn’t impacting overall bus operations, everything is just happening on the other side of transit center.
The extent of the damage to the actual transit center is still unclear, but I’m told it does not appear to be extreme. A Metro spokesperson tells me there were no injuries to any metro workers or passengers. The tanker driver also was not injured.
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