With Matthew Johnson, Director, E.L. Reed Herbarium, Texas Tech University

Thursday, March 12, 2026

12:00 PM-1:00 PM ET

Hybrid - Join us in person or on Zoom!

Free; preregistration required. Register >

How can plants that have been dead for 50 years help us learn how plants acclimated to climate change? Just as historians can learn about our past through newspapers and books, botanists can use carefully preserved herbarium specimens to learn how plants experienced their environment when they were still alive. Our team at the E.L. Reed Herbarium at Texas Tech University is using specimens from the 1970s collected in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, a biodiversity hotspot with many rare and endemic plant species. We compared herbarium specimens to new collections to reveal how plants have responded to fifty years of climate and land use change through morphology (stomatal densities), physiology (stable carbon isotopes), and genetics (high-throughput DNA sequencing).

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Matt Johnson is an Associate Professor in Biological Sciences and Director of the E.L. Reed Herbarium at Texas Tech University. He received a PhD from Duke University, where he studied the evolution of reproductive success in Sphagnum peatmosses, and completed post-doctoral work on the Moss Tree of Life Project at the Chicago Botanic Garden. His current research focuses on the origin and maintenance of biodiversity in plants through the development of new tools for phylogenetics and conservation genetics, and the integration of herbarium specimens into modern botanical research.