Vanessa Carina Bieker

In my PhD project, I study Ambrosia artemisiifolia, an annual weed that is native to North America and became invasive upon introduction in Europe. I use historic herbarium samples and modern samples from the native as well as the invasive range to study changes over time.  We hope to be able to identify the source population(s) that gave rise to the European population. Moreover, we will investigate the question what type of mutation (standing variation vs. de novo) contributes most to adaptation in the introduced range.