Kyle Gunther

Unido: 14.ago.2016 Última actividad: 27.mar.2024 iNaturalist

Hello!

I am a biologist for an environmental consulting company and often get paid to find and map plants and vegetation communities (love my job). Before that I earned my masters of science in Dr. Lluvia Flores-Renteria's lab at San Diego State University (SDSU) where I studied the mission manzanita (Xylococcus bicolor). I used a combination of population genetics, habitat suitability models, and leaf morphometrics to look for significant, population-level differences with the hope of informing the establishment of conservation units and/or management decisions. We found three genetically distinct groups, 1) corresponding to Catalina Island, and 2) a northern and 3) a southern group corresponding to the split in the distribution created by the peninsular deserts in Baja California. I was also very fortunate to have worked as the collections manager at the SDSU Herbarium under the supervision of Dr. Michael G. Simpson, where we digitized the collection under an NSF grant (check out the collection on CCH2.org).

Between my undergrad and grad school, I gained valuable experience working as a field botanist in the Santa Monica Mountains, as well as a caretaker for the Zzyzx Desert Studies Center ran by the CSU Desert Studies Consortium. Check out the project I started as a Desert Docent at Zzyzx; it's amazing how much biodiversity is in such a small, seemingly 'empty' place out in the middle of the Mojave Desert (inaturalist.org/projects/zzyzx-desert-studies-center).

If you made it this far, thanks for reading!

Kyle Gunther

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