Our Collaborative Research Centre regularly offers training courses for its Early Career Researchers. In these courses, Principal Investigators introduce concepts and methods central to understanding mechanisms, constraints, and evolution of phenotypic plasticity in plants.
Project B3 examines how genotype and environment interact in shaping functional plant responses related to resource acquisition and conservation, framed within the concept of the Leaf Economics Spectrum. Because this concept has the potential to link across multiple projects in the CRC, project members offered a three-hour training course for CRC Early Career Researchers.
The morning began with a lecture by Prof. Anja Linstädter, who introduced the ecological background of the Leaf Economics Spectrum. PhD students and postdocs then went outdoors to collect leaves of various shapes and sizes, gaining first-hand insight into the remarkable variation captured by the Leaf Economics Spectrum. In the second session, Dr. Vera Hesen demonstrated how leaf traits are measured. Working in small groups, course participants had the chance to practice these methods themselves using Arabidopsis thaliana plants. The course provided a practical introduction to an important ecological framework and inspired the participants to integrate plant strategies in their own research.