What I liked
The Arnold Arboretum is one of the world’s most comprehensive and best documented living collections occupying over 250 acres. . During my 10 week experience, I had Elizabeth Spriggs as my research mentor who focuses her research on phylogeography and recent evolution of the chestnuts and ashes (Castanea and Fraxinus) the iconic, but severely threatened, North American trees. My research objective was to analyze morphological traits and describe variability in the genus Castanea and understand trait relationships to observe the differences and similarities within species. During that program, I was exposed to using R to make a PCA of my data, while also learning more data analysis skills.
