Vince Eckhart

Vince Eckhart, CPS biography
24 March 2003

Research: Flowering plants are famous for their diversity of form and geographic distribution. As we practice plant ecology, my students and I attempt to discover the ecological and evolutionary causes of variation in plant form and distribution. We ask why plants possess the features they do, rather than other features, and we ask why plants occur where they do, rather than elsewhere. The importance of place is inseparable from the subject matter in this kind of science.

Though a major part of our research concerns plants of California grasslands, we also are addressing special challenges and issues of plant ecology in Iowa and the rest of the tallgrass prairie region.

Vince Eckhart
Assistant Professor of Biology

Agriculture has eliminated much of Iowa's native vegetation, leaving the remaining prairies, woodlands, and wetlands highly fragmented. Therefore the major issues in Iowa plant ecology tend to involve conservation and restoration. Our focus has been to address questions in basic plant ecology that also inform conservation and restoration applications. One recent line of research in my lab examines the relationships between geographic gradients in precipitation across Iowa and life-cycle evolution of native plants in the genus Linum (flax). Teaching: All the courses I teach support the mission of the Center for Prairie Studies, and this close correspondence was the major reason I signed on as a "charter member" of the Center.