Victoria Sork

Last updated
Victoria Sork
Born
Victoria Louise Sork

Los Angeles
Alma mater University of California, Irvine (BS)
University of Michigan (PhD)
Awards Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2004)
Scientific career
Fields Oaks
Epigenetics
Population genomics
Conservation genetics [1]
Institutions University of California, Los Angeles
Thesis Demographic Consequences of Mammalian Seed Dispersal for Pignut Hickory  (1979)
Website sorklab.eeb.ucla.edu

Victoria Louise Sork is an American scientist who is Professor and Dean of Life Sciences at University of California, Los Angeles. [1] She studies tree populations in California and the Eastern United States using genomics, evolutionary biology and conservation biology. [2] [3] [4] [5] Sork is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Contents

Early life and education

Sork was born in Los Angeles. [6] She earned her undergraduate degree in biological sciences at the University of California, Irvine. [7] She moved to the University of Michigan for her graduate studies where she was awarded a PhD in 1979 for research on seed dispersal in pignut hickory (Carya glabra). [8]

Research and career

Sork studies the evolution of trees in California's oak woodlands and savannas. [9] [10] She believes that trees are crucial determinants of particular ecosystems and that their considerable population sizes offer a good context for the study of evolution. [11] Trees provide a living record of the changing climate, and scientists like Sork can sequence their genome to evaluate the impact of different environmental conditions. [12] Sork uses genetic markers to monitor gene flow and genomics to understand genetic variation. [11] She has focussed on Oaks (Quercus) and particularly Quercus lobata (Valley oaks), studying their local adaptation, the molecular ecology of their pollen, phylogeography of the genetic variation, hybridisation and how climate change will impact them. [9] [11] [13]

In the 2000s Sork started working with Jessica Wright of the Food and Drug Administration on a project that evaluated which trees would be most able to adapt to a changing climate. [14] This has involved gathering tens of thousands of seeds from almost one hundred locations, growing them to saplings in greenhouses and planting them in experimental gardens. [14] She sequenced the genomes of the mother trees to compare with current genetic information, and combined this with how well the trees grew in different environments. [14] She has investigated how the trees that are planted in the wake of the Californian wildfires will respond to a warming climate. [14] [15] Her studies showed that genomics can be used to inform strategies for conservation, emphasising the need for planting trees that can withstand changing ecosystems and higher temperatures. [14] [16] She showed that trees with "beneficial" genetic traits would have significantly higher growth rates than those without them. [14]

Sork is part of a $10 million conservation strategy, the California Conservation Genomics Project, which aims to transform land is managed in California. [17]

Academic service

She was appointed Chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in 2004. [6] In 2009 Sork was made Dean of the UCLA College of Letters and Science Life Sciences Division. [6] [18] Under her leadership, UCLA have established new initiatives, including [6] the La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science, [19] and The Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden. [20]

Awards and honours

In 2004 Sork was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (FAAAS). [21]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chaparral</span> Shrubland plant community in western North America

Chaparral is a shrubland plant community found primarily in California, in southern Oregon and in the northern portion of the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico. It is shaped by a Mediterranean climate and infrequent, high-intensity crown fires.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oak</span> Tree or shrub in the genus Quercus

An oak is a hardwood tree or shrub in the genus Quercus of the beech family. They have spirally arranged leaves, often with lobed edges, and a nut called an acorn, borne within a cup. The genus is widely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere; it includes some 500 species, both deciduous and evergreen. Fossil oaks date back to the Middle Eocene. Molecular phylogeny shows that the genus is divided into Old World and New World clades, but many oak species hybridise freely, making the genus's history difficult to resolve.

<i>Quercus ilex</i> Oak tree species native to the Mediterranean

Quercus ilex, the holm oak, also evergreen oak, is a large evergreen oak native to the Mediterranean region. It is a member of the section Ilex of the genus, with acorns that mature in a single summer.

<i>Quercus douglasii</i> Species of oak tree

Quercus douglasii, known as blue oak, is a species of oak endemic to California, common in the Coast Ranges and the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. It is California's most drought-tolerant deciduous oak, and is a dominant species in the blue oak woodland ecosystem. It is occasionally known as mountain oak and iron oak.

<i>Quercus tomentella</i> Species of tree

Quercus tomentella, the island oak, island live oak, or Channel Island oak, is an oak in the section Protobalanus. It is native to six islands: five of the Channel Islands of California and Guadalupe Island, part of Baja California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oak savanna</span> Lightly forested grassland where oak trees are dominant

An oak savanna is a type of savanna, where oaks are the dominant trees. It is also generally characterized by an understory that is lush with grass and herb related plants. The terms "oakery" or "woodlands" are also used commonly, though the former is more prevalent when referencing the Mediterranean area. Oak savannas typically exist in areas with low precipitation and feature poor soils. Predominant land uses include rangeland agriculture. Naturally, these savannas depend on natural wildfires to maintain their open vegetation.

<i>Quercus lobata</i> Species of oak tree

Quercus lobata, commonly called the valley oak or roble, is the largest of the California oaks. It is endemic to the state, growing in interior valleys and foothills from Siskiyou to San Diego counties. Deciduous, it requires year-round groundwater, and may live up to 600 years. Its thick, ridged bark and deeply lobed leaves are characteristic, and assist in identification.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mast seeding</span> Fruit of forest trees like acorns and other nuts

Mast is the fruit of forest trees and shrubs, such as acorns and other nuts. The term derives from the Old English mæst, meaning the nuts of forest trees that have accumulated on the ground, especially those used historically for fattening domestic pigs, and as food resources for wildlife. In the aseasonal tropics of Southeast Asia, entire forests, including hundreds of species of trees and shrubs, are known to mast at irregular periods of 2–12 years.

<i>Quercus brandegeei</i> Species of oak tree

Quercus brandegeei is a rare Mexican species of plant in the family Fagaceae, in the oak genus Quercus, section Virentes. It has been found only in the southern part of the State of Baja California Sur in northwestern Mexico.

<i>Quercus <span style="font-style:normal;">×</span> macdonaldii</i> Species of tree

Quercus × macdonaldii, formerly Quercus macdonaldii, with the common names MacDonald's oak and Macdonald oak, is a rare hybrid species of oak in the family Fagaceae.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Forest migration</span>

Forest migration is the movement of large seed plant dominated communities in geographical space over time.

<i>Quercus geminata</i> Species of oak tree

Quercus geminata, commonly called sand live oak, is an evergreen oak tree native to the coastal regions of the subtropical southeastern United States, along the Atlantic Coast from southern Florida northward to southeastern Virginia and along the Gulf Coast westward to southern Mississippi, on seacoast dunes and on white sands in evergreen oak scrubs.

<i>Quercus sagrana</i> Species of oak tree

Quercus sagrana, also spelled Quercus sagraeana, the Cuban oak, is a medium-sized evergreen tree native to western Cuba in the Cuban pine forests ecoregion. It is the only oak native to the Caribbean.

<i>Andricus quercuscalifornicus</i> Species of wasp

Andricus quercuscalifornicus, or the California gall wasp, is a small wasp species that induces oak apple galls on white oaks, primarily the valley oak but also other species such as Quercus berberidifolia. The California gall wasp is considered an ecosystem engineer, capable of manipulating the growth of galls for their own development. It is found from Washington, Oregon, and California to northern regions of Mexico. Often multiple wasps in different life stages occupy the same gall. The induced galls help establish complex insect communities, promoting the diversification in niche differentiation. Furthermore, the adaptive value of these galls could be attributed their ecological benefits such as nutrition, provision of microenvironment, and enemy avoidance.

<i>Ramalina menziesii</i> Species of lichen

Ramalina menziesii, the lace lichen or fishnet, is a pale yellowish-green to grayish-green fruticose lichen. It grows up to a meter long, hanging from bark and twigs in a distinctive net-like or lace-like pattern that is unlike any other lichen in North America. It becomes a deeper green when wet. Apothecia are lecanorine. Lace lichen is an important food source for deer in the Coast Range of California, and a source of nest material for birds. It is highly variable in its growth form, with branches sometimes so slender as to appear like strands, sometimes tiny, and sometimes large with broadly flattened branches.

Ruth Geyer Shaw is a professor and principal investigator in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at the University of Minnesota. She studies the processes involved in genetic variation, specializing in plant population biology and evolutionary quantitative genetics. Her work is particularly relevant in studying the effects of stressors such as climate instability and population fragmentation on evolutionary change in populations. She has developed and applied new statistical methods for her field and is considered a leading population geneticist.

Landscape genomics is one of many strategies used to identify relationships between environmental factors and the genetic adaptation of organisms in response to these factors such as climate and soil. Landscape genomics combines aspects of landscape ecology, population genetics and landscape genetics. The latter addresses how landscape features influence the population structure and gene flow of organisms across time and space. The field of landscape genomics is distinct from landscape genetics in that it is not focused on the neutral genetic processes, but considers, in addition to neutral processes such as drift and gene flow, explicitly adaptive processes, i.e. the role of natural selection.

Jeannine Cavender-Bares is Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and Director of the Harvard University Herbaria. She is also adjunct professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution & Behavior at the University of Minnesota, where she served on the faculty for over two decades. Her research integrates evolutionary biology, ecology, and physiology by studying the functional traits of plants, with a particular focus on oaks.

<i>Quercus <span style="font-style:normal;">subg.</span> Quercus</i> Subgenus of Oak trees

Quercus subgenus Quercus is one of the two subgenera into which the genus Quercus was divided in a 2017 classification. It contains about 190 species divided among five sections. It may be called the New World clade or the high-latitude clade; most species are native to the Americas, the others being found in Eurasia and northernmost North Africa.

Moisés Expósito-Alonso is a Spanish scientist and assistant professor of global change biology at the University of California, Berkeley, member of the Innovative Genomics Institute, and inaugural Freeman Hrabowski Scholar from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His research includes the study of plants and how climate change affects their evolution.

References

  1. 1 2 Victoria Sork publications indexed by Google Scholar OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  2. ↑ Sork, Victoria L.; Nason, John; Campbell, Diane R.; Fernandez, Juan F. (1999). "Landscape approaches to historical and contemporary gene flow in plants". Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 14 (6): 219–224. doi:10.1016/S0169-5347(98)01585-7. ISSN   0169-5347. PMID   10354623.
  3. ↑ Loiselle, Bette A.; Sork, Victoria L.; Nason, John; Graham, Catherine (1995). "Spatial genetic structure of a tropical understory shrub, Psychotria officinalis (Rubiaceae)". American Journal of Botany. 82 (11): 1420–1425. doi:10.1002/j.1537-2197.1995.tb12679.x. ISSN   0002-9122.
  4. ↑ Kelly, Dave; Sork, Victoria L. (2002). "Mast Seeding in Perennial Plants: Why, How, Where?". Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics. 33 (1): 427–447. doi:10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.33.020602.095433. ISSN   0066-4162.
  5. ↑ Sork, Victoria L.; Bramble, Judy; Sexton, Owen (1993). "Ecology of Mast-Fruiting in Three Species of North American Deciduous Oaks". Ecology. 74 (2): 528–541. doi:10.2307/1939313. ISSN   0012-9658. JSTOR   1939313.
  6. 1 2 3 4 "Victoria L. Sork". lifesciences.ucla.edu. UCLA. Retrieved 2020-02-02.
  7. ↑ Regents, University of Michigan Board of (1972). Proceedings. The University.[ ISBN missing ]
  8. ↑ Sork, Victoria Louise (1979). Demographic Consequences of Mammalian Seed Dispersal for Pignut Hickory (PhD thesis). University of Michigan. OCLC   5822016. ProQuest   302924856.
  9. 1 2 "Research in the Sork Lab". sorklab.eeb.ucla.edu. Retrieved 2020-02-02.
  10. ↑ "Victoria Sork". Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA. 2016-09-22. Retrieved 2020-02-03.
  11. 1 2 3 "Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | indivFaulty2". eeb.ucla.edu. Retrieved 2020-02-02.
  12. ↑ "Valley oak tree could provide insight into how plants will adapt to climate change". dailybruin.com. Retrieved 2020-02-03.
  13. ↑ Browne, Luke; Wright, Jessica W.; Fitz-Gibbon, Sorel; Gugger, Paul F.; Sork, Victoria L. (2019). "Adaptational lag to temperature in valley oak (Quercus lobata) can be mitigated by genome-informed assisted gene flow". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 116 (50): 25179–25185. Bibcode:2019PNAS..11625179B. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1908771116 . ISSN   0027-8424. PMC   6911187 . PMID   31767740.
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Colgan, David (2019-11-25). "One of California's iconic tree species offers lessons for conservation".{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  15. ↑ Kinver, Mark (2019-12-05). "Genetics can play key role in saving trees". BBC News. Retrieved 2020-02-03.
  16. ↑ Browne, Luke; Wright, Jessica W.; Fitz-Gibbon, Sorel; Gugger, Paul F.; Sork, Victoria L. (2019-12-10). "Adaptational lag to temperature in valley oak (Quercus lobata) can be mitigated by genome-informed assisted gene flow". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 116 (50): 25179–25185. Bibcode:2019PNAS..11625179B. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1908771116 . ISSN   0027-8424. PMC   6911187 . PMID   31767740.
  17. ↑ Wolpert, Stuart; UCLA (2019-08-14). "UCLA to lead $10 million California conservation project". universityofcalifornia.edu. University of California. Retrieved 2020-02-02.
  18. ↑ Women, UCLA Center for the Study of (2013-02-01). "Victoria Sork". escholarship.org.
  19. ↑ "$5 million gift from Morton La Kretz will support renovation of UCLA Botany Building". UCLA. Retrieved 2020-02-03.
  20. ↑ "UCLA's Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden is ready for its close-up". UCLA. Retrieved 2020-02-03.
  21. ↑ "Annual report" (PDF). www.aaas.org. 2004. Retrieved 2020-02-03.
  22. ↑ "Victoria Sork awarded the 2020 Molecular Ecology Prize". 4 May 2020.
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