Professor Helen Holmlund of Seaver College earns NSF grant to study ferns on four different continents | Newsroom

Helen Holmlund discovered her calling while hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains as a summer student at Pepperdine University.

“At university I first came into contact with practicing scientists. Before then, I didn’t know what research was and how it worked,” she explains. “Pepperdine accepted me into the plant biology lab and I was hooked from day one. We went crawling through the bushes and it was so much fun asking questions, testing hypotheses and designing experiments in nature.’

After this first spark of passion, Holmlund is now ready to offer a new generation of students a similarly immersive experience with plants. The assistant professor of biology just received a $500,999 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant that will allow her and Seaver College students to study drought-tolerant ferns on four different continents.

Drought-tolerant ferns can help provide insight into the various strategies plants use to survive drought. Ferns are the second most diverse type of vascular plants with approximately 12,000 different species worldwide. However, research into plant drought tolerance has historically neglected ferns – a shocking fact given the ability of some ferns to survive in water-scarce environments.

As Holmlund learned, ferns in the Santa Monica Mountains survive with very little moisture. This is surprising because vascular plants need water for essential processes such as photosynthesis – a biological function that creates chemical energy and oxygen essential for survival. Rather than dying during drought, some Southern California ferns are desiccation-tolerant “resurrection” ferns, meaning they dry out their tissues to less than 10 percent water. After rehydration, they can restore full functionality.

The quest of Holmlund’s NSF research enterprise is to better determine how these resurrection ferns might function after near-complete desiccation. These discoveries could improve our understanding of how different plants survive long-term drought.

“It is very important to see how these resurrection ferns can cope with climate change,” says Holmlund. “More broadly, it is important to understand how they cope with environmental stressors because they are key players in the ecosystem. We need to learn more about their survival limits.”

To learn more about the limits of a fern’s survival, Holmlund compares six different families of resurrection plants found around the world. This process will take the Seaver College professor and her research students from the sunny shores of Malibu to Texas, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and Switzerland. At each of these stops, the research team will conduct field anatomical and physiological analyzes of resurrection ferns and their close relatives.

Pepperdine’s extensive international presence allows Holmlund and her students to take a global approach. During the trips abroad, the research team will use two of the university’s international campuses and deploy their resources to support the research. In addition to providing greater access to specimens, Holmlund believes this unique facet of the project will engage more undergraduate researchers and provide research opportunities for students participating in international programs.

“I view the students as collaborators in the project and as scientists in their own right,” she says. “The NSF grant opens up opportunities for student research at home and abroad. I hope that the students working on the project will be inspired and that it will help them in their own search for a vocation.”