Amy McPherson is the Director of Publications for the Botanical Society of America and Managing Editor of the American Journal of Botany, the Society’s flagship journal. Prior to joining the BSA in 2005, Amy was Managing Editor of the Missouri Botanical Garden Press and oversaw publication of two journals and several book series. She has a degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and decades of experience in scholarly publishing. Botanists are her favorite kinds of people.

Dr. Andrea Berardi is an Assistant Professor at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. She is a plant evolutionary biologist whose research focuses on evolutionary, genetic, and ecological processes underlying speciation, specifically focusing on how floral traits play a role in reproductive isolation and adaptation to the environment. Her favorite traits to study are floral color and plant secondary/specialized metabolites. She is co-editing a special issue of the American Journal of Botany on "Paradigm Shifts in Flower Color," along with Justen Whittall, Eduardo Narbona, and José Carlos del Valle García.

Dr. Erica Lawrence-Paul is an NSF postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Jesse Lasky’s lab in the Department of Biology at the Pennsylvania State University. She earned her doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania, studying the ecophysiological significance of the plant developmental transition, vegetative phase change, with a particular focus on photosynthetic and leaf carbon economic traits. Her current work focuses on understanding how natural variation in the timing of vegetative phase change and phase-specific differences in stress tolerance contribute to plant abiotic stress response and local adaption.

Institution: Pennsylvania State University

Bluesky: @ehlawrence-paul.bsky.social

Jessica is a whole plant physiologist with expertise in vascular physiology, floral physiology, phenology, and physiological ecology in seasonally cold climates. She has a sweet tooth which gives her a strong disposition towards research tied to the phloem. She is an Associate Professor at a primary undergraduate institution and has a passion for mentoring undergraduate and graduate students (especially master’s students). She developed and runs a community-engaged research program focused on tree phenology in coastal forests around Lake Superior and is the Chair of the Physiological and Ecophysiological Sect. of BSA. Before starting as a faculty, she was a Putnam Research Fellow at the Arnold Arboretum and a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. She received her PhD from the University of Minnesota in Plant Biological Sciences. The research discussed in the podcast was funded by the National Science Foundation (IOS 1656318).

BlueSky @savageplantphys.bsky.social 

Dr. Jordan Dowell is an assistant professor at Louisiana State University and an Associate Editor of Applications in Plant Science, a journal of the Botanical Society of America. He studies the evolutionary ecology of plant-plant chemical communication and the impacts of multifunctional traits on biotic interactions from single-cells to landscapes using various techniques, from metabolomic and genomic approaches to remote sensing and field-based studies.

Dr. Shiran Ben Zeev, the creator and host of the podcast, is a postdoctoral fellow at Penn State University who studies plant–plant interactions in crops. He completed a Ph.D. in Crop and Vegetable Sciences at Hebrew University, focusing on genetic and agronomic aspects of lodging in tef, alongside ground-breaking breeding initiatives. He produced and hosted award-winning podcasts about science and sustainability in Israel, and is a proud husband and father.