Tara Rajaniemi

faculty

Tara Rajaniemi, PhD

Professor

Biology

Curriculum Vitae

Contact

508-999-8223

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Science & Engineering 333

Education

2001University of MichiganPhD
1995Florida State UniversityBA

Teaching

  • Plant Biology
  • Community Ecology
  • Experimental Design and Analysis

Teaching

Programs

Teaching

Courses

The diversity, cellular biology, anatomy and morphology, physiology, and ecology of plants. In the laboratory, the major groups of plants will be studied, and students will use hypothesis-testing and experimentation to examine concepts in plant physiology and ecology.

Students with senior standing (or others with consent of the instructor) report on and discuss current biological problems as presented in principle journals, abstracts and reviews. The work of each seminar is usually built upon a single unifying content area.

One to four hours in varied formats Selected topics in Biology. In recent years these have included physiology and biochemistry of marine animals, evolutionary ecology, biology of marine mammals, morphometrics and phylogenetic systematics, and extremophiles.

Research

Research interests

  • Root growth responses to competition
  • Effects of species interactions on community structure
  • Plant species distributions on coastal dunes

Select publications

See curriculum vitae for more publications

  • Rajaniemi, T.K., and Barrett, D.T. (2018).
    Germination responses to abiotic stress shape species distributions on coastal dunes
    Plant Ecology, 219, 1271-1282.
  • Rajaniemi, T.K., Goldberg, D.E., Turkington, R., and Dyer, A.R. (2012).
    Local filters limit species diversity, but species pools determine composition
    Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 14, 373-380.
  • Rajaniemi, T.K. (2011).
    Competition for patchy soil resources reduces community evenness
    Oecologia, 165, 169-174.