Research in the laboratory is focused on the interface between plants and their environment. The tools of physiological and evolutionary plant ecology are currently being applied towards the study and interpretation of this interface. investigations draw upon a variety of physiological methods, modeling and use of stable isotopes as avenues for improving our understanding of how the ecophysiological characteristics of plants are shaped by and resonc to the environments they inhabit. Student and post-doctoral research projects are done in the laboratory pay special attention to how aspects of plant form and function combine to permit adaptation to environmental variation, whether naturally or anthropologically imposed and how plants and their unique traits influence the structure and function of communities and ecosystems they compose.