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Joseph Moosbrugger

MS Student Email: jm355009@ohio.edu

Environmental and Plant Biology

317 Porter Hall

Athens, Ohio 45701 Advisor: Dr. Brian McCarthy

Crane Hollow Nature Preserve Rocks and Joseph Moosbrugger

Interests

I am interested in ecology as a field, particularly in Eastern deciduous forests. Additionally, invasive species and plant-animal interactions fascinate me. I really just enjoy being outside tromping through the woods while looking at plants

A rockhouse on a tributary of Crane Hollow

Research

For my masters thesis I am performing an annotated flora of Crane Hollow Preserve located in Hocking County, Ohio. The preserve was previously studied in the early eighties, however the preserve has increased in size dramatically, creating the need for a new study. It is a fun project as I get to wander around a beautiful field site with immense sandstone cliffs and amazing rock formations. The varied topography and past land use history has created an enormous amount of spatial heterogeneity and varied communities leading to a great amount of species diversity. The preserve has a mixture of community types including fields, oak forests, mesic forests, hemlock-northern hardwood forests, along with floodplain forests. Currently, I have found over 700 species on the preserve. The preserve harbors a few very interesting rare species including Aconitum columbianum (Northern Monkshood) and Trichomanes boscianum (Appalachian Filmy Fern). I personally have discovered several state listed species including Scleria triglomerata (Tall Nut-Rush) and Panicum verrucosum (Warty Panic-grass). Most interesting is the discovery of a species which may be new to Ohio, Eupatorium godfreyanum (Godfrey’s Thoroughwort).