Battles Lab

rcwenk AT berkeley DOT edu

I have worked in the ESPM department on and off since summer 2000, as an
undergraduate at U.C. Davis. I now work half time as a research associate
in the Battles Lab and half time as a curatorial assistant in the herbarium
at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco
(http://research.calacademy.org/research/botany/index.php).

In the Battles lab, I have done field work throughout California,
especially in annual grasslands, foothill oak woodlands, and Sierra mixed
conifer forests. I have also worked on a project in Pennsylvania and New
Jersey, and an upcoming trip will take me to the southern beech
(Nothofagus) forests of Chile. I am currently working on a project looking
at net primary productivity (NPP) in a blue oak woodland in the central
California foothills. I am also a surrogate member of the Bartolome lab,
where I help out with springtime grassland surveys in the East Bay Regional
Parks and more.

In the botanical half of my life, I have collected herbarium specimens all
over California, especially in the Siskiyou/ Trinity Mountains and
Monterey/ San Luis Obispo counties, as well as in the southern Swiss Alps
and the tiny islands of Sao Tome & Principe, Africa. My primary interests
are in California floristics, especially serpentine and other types of
edaphic endemism, island biogeography, and historical collections of
California plants. My newest interest is collecting moss!

EDUCATION

2008 M.S. in Biology, San Francisco State University and California Academy
of Sciences: Molecular phylogeny, biogeography, and morphological studies
of the genus Elytraria (Acanthaceae)

2002 B.S. Evolution & Ecology and B.A. Geology, University of California at
Davis

PUBLICATIONS

Bartolome, J.W., B. Allen-Diaz, J.J Battles, G. Gea-Izquierdo, A. Huber,
R.D. Jackson, Z.E. Kayler & R.C. Wenk. In review. Biomass research
describes the dynamics of oak savanna ecosystem processes. California
Agriculture

Baldocchi, D., Q. Chen, X. Chen., S. Ma, G. Miller, Y. Ryu, J. Xiao., R.
Wenk, & J. Battles. In review. The Dynamics of Energy, Water and Carbon
Fluxes in a Blue Oak (Quercus douglasii) Savanna in California ,USA. In
Ecosystem Function in Global Savannas: Measurement and Modeling at
Landscape to Global Scales. M.J. Hill & N.P. Hanan, editors. Taylor &
Francis- CRC Press.

Ryu, Y., Sonnentag, O., Nilson, T., Vargas, R., Kobayashi, H., Wenk, R. &
Baldocchi, D.D. 2009 in press. How to quantify tree leaf area index in a
heterogeneous savanna ecosystem: A multi-instrument and multi-model
approach. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology

Wenk, R.C. & T.F. Daniel. 2009. Molecular Phylogeny of Nelsonioideae
(Acanthaceae) and Phylogeography of Elytraria. Proceedings of the
California Academy of Sciences 60(5):51-66.

Wenk, R.C., J.J. Battles, R.D. Jackson, J.W. Bartolome, & B. Allen-Diaz.
2006. An accurate and efficient method for sorting biomass extracted from
soil cores using point-intercept sampling. Soil Science Society of America
Journal 70:851-855.

POSTERS/ PRESENTATIONS

Wenk, R.C. & T.F. Daniel. 2007. Molecular Phylogeny and Biogeography of
Elytraria (Acanthaceae: Nelsonioideae). Botany and Plant Biology 2007, 8-11
July 2007. Chicago, Illinois.

Wenk, R.C. & T.F. Daniel. 2006. Phylogeny and Biogeography of Elytraria
(Acanthaceae: Nelsonioideae) based on molecular sequence data from two
genomes. Botany 2006, 28 July-2 August 2006. Chico, California.

Brown, L., R.C. Wenk, & B. Allen-Diaz. 2004. Sudden Oak Death effects on
coast live oak woodland vegetation. 89th Meeting of the Ecological Society
of America, 1-6 August 2004. Portland, Oregon.