Chicago Botanic Garden

Plant Science — OUR SCIENTISTS

PHOTO: Emily YatesEmily Yates

Seed Bank Coordinator, National Tallgrass Prairie Seed Bank
(Seeds of Success Program/Millennium Seed Bank Project)

B.S. Biology, Drake University, 1999
M.S. Geography, Southern Illinois University,
Carbondale, 2003


PUBLICATIONS
phone (847) 835-6861


Research Interests

My general research interests include conservation biology, biogeography of plants, and interactions between invasive plants and habitat fragmentation. I’m particularly interested in applying GPS (Global Positioning System) and GIS (Geographic Information System) technology to solving conservation problems, as well as promoting public support and enthusiasm for plant conservation and restoration efforts, particularly in forest and prairie communities in the Midwest and Great Plains.


Current Projects

• Coordinating the National Tallgrass Prairie Seed Bank, including collection of native seed, herbarium vouchers, and data collection at field sites across the Midwest and Great Plains with Garden staff, volunteers, and more than 30 contract seed collectors.

The Seed Bank Coordinator serves to support the partnership between the Chicago Botanic Garden, the national Seeds of Success (SOS) program, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Millennium Seed Bank Project (MSBP). SOS is an interagency program supporting and coordinating seed collection of native plant populations in the United States to increase the amount of native seeds available for use in stabilizing, rehabilitating, and restoring land in the U.S. The MSBP is an international conservation program headed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, that aims to collect seed from 10 percent of the world’s flora by 2010 for long-term ex-situ conservation. Here in Chicago, the National Tallgrass Prairie Seed Bank focuses on collecting and banking 1,500 native plant species from the tallgrass prairie and surrounding ecoregions for long-term storage and use in restoration projects, and in seed biology and ecology research. This includes seed cleaning, processing, and long-term ex-situ storage at the seed bank at the Garden.

• Developing GIS mapping tools for targeted seed banking efforts, using mapping for prioritizing collecting schemes for making restoration collections, and capturing genetic diversity of species across ecoregions.

• Mapping shifts in the geographic distributions of rare plant species under climate change using GIS and species distribution modeling software (i.e., Diva-GIS, Maxent, etc.).

 


publications

Croat, T. B., E. D. Yates & A. Swart. Araceae. In: R. Vásquez (ed.), Flora del Cenepa y
areas Adyacentes, Amazonas, Perú, in press.

Croat, T. B., D. Bay & E. D. Yates. 2008. New species of Philodendron (Araceae) from Bajo Calima, Valle Department, Colombia. Novon, in press.

Croat, T. B., J. Whitehill & E. D. Yates. 2007. A new subsection of Anthurium section Calomystrium and five new species from Colombia and Ecuador. Aroideana 30.

Croat, T. B., D. Bay & E. D. Yates. 2007. New species of Stenospermation and Xanthosoma (Araceae) from Bajo Calima, Valle Department, Colombia. Novon 17(3):298-305.

Croat, T. B., D. Bay & E. D. Yates. 2006. New Taxa of Anthurium (Araceae) from the Bajo Calima Region (Valle, Chocó), Colombia and Ecuador. Novon 16(1):25-50.

Croat, T. B., A. Swart, & E. D. Yates. 2005. New species of Araceae from the Río Cenepa region, Amazonas Department, Perú. Rodriguézia 56(88):65-126.

Croat, T. B., E. D. Yates & D. Hayworth. 2005. New taxa of Anthurium and Philodendron (Araceae) from western Amazonia. Willdenowia 35(2):345-358.

Yates, E. D. & K. E. Kordecki. 2005. Pistia stratiotes L. (Araceae) – Ubiquitous Aroid Invader. International Aroid Society Newsletter 27(3):12-15.

Yates, E. D., editor. 2005. International Aroid Society Newsletter. Vol. 27 (issues 1,2,3,4).

Yates, E. D. 2005. Recent Aroid Literature. International Aroid Society Newsletter 27(2):11-14.

Yates, E. D., D. F. Levia, and C. L. Williams. 2004. Recruitment of three non-native invasive plants into a fragmented forest in southern Illinois. Forest Ecology and Management 190:119-130.


Presentations and Posters

Yates, E.D., D. Sollenberger & P. Vitt. 2008. Seeds of Success National Tallgrass Prairie Seed Bank Project at the Chicago Botanic Garden. The 21st North American Prairie Conference, August 4-8, 2008, Winona State University, Winona, MN.

Sollenberger, D., E.D. Yates & P. Vitt. 2008. The Seeds of Success National Tallgrass Prairie Seed Bank Project: development of target species lists for restoration. The 21st North American Prairie Conference, August 4-8, 2008, Winona State University, Winona, MN.

Yates, E.D. & P. Vitt. 2008. Modeling potential distributions of rare grassland plant species: quantifying geographic range shifts in response to climate change. Association of American Geographers (AAG) annual meeting, April 15-19, 2008, Boston, MA.

Kornfeind, J., E. D. Yates, and P. Vitt. 2007. Assessing range shifts of rare grassland species in response to climate change. Botanical Society of America (BSA) annual meeting, July 7-11, Chicago, IL.

Yates, E. D., E. Allen, and P. Vitt. 2007. The Millennium Seed Bank Project at the Chicago Botanic Garden: ex-situ conservation of native prairie plant species. Association of American Geographers (AAG) annual meeting, April 17-21, 2007, San Francisco, CA.

Yates, E. D. 2003. Invasive plant species and forest fragmentation in southern Illinois. 99th Annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers (AAG), New Orleans, LA, March 5-8, 2003.

Rosburg, T. R., E. D. Yates, and K. R. Swanson. 1999. An assessment of the accuracy of GPS for biological monitoring. 111th annual meeting of the Iowa Academy of Science, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, April 23-24, 1999.

Yates, E. D., T. R. Rosburg, and K. R. Swanson. 1998. An assessment of the efficacy of using GPS for biological monitoring of the effects of deer herbivory on forest vegetation. Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Iowa Space Grant Conference, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, October 30, 1998.