Dr. Miriti studies how plants interact with their environment, with a particular focus on desert plants in Joshua Tree National Park in California.

Dr. Miriti received her Ph.D. in 1999 from the University of Illinois at Chicago. After a postdoctoral fellowship with Jessica Gurevitch at Stony Brook University, Dr. Miriti moved to OSU in 2002. Her work involves studying the distribution of plants within an ecosystem in order to better understand what resources each plant needs from its environment and the outcomes of inter-species competition.

In a recent paper, Dr. Miriti and colleagues examined a hybrid Miscanthus grass called “PowerCane,” which is a potential biofuel source. Miscanthus can grow very large (thus having the potential to produce a lot of biofuel per plant) and has been shown to grow well in a wide variety of climates, including harsh cold. However, one of the two parent strains for the hybrid is known to be fairly invasive — it outcompetes native plants in its environment for resources, decreasing biodiversity. Dr. Miriti’s work aimed to understand what the chances are of PowerCane expanding beyond commercial fields and negatively impacting surrounding plant life.

Over the course of two years, Dr. Miriti and colleagues studied plots in Columbus, Ohio, and Ames, Iowa, which contained one of three Miscanthus types: PowerCane, one of its parent strains (from commercial seeds), and the same parent strain (from a nearby wild population). They compared Miscanthus grown alone to Miscanthus grown with a competing species, and found (as expected) that competition reduced the growth of the Miscanthus plant. However, they noted that PowerCane grew bigger than the other two, with or without competition, and that it had reduced seed production. The first point supports further investigation of PowerCane as a good biofuel source, while the second is reassuring about the risks of PowerCane invasion among wild ecosystems. However, the authors emphasized that their sample was small and that further risk assessment should be done.