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Meet the Faculty

Heidi Appel

Heidi Appel
Senior Research Scientist
Division of Plant Sciences

Education
B.G.S., Oakland Unviersity
M.S., Biology, University of Michigan
Ph.D., Biology, University of Michigan

Description
Heidi Appel has a research appointment and co-directs the Schultz-Appel Chemical Ecology Lab. Motivated by a desire to explain patterns seen in nature by their underlying mechanisms, her main research interests are to understand how plants recognize and respond to insect herbivores with chemical defenses, how responses to insects are modified by demands from other stresses, and how well those defenses work. This requires a multidisciplinary approach including ecology, biochemistry, and molecular biology, and she studies Arabidopsis, poplar, and grape because of their genetic advantages for gene expression work. Her current research is focused in three areas: 1) dynamic "induced" responses by plants to attack by insects, 2) how some insects mask their attack or even manipulate plant defenses, 3) how plant responses to insect herbivores influences their responses to other stresses. She co-teaches a graduate seminar on Molecular Ecology of Plant Herbivore Interactions.