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Welcome to the Heyduk lab @ UConn

We are a plant evolutionary biology group in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department at the University of Connecticut. The lab’s research integrates plant physiology and genomics in a comparative framework to understand evolution of plant adaptations to their environments, with a particular focus on photosynthetic diversity.

Research
People
Papers
Photo of a large Joshua tree in a field of Joshua trees.

Joshua tree research featured in UConn Today

Read the paper in New Phytologist

UConn Today
Photo of a group of women in hiking gear in front of a Joshua tree

Lab presents at Botany 2025

The lab gave talks, posters, and lightning talks – and got to hang out with Joshua trees!

Photo of a Tillandsia species growing in a tree.

NSF grant funded!

The lab was awarded a new grant, with collaborators at Colorado College and the New York Botanical Garden, to study the impacts of nitrogen and photosynthetic pathway on leaf economics and life history traits in bromeliads.

Image of a LiCor Chamber head clamped onto a leaf in green light.
Image of a skunk flower cabbage coming up through stream water.
Image of a Yucca species growing in beach sand dunes.