Yannick Woudstra

About me

Dandelions are plants that don’t do sex. Contrary to most plants, they don’t require pollination for their reproduction and instead form clonal seeds. Why then do dandelions still produce so much pollen? This is a question I wish to answer from an evolutionary biological angle. Is the pollen in asexual dandelions still fertile? Does pollen production decrease over time? And what happens on the fundamental level of the genes controlling pollen production? The results can have big implications for the conservation of dandelions and especially the dependent insects that feed on their pollen, and other organisms further down the food web.

This is the focus of my Postdoctoral research project in the Slotte Lab, which is currently funded by the Sven & Lily Lawski stipendium. To characterise how pollen deteriorates in asexual dandelions, I will analyse the fertility with flow cytometry and microscopy. I will then try to unravel the underlying mechansisms by combining gene expression analysis of pollen with functional genomic work on pollen-specific genes.

Simultaneously I will continue work on urban ecology, in which I study the biological adaptations acquired by dandelions to cope with urbanisation. This is a collaboration with the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) and Naturalis Biodiversity Center in The Netherlands, where I started this investigation. After studying several Dutch cities, I now hope to expand this research into Stockholm and other Nordic cities.

Finally, with a background in plant systematics, I like to study the taxonomy of notoriously difficult plant groups and will continue to do so. Plant groups I work(ed) on include the Poppy family (Papaveraceae), the Daisy family (Asteraceae, in particular Taraxacum) and aloes (Asphodelaceae, subfamily Alooideae).