Dogs Day Out Episode 2: Saving the Virginia spiraea with Rosie Dickson of Women’s Tennis

ASHEVILLE, N.C. – Summer provides the opportunity for student-athletes to do a variety of things they may not be able to do during a busy semester. Among those, is the opportunity to complete internships or capstone projects. While internships or projects are required to graduate, they are often interesting to the student and can potentially serve a much bigger purpose than simply checking a box on a degree application.

In episode two of "Dogs Day Out", Rosie Dickson, a rising senior on the women's tennis team, walked us through her summer project which has one of those potential real-world impacts: saving the Virginia spiraea.

"It's federally threatened, so it's almost endangered," Dickson said of the plant. "It's been federally threatened since the early 90s so we are trying to help with the recovery plan."

In addition to her efforts, Dickson is working alongside Jonathan Horton (Ph. D.), who is the Chair and Professor of Biology at UNC Asheville.

"My colleagues Jennifer Rhode-Ward, David Clark started working with Virginia Spiraea which is a federally-listed species of shrub that grows in western North Carolina," Horton said. "This project carried over from that work."

"One of the major threats is that it's not very shade-tolerant," Horton said. "The rivers don't flood like they used to…Now, for them to be successful they need people to cut away the competing vegetation to highlight them periodically.

On campus, Dickson and Horton work in a garden in which they have four genotypes of Virginia spiraea with various degrees of shade: 100, 75, 50 or 25 percent sunlight. From the garden, measurements are taken to the lab to measure the "photosynthetic characteristics" with the hopes to find some that can survive in less sunlight than others.

"The best genotype to use the sunlight the best in the shade has the highest chance of survival in wild population," Dickson said. "Hopefully we can outsource those seeds into the wild population and hopefully that will increase the chance of success and recovery."

Dickson and Horton are not just doing this for a "school project", as the results they gather this summer will be shared with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"They actually proposed one of the first plans in the 1990s," Dickson said of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "They've been one of the driving forces for this project

While Dickson still has another year at UNC Asheville to compete on the women's tennis team and finish up her studies, she plans to pursue higher education upon graduation.

"I definitely want to go to grad school," Dickson said. "I want to get a master's in either plant sciences or agricultural management."

With projects like this one, Dickson is surely setting herself up for success.

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