I am a plant biologist with primary interests in systematics, population genetics, and informatics.  My dissertation research focuses on the taxonomically difficult group of grasses in the Dichanthelium acuminatum complex.  I am developing molecular genetic markers and will use these and morphological characters to test the subspecific boundaries of the taxa in the complex. Details are here. My major advisers are Drs. Jim Manhart (Biology) and Stephan Hatch (Rangeland Ecology and Tracy Herbarium). My botanical interests also extend to floristics and conservation genetics.

Along the Sundew Trail in the Hickory Creek Savannah Unit of the Big Thicket National Preserve in Texas. Below: Pitcher plant bog on the Crippled Fawn Ranch in Leon county Texas.  Both photos from Spring 2004 D. acuminatum field work.

 
Oral and Poster Presentations:

Hammer, R.L. Flow cytometric measurement of nuclear DNA content in the Dichanthelium acuminatum complex (Poaceae). Poster presentation at the Botany 2005 Conference. August 2005, Austin, TX.  Abstract here.

A secondary research interest is bioinformatics.  I work in the Laboratory for Functional Genomics (LFG) in the Department of Biology as a bioinformatics specialist. I am employed as a graduate assistant and am responsible for managing seven Linux-based servers and supporting several genomics projects with software programming and support.  I develop scripts and software primarily with the Perl scripting language.  See below for some representative publications of my collaborative work with the LFG and the Department of Biology.  I hope to expand my work in computational biology to include the field of biodiversity informatics, which has an organismal focus and coincides with my work in plant systematics and conservation.

Vitae: Here

Contact info:
Rick L. Hammer
Department of Biology 
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77845-3258
fax: 979-845-2891
email: hammer@tamu.edu

page last updated: August 28, 2006