Doctor Kasia Ziemińska
Kasia is plant ecologist and trained wood anatomist passionate about understanding how anatomical diversity drives tree functions and ecology.
She joined the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment in 2023 and is working with Distinguished Professor Ian Wright. Her project focuses on coordination between wood anatomy and tree growth.
Kasia trained as wood anatomist at Kew Gardens in London, UK. Afterwards, she obtained her PhD in 2014 from Macquarie University. Since then, she held several fellowships (e.g., Putnam Fellowship at Harvard University, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship at the Research Institute for Development, France, Carl Tryggers Fellowship at Uppsala University, Sweden). See below for more details about individual projects.
Areas of research/teaching expertise
Wood anatomy; plant ecology; plant physiology
Selected awards and recognition
- 2021-2023. Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship, AMAP – IRD, France. Project: “Towards comprehensive maps of tree structure and function: linking tree architecture, anatomy and physiology.”
- 2021. Swedish Phytogeographical Society – personal grant for a microscope + camera
- 2020 Smithsonian Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship, Smithsonian Environmental Research Centre, USA, declined due to time conflict with MSCA. Project: “Towards comprehensive understanding of tree demography: linking anatomy with tree growth and death.”
- 2020-2021 Carl Tryggers Fellowship. Co-written with Assoc. Prof. Bob Muscarella. Uppsala University, Sweden. Project: “Linking wood anatomy, hydraulic strategies, and species distributions – implications for tropical forest response to drought.”
- 2016-2018. Independent Postdoctoral Putnam Fellowship, Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. Project: “The role of fibers and parenchyma in tree hydraulics.”
- 2012 Daintree Rainforest Observatory Research Student Grant awarded by James Cook University
Selected publications
(Gleason et al., 2012; Ziemińska et al., 2013, 2015, 2020; Morris et al., 2016; Zweifel et al., 2021; Etzold et al., 2022; Ziemińska, 2023):Ziemińska K, Bibbo S, Farrar S, Uriarte M, Ziaco E, Zimmerman JK, Muscarella R. 2023. Within-tree shifts in wood anatomy and tree growth after major hurricanes. Functional Ecology (in press).
Etzold S, Sterck F, Bose AK, Braun S, Buchmann N, Eugster W, Gessler A, Kahmen A, Peters RL, Vitasse Y, et al. 2022. Number of growth days and not length of the growth period determines radial stem growth of temperate trees. Ecology Letters 25: 427–439.
Gleason SM, Butler DW, Ziemińska K, Waryszak P, Westoby M. 2012. Stem xylem conductivity is key to plant water balance across Australian angiosperm species. Functional Ecology 26: 343–352.
Morris H, Plavcová L, Cvecko P, Fichtler E, Gillingham MAF, Martínez‐Cabrera HI, McGlinn DJ, Wheeler E, Zheng J, Ziemińska K, et al. 2016. A global analysis of parenchyma tissue fractions in secondary xylem of seed plants. New Phytologist 209: 1553–1565.
Ziemińska K. 2023. The role of imperforate tracheary elements and narrow vessels in wood capacitance of angiosperm trees. IAWA Journal 1: 1–14.
Ziemińska K, Butler DW, Gleason SM, Wright IJ, Westoby M. 2013. Fibre wall and lumen fractions drive wood density variation across 24 Australian angiosperms. AoB PLANTS 5.
Ziemińska K, Rosa E, Gleason SM, Holbrook NM. 2020. Wood day capacitance is related to water content, wood density, and anatomy across 30 temperate tree species. Plant, Cell & Environment 43: 3048–3067.
Ziemińska K, Westoby M, Wright IJ. 2015. Broad Anatomical Variation within a Narrow Wood Density Range—A Study of Twig Wood across 69 Australian Angiosperms. PLOS ONE 10: e0124892.
Zweifel R, Sterck F, Braun S, Buchmann N, Eugster W, Gessler A, Häni M, Peters RL, Walthert L, Wilhelm M, et al. 2021. Why trees grow at night. New Phytologist 231: 2174–2185.
