Sonja Weber is a Graduate Student at Iowa State University whose research digs into how remnant and reconstructed prairies differ in their plant communities and how they respond to management like fire and grazing. A St. Louis native, Sonja grew up in a family that made science and the outdoors a shared, everyday activity, sparking the curiosity that eventually pulled her into Wildlife Ecology at ISU.
What did you enjoy most about the outdoors and conservation growing up? I grew up in the St. Louis suburbs, which might not sound like a launchpad for a wildlife ecologist, but St. Louis has a really ingrained, family-centric culture built around natural resources and science. From the Missouri Botanical Garden to the state parks just outside the city to the free St. Louis Zoo, these surroundings shaped me early and made science and the natural world feel like something you did with your family, not just something you learned about in school. My extended family also does extensive work with suburban landscaping, so visits with them almost always turned into an informal plant ID lesson in someone's yard. Much of what I learned with them was about the usual exotic cultivars found in most suburban yards. Those afternoons are a big reason I now think so much about the potential of suburban and urban spaces, and how weaving native plants back into them could turn our neighborhoods into meaningful habitat instead of just landscaping.
Why did you choose Iowa State for Graduate School? Honestly, I fell in love with prairies during undergrad. My university in Missouri had a reconstructed prairie on campus, and spending time working there completely changed how I thought about Midwestern landscapes. I went from seeing prairie as "simply grassland" to seeing it as this incredibly complex, layered community that I wanted to understand. So, when a position came up at Iowa State comparing remnant and reconstructed prairies, it felt like it had been written for me. The fact that my fieldwork would take me across the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) was a huge draw too. The PPR is one of the most ecologically important and threatened landscapes in North America and getting to spend my graduate years working in it was an opportunity I couldn't pass up.
What is the most useful thing that you’ve learned as a student? Discovering you were wrong early is more valuable than being right slowly. Asking for help early is a skill, not a weakness. So much of ecology is messy. Weather doesn't cooperate, plots don't behave the way the literature says it should, and your first hypothesis is often only something to build on. Learning to treat a failed sampling day or an unexpected result as a sidestep rather than a setback has probably done more for my professional and personal growth than any single class could teach.
Why did you choose Wildlife Ecology as your focus of study? Wildlife ecology sits at the intersection of everything I find to be interesting. Plants, animals, disturbance, land use history, the people who manage the landscape; I like the fact that it forces you to think across scales. From a single bee visiting a single flower up to how fire regimes shape an entire prairie over decades, it's a field where the science has direct, tangible consequences for how land gets managed. That feedback loop between research and real-world outcomes is what keeps me in it.
Why are you interested in grassland communities and pollinator habitat? Grasslands are one of the most threatened ecosystems in North America, with tallgrass prairie in particular having less than 1% of its original range in Iowa. What's left is a patchwork of remnants that have never been plowed and reconstructions that people have deliberately rebuilt from square one. I find the nuances between those two fascinating, as they can look similar from the road, but soil, plant communities, and the pollinators they support can be drastically different. Understanding what makes a reconstruction "work," and what a remnant provides that we can't easily rebuild, feels like one of the more urgent questions in Midwestern conservation research.
What research are you conducting this summer? I'm studying differences between remnant and reconstructed prairie plant communities and how different management practices like prescribed fire and grazing shape those systems. A big part of my work is focused on the structure of the landscape itself, how the plant community is composed, its diversity, and its physical structure that are what ultimately determine what pollinators and other wildlife the prairie can support. I'm trying to understand how the decisions made in our management of the land ripples through its plant community and how they ultimately affect the quality of habitat we are providing.
What are you excited to learn during your research? I'm most excited to see how remnants and reconstructions may respond differently to the same management. Reconstructions are often treated as if they're on a trajectory to eventually become a remnant, but I suspect the reality is (as it often is in ecology) far more nuanced. If we can pin down where the trajectories of each path diverge, it could really change how we prioritize both restoration and the protection of the remnants we still have.
How can Iowans help pollinators? Plant native and think in patches! In a world of constantly shrinking, increasingly fragmented landscapes, every native planting matters more and more. A prairie pollinator garden in a backyard, a strip of native flowers along a field edge, or a native landscaping bed at a business all function as the steppingstones that let pollinators move through what would otherwise be a hostile landscape. You don't need a ton of acres to make a difference, a small, well-chosen mix of native forbs and grasses can support a surprisingly diverse array of bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. If you can, talk to your neighbors; a connected habitat is worth more than isolated habitat, even if the total area is the same.
Photos by Sonja Weber and Dharma Fribley