Research in our lab explores the evolutionary and ecological processes that contribute to plant diversity, with a focus on reticulate evolution. We are working to understand how reticulate processes – including polyploidy, hybridization, and introgression – affect patterns of diversification, biogeography, genome evolution, and ecophysiology.
The importance of reticulate phenomena in shaping the evolutionary trajectories of many plant lineages is now widely recognized, though the specific effects of reticulation on patterns of relationships and biogeography, organization of post-hybridization genomes, and physiological ecology of hybrids, are still largely unexplored.
To address these fundamental questions, we collect data via field and experimental studies, as well as Sanger and next-generation sequencing, and integrate techniques from several disciplines, including computational and evolutionary genomics, phylogenetic systematics, physiological ecology, and traditional specimen-based botany. We use a variety of study systems, but with a strong focus on the seed-free vascular plants: ferns and lycophytes. These groups have historically been underrepresented compared to other plant lineages in studies of phylogenetics, genomics, and physiological ecology, and as a result many questions remain about their relationships, genome structure and evolution, and physiological traits that have allowed them to persist and diversify.
