Areas of Research

Herbaria house the largest and most diverse collections of plants across space, time, and taxa. This makes them uniquely situated for addressing a variety of large-scale questions about biodiversity. Our lab focuses on developing cutting-edge research and technologies to unlock the potential of these vast resources. These have included understanding plant phenological response to climate, characterizing herbivory responses to warming, and illuminating collecting biases and the colonial legacy of herbaria.  We also engage in a variety of projects to rapidly digitize herbarium specimens to i.) reduce barriers to access, ii.) vastly expand traditional applications of these collections, and iii.) explore novel avenues of research using approaches such as crowdsourcing and artificial intelligence. We welcome partnerships in these areas.

	Systematics, Biogeography and Phylogenomics

Our lab is rooted in biodiversity discovery and has given special attention to systematic investigations of species in the large and important tropical order, Malpighiales. Our efforts especially in the plant clade Malpighiaceae have helped to redefine our understanding of the biogeographical origins and spread of tropical lineages and to characterize morphological stasis associated with plant-pollinator mutualisms spanning tens of millions of years. Our efforts applying phylogenomic tools and morphological approaches have also helped us redefine our understanding of evolutionary relationships to facilitate more robust modern classifications. Moving forward, we are particularly interested in applying these methods to plants of human use, to better understand their history, origins, and the structure of domestication at the level of the genome.

	Symbioses

Symbioses are a key aspect of life on earth, and are central to many eco-evolutionary investigations. Our lab has used symbioses – mutualisms, host-parasite interactions, and plant-herbivore relationships – as a springboard for investigating plant development, morphology, genetics, and related effects of climate change. Recent scholars in the lab have explored the genetic and genomic basis of plant parasitism, including characterizing genome loss and horizontal gene transfer; applied digitized and physical specimens to understand insect herbivory in the face of climate change; and the genomic basis for key floral traits essential for plant-pollinator mutualisms.  

Interested and want to learn more? Take a look through our publications, or contact us.