Biodiversity

Genome evolution, polyploidy, duplicate gene fates and evolution, evolution of gene regulation, transcriptomics, alternative splicing, non-coding RNAs

Plant evolutionary ecology; geographic range limits and rarity; population dynamics and community structure.

Molecular phylogenetic studies of fungi and evolution of fungal life history stategies.

The study of plant form using the techniques of comparative genomics, molecular developmental biology and evolutionary biology.

Ecology and evolutionary biology; the distribution of biodiversity and the challenges posed to its conservation through recent changes to the environment.

My lab group works on the evolution, phylogenetics and comparative genomics of diverse groups of land plants (embryophytes), with a particular focus on monocots, a flowering-plant clade that includes the major crop plants that sustain human civilization. 

Early eukaryote evolution, molecular phylogeny, protistology.

Marine invertebrate zoology, protozoology, evolutionary morphology & phylogenetics.

Spider systematics and evolution.

Ecophysiology, ecosystem ecology, macroecology, scaling, fire behaviour and effects.

Microbiome of coastal marine organisms; eukaryotes in the microbiome

Adaptation, Domestication, Crop Evolution, Hybridization, Speciation, Weed Evolution

The biology of viruses that infect marine phytoplankton and bacteria, and the role of these viruses in population dynamics and geochemical cycles.

Understanding the genetic basis of plant diversity and adaptation.

Aquatic and Insect Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

• ​​We investigate the effect of changing environments on insect and aquatic communities;
• We use field and laboratory experiments, syntheses of published literature, and natural history collections to investigate ecological and evolutionary responses to climate and habitat change;
• Our work is grounded in ecological and evolutionary theory and has applications to conservation biology and healthy ecosystems

Plant molecular systematic and evolution; the evolution of asexual polyploid complexes in higher plants.