Research
My research uses a clade-specific approach, focusing on poorly studied groups of plants and
applying diverse research methods to study their evolutionary history in a holistic way. I have
concentrated on two deeply-diverged groups:
1. Isoetes (quillworts), a spore-producing
genus that is the only living descendent of the dominant tree-like plants of the Carboniferous period 300 million years ago.
2. The Anthocerotophyta (hornworts), a phylum of non-vascular
plants that represents one of the oldest divergences in land plants, about 500 million years ago.
I use techniques from population genetics, phylogenomics, comparative genomics, and
plant transformation to elucidate the biology of these plants, from cellular to organismal scale
and from recent to deep evolutionary time. Unlike better known organisms such as flowering
plants – where morphological diversity is the center of attention – my study systems provide an
alternative perspective: speciation with little change visible to the human eye.
