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.