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Spectranomics is an emerging field which connects plant optical spectra with functional traits and phylogenies. For my postdoc at the Université de Montréal, I am studying the evolution of leaf spectra as part of the CABO project. I am investigating how leaf spectra vary within and among species occurring in a variety of ecosystems in Canada using phylogenetic comparative methods.
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The cerrado and campos rupestres of Brazil have extremely high levels of plant diversity and endemism but the origins of this diversity are not well understood. For my dissertation, I studyied the diversification and niche evolution of Tibouchina s.s. (Melastomataceae), investigating the geographic and ecological factors driving diversification. This clade contains ~30 species, including many from the cerrado and campos rupestres.
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I have dabbled in community phylogenetics for a side project during my PhD. I have studied the effects that taxon sampling and tree reconstruction methods can have on measures of phylogenetic diversity using a case study of 14 plant communities at the Ordway-Swisher Biological Station in north-central Florida.
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For my MSc research project, I studied the systematics and biogeography of Coelocarpum (Verbenaceae), which is a small genus of 8 species from Socotra, Madagascar and Somalia. Using several plastid loci, we found that this genus is paraphyletic, with the Malagasy species forming a clade sister to a clade containing the remaining species of Coelocarpum and Lantaneae. This work remains unpublished due to the need for additional molecular support for our findings.
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While volunteering at the UVIC herbarium, I conducted a morphometric study of Phragmites australis (Poaceae) to determine whether morphological differentiation exists that corresponds to the native and invasive haplotypes growing in BC. My work was published as part of a larger project looking at the distribution and morphology of invasive and native haplotypes of P. australis in BC (Canada).
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