Evolution * Ecology * Biophotonics
I am a plant organismal and evolutionary biologist, and I use tools from biology and biophotonics to understand the evolutionary origins and maintenance of biodiversity. I am particularly interested in the evolution of novel traits, especially structural colors in fruits, although I am always open and excited to work on projects in other systems and scales of biology.
Although most plants use pigments to color their fruits, some species use structural colors, where nanostructures on the surface of the fruit interfere with light to reflect some wavelengths over others and, thus, produce color. These kinds of colors are relatively rare in nature, but my collaborators (especially Rox Middleton) and I are regularly finding new species in new clades (such as Viburnum, Lantana, and others). These structural colors represent an opportunity to use comparative approaches to study convergent evolution and, especially, the influence of evolutionary history on ecological interactions between plants and animals.
Fruit and flower colors both vary across space and time, but the driving forces behind that spatial variation is uncertain, especially as the patterns themselves remain unclear. One arm of my research focuses on characterizing spatial patterns in fruit and (more recently, with collaborator Agnes Dellinger) flower traits, in an effort to understand the variety of biotic and abiotic factors that influence spatial patterns on a global scale.
One of the worst weeds in tropical regions around the world, Lantana strigocamara (syn. L. camara), has brilliantly colored flowers and structurally colored, metallic blue fruits. In spite of its importance as an invasive weed, the hybridization and phylogenetic history of Lantana is uncertain, and multiple independent origins of fleshy-fruited lantanas within Lippia further complicate the picture. With collaborator Pat Lu-Irving, we are working towards improving the phylogenetic, genetic, and genomic resources within this group.