Plant Evolutionary Genetics
Our research team is broadly interested in the genetic bases of adaptation and the population and genomic context in which adaptive evolution occurs. We focus much of our research on plant species evolving in agricultural environments and on their close relatives. These novel and highly modified environments have provided the setting for drastic evolutionary change in many plant groups.
We ask questions about the origins and evolution of agricultural weeds, the genetic processes underlying crop domestication, and the mechanisms of trait evolution in crop wild relatives. To address these topics, we use tools from the fields of comparative genomics, population genetics, evolutionary ecology, and molecular biology.
