M.Sc., Botanist
Research interests:
Fields:
Tropical botany, taxonomy, systematics, biogeography, ecology and evolution.
Groups:
Asparagaceae (Asparagus)
Palms: Indo-Pacific pseudomonomerous members of tribe Areceae
Lauraceae
Current research:
I am currently doing my PhD at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, DK.
The main focus of my project is to examine the Phylogenetic relationships and evolutionary divergence of Asparagus (Asparagaceae).
Brief project description:
Asparagus (Asparagaceae) is distributed in the Old World, but with a putative closest sister genus in Mexico. The genus includes several commercially important species, however, the exact number of species is unknown and highly controversial (170-300?). In large genera like Asparagus, an infrageneric structure is necessary to deal with the morphological variety. Recent studies indicate that only one of the existing infrageneric divisions is monophyletic, something I will investigate. Many species are listed as rare or vulnerable, but the majority are unsufficiently known. I aim to ameliorate this by focusing on a subset of the genus, distinguished by their presence in the speciose and ecologically diverse Cape Region, South Africa, where the radiation of Asparagus recently was proposed to have initated. Several studies have considered the general environmental factors determining the patterns of species richness in the Cape, but very little is known about the biological, ecological and evolutionary attributes of the species themselves. By combining phylogeny (and thus evolutionary history) with ecological and biological traits we have a chance of assessing the evolution of these traits and their possible role in speciation and extinction.