Our Evolution and Adaptation research group investigates the interactions between (macro)ecology and evolution. The objective is to gain a better understanding of the global distribution of genetic, taxonomic and functional diversity. To this end, we investigate microevolutionary processes in order to understand how these play out over macroevolutionary (i.e. million-year) time-scales. Furthermore, we compare genomic, phylogenetic, fossil and functional characteristics of (mainly) flowering plants (angiosperms) – from tropical rainforests (e.g. in the palm and Annonaceae families) to Mediterranean-type ecosystems (e.g. in the Rhamnaceae and Proteaceae families). For more details on our research, see Research Projects.

Our research approach includes fieldwork, molecular lab work and ecological work (e.g. functional trait measurements from the field, herbaria, floras, literature, monographs, books) and a wide range of analytical methods / tools (e.g. bioinformatics, species distribution modelling, phylogenetic comparative methods, structural equation modelling and other linear statistics).