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As a plant evolutionary biologist, I combine field ecology with cutting-edge genomics to understand how selection pressures and genetic diversity interact to dictate evolutionary outcomes. My research program focuses on the still poorly understood eco-evolutionary role of gene flow between species (introgression).
Crop-weed hybrid evolution
Crop-weed hybrid evolution
Invasive weeds threaten conservation and agriculture, and hybridization between weeds and their crop relatives often exacerbates invasions. I am developing invasive wild radish (Raphanus raphanistrum), which hybridizes with the crop radish (R. sativus), as a model system for investigating the genetic and climatic drivers of crop-wild hybrid weed formation and success. In my current postdoctoral fellowship, I am analyzing the genetics of herbarium specimens with modern genomic tools to determine how climate influences crop-wild radish hybridization and invasion, and to uncover the genomic basis of hybrid radish success and climate adaptation. I am building the first genomic time series of hybrid weed formation, covering the ~160 years since wild radish introduction to the U.S., and pairing it with trait and climate data. By analyzing and comparing the genetics of crop-wild hybridization through time and across climates, I will uncover how climate influences crop-wild hybridization and how climate-mediated gene flow facilitates invasion. This greater understanding of hybridization dynamics is necessary to inform management strategies for curbing the proliferation of invasive hybrids in a changing climate.
Divergent Adaptation and
Species Maintenance
Divergent Adaptation and
Species Maintenance
To understand speciation, we must understand both the genetics and ecology of reproductive isolation. Speciation - particularly in plants - often involves ecogeographic isolation, in which populations adapt to different environmental conditions across a geographic range, thus reducing, but not always eliminating, gene flow. When gene flow occurs, it should weaken differentiation between species, potentially breaking down species barriers. Nevertheless, examples abound across the tree of life of speciation and species maintenance despite hybridization, ranging from hominids to butterflies to plants. How, then, is differential adaptation and species identity maintained in the face of gene flow?
My dissertation integrates ecological and genetic investigation to answer this question in a pair of recently diverged (~1mya) tropical herbs with a natural hybrid zone: Costus allenii and C. villosissimus (left). It is built around three research aims: 1) characterize differential abiotic adaptation 2) characterize differential biotic adaptation, and 3) characterize geographic and genomic patterns of introgression and how they are influenced by the genetic architecture of differential adaptations. Learn more about each through the links below!
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