I have always been fascinated by plants – by the remarkable diversity of their shapes, flower colours, growth forms and life strategies. My research focuses on how this diversity we find in plants has been shaped by fundamental evolutionary processes leading to plant adaptation and speciation. In the centre of my focus is polyploidisation (whole genome duplication), a major-effect mutation acting as a primary trigger of sympatric speciation in plants. I aim to elucidate the key evolutionary mechanisms operating at various stages of polyploid speciation, which are important for the potential evolutionary success of polyploid lineages (e.g., origin and local establishment of polyploid mutants, adaptive potential of new traits in polyploids, inter-ploidy introgression).
