Research interests

For many years I am intrigued by the evolutionary patterns that shaped the world’s enormous biodiversity. With over 300.000 species, flowering plants are especially species-rich, only trailing insects in named species diversity, yet until now it is still puzzling how this huge angiosperm biodiversity originated.

As a result, I am especially interested in tracing evolution and speciation mechanisms in flowering plants using biogeography, diversification analyses, molecular phylogenetics, population genetics and bioinformatics.

Although I work on a wide range of taxa within flowering plants, my research is mainly focused on Rubiaceae, Balsaminaceae and Musaceae. Besides studying certain angiosperm families in specific, I also investigate the impact of general ecological and evolutionary patterns that could explain the earth’s current tropical biodiversity.

Research projects

• SYNTHESYS+: Synthesis of systematic resources
• Plant.ID - Molecular Identification of Plants
• HerbaXylaRedd: Unlocking valuable ecological information from the collections of the Botanical Garden Meise herbarium and the Royal Museum for Central Africa xylarium
• Exploration of genetic diversity, drought tolerance and Fusarium resistance of wild bananas in Vietnam
• Effects of tropical rainforest disturbance on gene flow, genomic diversity and introgression in understory trees: the case of Coffea canephora in the Congo basin

Publications
FRIS Research Portal