Plant & Microbial Biology
College of Biological Sciences
Twin Cities
Award Year
2017
University Award
McKnight Land-Grant Professorship
The origin, distribution, and maintenance of plant diversity
That we observe a diverse collection of distinct types of plants (i.e. “species”) rather than a single plant type reflects historical speciation events repeated many times over. But how does speciation occur? And how are nascent species maintained? To answer these questions, Yaniv Brandvain combines theoretical and empirical approaches to characterize, predict, and interpret patterns of genomic variation, interspecific reproductive barriers, species range overlap, reproductive modes, and other key plant traits.