Objectives

Current hypotheses of seed plant relationships remain controversial and have been inferred from a limited sampling of characters and taxa. We do not know whether living gymnosperms form a monophyletic group (Acrogymnospermae) and we have been unable to confidently identify which gymnosperms might be the sister group of flowering plants. Furthermore, very few molecular phylogenetic studies at the species level have focused on any group of gymnosperms. Our results will address questions at all levels in the seed plant tree of life.

Molecules: phylogeny of all living species - We are assembling molecular matrices that represent every living species of gymnosperm.   This is providing unprecedented insights into patterns and timing of diversification within gymnosperm clades, allowing us to test the links between these patterns and processes on a global scale.

Morphology: integrated phylogeny of fossils and living taxa - We are assembling morphological matrices that include 180 living and 79 extinct gymnosperms.   Most major clades of gymnosperms are extinct and cannot be included in molecular matrices, while efforts to infer relationships from morphological data have been limited by the lack of comparable data sets from living and extinct taxa, disallowing their consideration in the same analyses.  

Informatics - We are building our archive of taxonomic, geographical, morphological, and molecular data in TOLKIN (Tree of Life Knowledge and Information Network at www.tolkin.org).

Education & Outreach - Check out our offierings of workshops and curricula that demonstrate how locally accessible living collections can be used to teach science to middle and high school students!