Past Research

 

Flowering plants use a spectrum of mating strategies ranging from self-fertilization to separate outcrossing male and females.

My MSc research had two objectives. (1) I used molecular tools to study the ecological conditions required for the evolution and maintenance of male Sagittaria latifolia, a plant which has mating populations of either separate sexes (dioecious) or unisexuals (monecious). (2) I examined the stability of the emergence of a female phenotype in Mercurialis annua, an unusual plant in that there is some evidence of males, females, and hermaphrodites co-existing in natural populations.

This research provided some of the first experimental evidence to test conditions which promote the evolution of males in a dioecious plant and the stability of a new sex phenotype in the presence of two other sexes.

I was supervised by Dr. Marcel E. Dorken.