MSI PI Jeannine Cavender-Bares (associate professor, Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior) collaborated on a study that describes for the first time the evolutionary history of North American oak trees. The study describes the diversification of two lines, red oaks and white oaks, that split from a common ancestor. It was published recently in the journal New Phytologist.
An article about this research appears on the University of Minnesota News site: American oaks share a common northern ancestor. The paper can be found on the New Phytologist website: Sympatric parallel diversification of major oak clades in the Americas and the origins of Mexican species diversity.
Professor Cavender-Bares uses MSI resources to support research into the many dimensions of plant biodiversity, including functional, genotypic and phylogenetic measures of diversity.