Character Evolution

Exploring genomic, physiological, phenotypic and ecological traits to understand the drivers and processes underpinning global plant and fungal diversity.

Arecaceae

Team lead: Dr Ilia Leitch

Investigating the evolution of plant and fungal traits and their responses to global change.

The Character Evolution team conducts research on specific traits that cut across plant and fungal lineages. We focus on a wide range of genomic, structural, chemical and ecological traits within a comparative evolutionary framework to understand the drivers and processes underpinning global plant and fungal diversity.

Our research uses diverse datasets associated with Kew’s scientific and living collections. Ongoing collecting and digitisation activities are contributing to the growth of these publicly available datasets.

We aim to analyse our data with increasingly sophisticated phylogenetic and ecological modelling approaches. This will lead to a greater understanding of how different traits interact and evolve to generate plant and fungal diversity, how key traits can influence or be influenced by evolutionary and ecosystem processes, and how these insights can predict plant and fungal responses to global environmental change. 

Team members

Senior Research Leader
Dr Ilia Leitch

Senior Research Leader Plant Structure
Dr Paula Rudall

Research leaders
Dr Sidonie Bellot

Research Fellow
Dr Jan Hackel
Dr Marybel Soto Gomez

Research Assistant
Sahr Mian
Jason Stevenson

Post-doctoral researcher
Ben Kuhnhaeuser

Honorary research associates
Professor Richard Bateman
Dr Oriane Hidalgo
Dr Jaume Pellicer

Honorary research fellows
Professor Michael David Bennett
Peter Brandham

PhD students
Marie Henniges
Joe Morton

Projects