Bruce Martin

Why are rainforests so biodiverse? And why are there so many more species of flowering plants than conifers, or so many more beetles than lacewings? Generally, my research aims to identify and understand the factors that promote and constrain evolutionary diversification across the tree of life. Central to this research is the development of new statistical methods which are better able to model the complex evolutionary dynamics that generate these apparent disparities in biodiversity across different regions and evolutionary lineages.

Currently, I am leveraging recently-generated genomic data for hundreds of eucalyptus tree species to better understand the diversification of growth and reproduction-related traits among these remarkable plants. This work is funded by my NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology (Plant Genomes Research Program track). In addition to informing eucalyptus breeding efforts, such research will  produce new methods for investigating trait evolution in groups exhibiting complex histories of gene flow among diverging lineages.