Project Title:

Biological significance of evolutionary conflict and impact of speciation on genome evolution: the case of petal patterning

Project Summary:

This project will develop new evolution-guided methods to explore the molecular basis of morphological diversity. A program to comprehensively identify and characterise conflict in homologous gene trees will be developed and used to investigate correlation alternative gene tree topologies and petal trait distribution within the Trionum complex of Hibiscus species, a recent adaptive radiation of Angiosperms with a diverse range petal patterns that potentially play a role in pollination. Genes that correlate can then be further investigated for a developmental role in petal patterning. This new framework can then be compared with existing methods to link genotype with phenotype (e.g. differential gene expression). The role of gene duplications and whole genome duplications on the generation of diversity in the Hibiscus genome and phenotypically will also be investigated.