Former members and collaborators

Bruno is a taxonomist and has experience with the northern Atlantic Forest flora with a special interest in the family Myrtaceae. He was a Ph.D. student at the Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil. The focus of his thesis was on the phylogeny, biogegraphy and taxonomy of the Gomidesia clade (Myrcia s.l.), under the main supervison of Dr. Marccus Alves and in collaboration with Dr. Luís Gustavo Souza, Dr. Eve Lucas and Dr. Alexandre Antonelli.

Josué is a graduated PhD student under the supervision of Alexandre Antonelli at BioEnv, University of Gothenburg. His project is entitled, “Origin, evolution and biodiversity of Neotropical snakes: patterns and processes of the world’s richest and most threatened herpetofauna”. He completed his masters in zoology at the Universidade de Brasília (UnB, Brazil), studying the historical biogeography of the Cerrado herpetofauna. His main interests are the evolution of species niches and traits over time and space.

Keywords: biogeography, endemism, evolution, Cerrado, Serpentes

Dom gained his BSc (in biological sciences) and MRes (in biodiversity informatics and genomics) from Imperial College London. He completed his PhD at Imperial College London and the Zoological Society London in palaeobiology and macroevolution. In the Antonelli Lab, Dom continued the development of a pipeline for automating the construction of phylogenetic trees, called SUPERSMART.

Nicolas Chazot is working on macroevolutionary patterns of species, and phenotypic and ecological niche diversification. His work at the University of Gothenburg focused primarily on three projects: (1) investigating the relationship between the pattern of ecological niche evolution across European butterflies and species’ responses to global changes; (2) understanding the rise and fall of the Neotropical Mauritiinae palm trees associated with the ecological turnover in Amazonia during the Miocene using the fossil record and molecular phylogenies; and (3) investigating the macroevolutionary pattern of species and phenotypic diversification of the most diverse family of butterflies, the Nymphalidae.

Paola is a biologist working on phylogenetics, morphology, and taxonomy in different angiosperm families. Her main interest is in the early branches of Asteraceae, with focus on the subfamily Barnadesioideae. She is seeking to understand the phylogenetic relationship between all genera using target enrichment sequencing methods. She also aims at understanding the historical biogeography of the group. She finished her PhD at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, under the main supervision of Milton Groppo and co-supervised by Alexandre Antonelli at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Jonna finished a PhD under the supervision of Alexandre Antonelli and Bernard Pfeil at BioEnv. Her work involves estimating the phylogeny, biogeographic history and divergence times of hybrid plants. She employs sequence-capture methods which she first developed for Medicago (Fabaceae), but now focused on the pantropical genus Pavonia and the genus Hibiscus (Malvaceae).

Marcela has experience on different groups of plants. During her undergraduate studies she worked on Araliaceae (Hydrocotyle) of Brazil. Then during her MSc she became enthusiastic about the coffee family (Rubiaceae) whilst working on the Flora of Serra da Canastra – an area of the Brazilian Cerrado and Rocky Outcrops in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Her current interest is in the taxonomy of Rubiaceae. She did PhD hosted at Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil, under the main supervision of Luiza Kinoshita, working on the Systematics and Biogeography of Manettia (Rubiaceae), and co-supervised by Alex Antonelli and Claes Persson in Gothenburg.

Lovisa carried out phylogenetic work on a genus of Brazilian orchids and estimated diversification times for the whole family Orchidaceae. She finished her PhD at Oslo’s Natural History Museum.

Carina is a geologist/paleoecologist and associate researcher at the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED) of the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands) and holds an MSc and PhD from this university, and an MSc in Science Communication from the Imperial College London (UK). Her main interest is the natural history of the Amazon region and its seaward extension, the Amazon Fan. Most of her work is focused on better understanding the crucial role of Andean uplift on past biodiversity, drainage reconfigurations, and the extent and effect of marine incursions in the Amazonian heartland. This is best exemplified in her Science paper, published in 2010, where the links between biodiversity patterns and mountain uplift are explained. Together with Hubert Vonhof, Carina edited a special issue on Amazonia in the Journal of South American Earth Sciences (2006) and with Frank Wesselingh edited Amazonia, landscape and species evolution: A look into the past, published by Wiley-Blackwell (2010). In the past, Carina was lecturer at the Sultan Qaboos University (Oman) and Delft Technical University (The Netherlands), and research associate at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (UK). She has also worked as technical writer for External Communications at Shell International Exploration and Production (The Netherlands). Carina regularly gives presentations, serves in academic review panels, acts as reviewer for international academic journals, and occasionally writes popular science articles.

Samuli is a curator of vascular plants in the University of Turku Herbarium (TUR), Finland. He is interested in phylogenetic systematics and tropical biodiversity. His current research is focused on fern systematics and macroevolution, with a special interest in the diversification of Neotropical species of genus Lindsaea.

Pável is interested in insect biogeography and systematics. He is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie post-doc at the University of Gothenburg from 2017 to 2019. At the Antonelli Lab, he studies the phylogenetic relationships and biogeography of main Neotropical clades within the butterfly families Hesperiidae and Nymphalidae. The main goal is to better understand the ecological and evolutionary processes intervening in tropical biodiversity. He uses phylogenomic approaches, along with life-history data (larval host plants, geographical ranges) to estimate character evolution and diversification rates.

Boni is a Spanish biologist who received her MSc degree in Biodiversity and Taxonomy of plants from the University of Edinburgh (UoE)/Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh (RBGE). She is currently a PhD student at Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN), Canada under the supervision of Julissa Roncal and co-supervised by Alex Antonelli in Gothenburg. Her studies aimed at elucidating biogeographic patterns in the geological and ecological complex region of the Caribbean using phylogenies, to understand the endemic flora assembly of the region. As a case study she looked at the systematics and biogeography of a Podocarpus lineage.

Myriam Ramírez is interested in the ecology and evolution of birds, focused on understanding the evolutionary origin of certain traits and behaviors. She finished her PhD at the University of La Serena, Chile. Her research focuses on understanding how several environmental and geological changes that occurred in South America have affected macroevolutionary patterns of Neotropical parrots. She did an internship in the Antonelli Lab under the supervision of Alexandre Antonelli, where she carried out different analyses of diversification, trait evolution, and niche evolution on Neotropical parrots. At the same time, she workes with several research projects in ecology that assess endemic parrots in Chile.

Keywords: macroevolution, behavior, trait-evolution, birds, phylogenetics

Ferran Sayol has a wide interest in macroecological and macroevolutionary patterns driving current diversity, mainly using birds as a study model. During his PhD in Barcelona (UAB, 2018), he focused on the evolution of behavioural flexibility and its relevance to understanding how animals cope with environmental challenges. More recently, he has become interested in addressing a major societal challenge: the recent and ongoing loss of species due to human impact on Earth. In the Antonelli Lab, he developed a project on global patterns of bird extinctions, aiming to understand how anthropogenic extinctions might be concealing original macroevolutionary patterns. Among other questions, he investigates how trait distributions might be biased by non-random extinctions and whether some macroecological patterns are better explained by past rather than current species distributions.

Francisco did his Masters in Ecology, Evolution and Systematics at the LMU in Munich, Germany. Francisco is broadly interested in evolutionary biology and his main interests lay in phylogeography, population genetics, and behavioral ecology. Francisco is a research assistant in the Antonelli lab in Santander, Colombia and is working on DNA sequencing, phylogenetic community structure, and diversification rates of neotropical palms. Francisco is also collaborating with other projects addressing the evolution of neotropical mammals from the Caviidae family in South America.

Anna worked as a research engineer for the Antonelli Lab. She has a Master of Science in Biology and was responsible for the management of the molecular systematic laboratory.

Christine is working on phylogenomics and population genomics of tropical plants and patterns and processes related to diversification and speciation. She is a specialist in the palm family (Arecaceae) and her research is currently funded by the Swedish Research Council (2017-04980).

Sofie did a BSc project reviewing the current threats to Amazonian biodiversity.

Eder was PhD student working on the Systematics and Biogeography of Neotropical Rubiaceae at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil, focusing on the genus Ladenbergia (Rubiaceae). He was supervised by Dr. André Simões in collaboration with our lab.

Ivan obtained a masters degree in Ecology and Natural Resources from Federal University of Ceará (UFC), Brazil. He was a PhD student at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil and did a ‘sandwich’ internship in the Antonelli lab. Ivan collaborates with the Swedish Museum of Natural History. In his project, he addressed the evolutionary and biogeographical aspects of mountain forests of Northeastern Brazil, with a special focus on how past responses to climate changes affect plant distribution, migration and dispersal, phylogenetic and functional diversity. His main interest was in the use of floristic data and phylogenies to understand the biodiversity and diverse and particular patterns of the Neotropical region.

Søren is working on macroscale patterns in vertebrates, with a particular interest in the extent to which these are modified by humans. His research is currently funded by the Swedish Research Council (2017-03862).

Suzette is a biologist with a strong biogeographical background and interest. She aims at integrating knowledge from the paleoecology, biogeography and landscape ecology. She has been implementing GIS and Remote Sensing tools to a wide range of research questions in Venezuela, Colombia and the Amazon basin. She was a PhD student working at the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, the Netherlands. Her research was focused on spatial modelling of biome responses through time based on fossil pollen records in South America. Therefore she updated the site compilation of the Latin American Pollen Database. She worked on the multi-site and multi-proxy approach for improved spatial understanding of past biome responses.

Oskar is an evolutionary biologist and ecologist, at present based at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) in Switzerland. His background is in conservation biology, environmental sciences and informatics. Currently he investigates the role of past environmental conditions and eco-evolutionary feedbacks in shaping biodiversity gradients. For that, he develops macroevolutionary mechanistic models inferring biodiversity patterns from historical environmental dynamics. At the Antonelli Lab, he collaborates to investigate ways of extracting useful information from fossil records, specifically regarding age-dependent extinction processes.

Johannes developed the cataloging nature app, knowme.earth.

Narjara has experience the taxonomy and ecology of Orchidaceae. She is particularly interested in the colonization of island environments, especially within the Neotropics. She finished her PhD at the National Museum of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), under the supervision of Dr. Ruy Alves and Dr. Sérgio Ricardo Sodré with collaboration of Alexandre Antonelli. The title of her thesis was “Phylogeny of Polystachya estrellesis (Jacq.) Garay & Sweet (Orchidaceae) and molecular evidence of colonization of the Trindad’s Island”.

Orachorn did a PhD in the glucomannan contents of Amorphophallus species from Thailand, and developing molecular markers for species identification.

Karin did a MSc in biology working together with Rutger Vos to develop bioinformatic workflows needed for the SUPERSMART project.

Maria do Céo Rodrigues Pessoa was a PhD student at the Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil, under the supervision of Maria Regina Barbosa, and co-supervised by Alex Antonelli and Claes Persson at the University of Gothenburg. She was also a biologist at the Lauro Pires Xavier Herbarium (JPB), at the Federal University of Paraiba in Brazil. The purpose of her doctoral project was to perform a molecular phylogenetic study of the genus Chomelia Jacq. (Rubiaceae) and a taxonomic study of the Brazilian species.

Daniele is a computational biologist interested in macroevolutionary processes. He develops Bayesian models to estimate speciation, extinction, and migration rates from both molecular phylogenies and fossil occurrence data. His research was formerly funded by the Swedish Research Council (2015-04748). Now he is associated with the Department of Biology at University of Fribourg.

Amber did an extended BSc in interdisciplinary studies, with the focus on biology, at the University of Amsterdam. Her project aimed to reconstruct the origin and evolution of the plant genus Nitraria (Nitrariaceae) on the Tibetan Plateau, with the help of both pollen morphology and molecular data. She collaborated with the Antonelli lab and Heidelberg University and is under the supervision of Carina Hoorn, Alexandre Antonelli and Andreas Koutsodendris. Her main interests are paleoecology, palynology and the evolution of species and how climatic processes such as mountain uplift, sea retreat and global warming or cooling affect this evolution. She started her masters at the University of Amsterdam in September 2016.

María was a biologist from Guatemala and conducted her Master’s in the International Applied Ecology program IMAE. She is curious about mutualistic interactions, specially the ones implying generalist species. Her background in Ecology started with her bachelor studies in Guatemala where she investigated the populations genetics of stingless bees in the cloudy forest. She also has been involved in several projects about bat conservation, with special focus on frugivorous bats. Having guatemalan’s great biodiversity as natural laboratory and learning about diverse ecosystems trough her master inspired María to investigate biogeographic patterns in the Neotropics. María conducted her Master’s thesis in the Antonelli Lab investigating the role of non-specific mutualism on ecological speciation. Her research model included the non-specific mutualistic interaction between leaf-nosed bats and pepper plants and the phylogeographic analysis of this interaction which is key for forest regeneration.

Erica was a PhD student at the University of Zurich, co-supervised by Jürg Schönenberger and Alex Antonelli. Her PhD project aimed at reconstructing the evolutionary history and estimating the phylogeny of a tropical plant group: Thunbergioideae (Acanthaceae). She further improved targeted capture techniques for Illumina sequencing in Acanthaceae. By comparing the history of Thunbergioideae in different continents, we will shed further light on historical reasons for diversity disparities in the tropical world.

Fernanda Calió is a botanist interested in investigating general patterns of evolution within the Neotropics, and also studying the systematics of Gentianaceae and Rubiaceae. She finished a post-doc in the Plant Systematics Lab at Universidade de São Paulo, developing her studies under the supervision of Dr. Lúcia Lohmann with collaboration of Alexandre Antonelli and his team. She is now a full Professor at Federal University of Sao Carlos in Brazil.

Fabien is an evolutionary biologist who aims at understanding the origins and evolution of biological diversity. In particular, he is interested in macroevolution and historical biogeography of global patterns in biodiversity such as latitudinal diversity gradients, regional patterns like in the Neotropics and the Indo-Australian Archipelago, and fine-scale patterns such as island biogeography. Fabien aims to tease apart the main evolutionary and ecological processes that have shaped current patterns of biodiversity over macroevolutionary time scales. Fabien is currently employed as a post-doc at the Department of Biological Sciences (University of Alberta), Edmonton, Canada. From January 2016, he started a position as a permanent researcher at CNRS, France.

Camila is a biologist with an interest in ecological questions about the Amazon. She did her Master’s degree in the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, INPA working with the impact of past fire in flooded forest in birds. She worked with phylogenetics analyses and landscape genetics of Elaenia ruficeps (Aves – Tyrannidae). She was a PhD student at the University of Gothenburg under the main supervision of Alexandre Antonelli and she worked on the hidden diversity of the Amazon using environmental DNA. Her project had the goal to quantify the diversity of the Amazon with samples of soils, litters and insects and to compare the different forest types: várzeas, igapós, terra firmes and campinas.

Alexandre is an ornithologist, with extensive field experience in Brazil, mainly Amazonia. His interests lie in conservation biogeography and evolution of Neotropical birds. He received his Ph.D. degree from Heidelberg University, Germany, in 2012. He finished a post-doc with Alexandre Antonelli and Alexandre Aleixo at Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, Brazil, investigating the evolutionary diversification of selected Neotropical birds occurring in open vegetation in South America. He is now a full Professor at the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco in Brazil

Victor is a biologist with Bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences (2009) from the Universidade Paulista, Brazil and a Master’s degree from the Postgraduate Program in Plant Biodiversity and Environment, Botanical Institute of Sao Paulo, Brazil (2013). He has experience in Botany and emphasises on phanerogams taxonomy, working mainly with the taxonomy of the family Malvaceae s.l. Two of his projects conducted as an intern at the Botanical Institute won prizes for the best scientific initiation work and the Frederico Carlos Hoehne prize, repectively. Until his Master’s, Victor worked with four genera of Malvaceae s.l. (Malvoideae and Byttnerioideae). In 2014 he began to attend the PhD Program in Biotechnology at the University of Mogi das Cruzes (UMC), São Paulo, Brazil, focusing on Systematics of the genus Pavonia (another genus of Malvaceae, Malvoideae), under the supervision of Marília Cristina Duarte. He was a guest PhD student in the Antonelli group, under supervision of Alexandre Antonelli and Bernard Pfeil. He was enrolled in the ‘sandwich PhD’ program enabled by Ciências sem Fronteiras.

Ylva worked as a research assistant for the Antonelli Lab. She has a Master of Science in Biology and has studied relationships in the plant genus Muscari.

Adam was an associated PhD student from Charles University, Czech Republic. He has a bachelor in philosophy and a master in theoretical biology with a specialization in the comparison of frequentist and Bayesian statistics. His project investigated the evolution of herbaceous habit and ecological differences between herbs and woody plants.

Carla did a PhD on phylogeny of tribe Cinchoneae using DNA sequences. In this work she attempted to include representatives of all species of the tribe and several accessions of all species within the genus Cinchona. The project included DNA-sequencing and phylogenetic analyses of tribe Cinchoneae and fed into the larger project: The Quest for Cinchona. She was supervised by Nina Rønsted at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, and co-supervised by Alex Antonelli and Claes Persson

Rose defended her PhD in the systematics, taxonomy and evolutionary biogeography of Neotropical Apocynaceae (supervised by Luiza Kinoshita and André Simões at UNICAMP and co-supervised by Alexandre Antonelli).

Anieli is working on morphological and ecological patterns and their relation to the diversification of extinct and living turtles. Her research has been focused on evolutionary genetics, phylogenetics, biogeography, diversification rates and bioinformatics. During her MSc and PhD at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, she worked with the biogeography of turtles and macroevolutionary patterns related to the occupation of South America.

Gislaine’s main interest is related to the evolution of natural populations of plants in dry areas. In her PhD (supervised by Maura Manfrin at the University of São Paulo in collaboration with Alexandre Antonelli), she worked with the impact of Pleistocene climate change on the population dynamics of a South Brazil cacti species. Currently, she is a post-doc at the University of São Carlos supervised by Evandro Moraes, mainly focusing on the evolutionary process of naturally distributed populations of rare and endangered cacti in Serra do Espinhaço (rocky savanna) to establish their conservation strategies as a part of the National Plan of Action for the Conservation of Cacti of Brazil (PAN Cactaceae).

Marcelo received his PhD at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina, and is now a researcher of the Argentine National Council for Scientific and Technologic Research (CONICET) and Professor at the Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia “San Juan Bosco.” His work has focused on the evolution of platyrrhine primates, with emphasis on systematics, phylogeny, paleobiogeography and paleoenvironments. Among other projects, he is involved in the study of Paleogene mammals from Patagonia with the description of a diverse mammal assemblage. He is currently working on platyrrhine origins and their early evolutionary radiation. Between November 2016 and August 2017 he was a Guest Professor at the Antonelli lab. During his time here, one of the major objectives was to assess the role of Patagonian fossil platyrrhines in the evolution of the extant groups, using a paleobiogeographic scenario and inferring geographic evolution under Bayesian and phylogenetic methods.

Alex’s thesis title was: “Big data insights into the distribution and evolution of tropical diversity.” After completing his thesis, he left our lab to pursue post-doctoral research at the iDiv centre in Leipzig, Germany.

Heléne investigated how soil samples and eDNA can be used as a biodiversity estimate to complement traditional species inventory. She was also working on a project developing a standardized and mathematical method to calculate species ranges using observational data. Heléne’s interests are evolutionary processes and ecology of birds but also broad questions of evolution, species distributions and the interplay between species in ecosystems. During her BSc and MSc in evolutionary ecology at the University of Gothenburg,  she worked with the evolution of sexually selected colour signalling in weaverbirds (Ploceidae). For her degree projects, she performed ancestral state reconstructions of these colour traits and spent time in the field in southern Africa sampling tissue and genetic data of the birds.

Romina is an evolutionary biologist with an interest in genetics as a tool to address a wide variety of questions regarding the ecology, evolution and historical biogeography. She also maintains a strong interest in genomics and large datasets. Her work focuses on how evolutionary processes have shaped patterns of modern biodiversity in a range of bird species.

Juan was a post-doc funded by a post-doc mobility fellowship of the Swiss National Science Foundation. His research focuses on the palaeobiology, systematics, biogeography and morphology of vertebrates, especially from South America. He studies the macroevolutionary changes of these lineages in relation to palaeoenvironmental conditions and geographic distributions, combining palaeontological and neontological data. He is particularly interested in the diversity and evolution of Neotropical mammals.

Rob is doing research looking at how humans have impacted global patterns of diversity and evolutionary history for birds. Specifically, he is interested in human-driven extinctions and their effect on global macroecological and macroevolutionary patterns. During his PhD, at the University of Southampton, he focused on the ecological diversity of mammals and birds and the ecological consequences of species loss. He also has a conservation background, working with the IUCN/SSC Antelope Specialist Group at Marwell Wildlife.

Louisa was a biodiversity and systematics MSc student with a focus on systematic theory. Her master thesis examined biodiversity loss and material flows. Looking at supply chain data and using spatial analysis she focused on determining the products with the largest impact on biodiversity hotspots.

Climbiê Ferreira Hall is a Brazilian biologist and received his bachelor degree at the Universidade Federal de Goiás, Brazil, and his Master degree in Ecology and Evolution at the same University. He finished a PhD in Plant Biodiversity and Enviroment at the Instituto de Botânica, supervised by Fábio de Barros. He has used Next Generation Sequencing and molecular phylogenies as tools to study the biogeographical and evolutionary patterns of Neotropical orchids.  He focused on the subtribe Zygopetalinae producing a new phylogeny for the subtribe, specially of the Zygopetalum complex and working with species delimitation within the genus Koellensteinia.

Thaís is an herpetologist, with extensive experience in Brazilian snakes. She is interested in understanding the patterns of distribution of biodiversity and how geological and climatic events have worked to shape these patterns over time.

Gustavo finished his PhD in systematics, evolution and biogeography of the Neotropical genus Baccharis (Asteraceae), supervised by José Rubens Pirani (USP) with the collaboration of Alexandre Antonelli. During the time spent in Gothenburg, he looked for the implementation of up-to-date phylogenetic and biogeographical methods proposing and testing hypotheses about the evolution of morphological, biological and ecological characters within the genus and contextualizing the results with the biogeography and the history of the biomes in the Neotropical region.

Laura did her PhD in the Davis Lab in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and is now Assistant Professor at Louisiana State University. She studies the phylogeny and evolution of the Neotropical Lobelioideae, specifically the clade comprising the genera Centropogon, Siphocampylus, and Burmeistera. In addition to taxonomy of the clade, she is interested in patterns of character evolution, particular of floral morphology in relation to pollinator shifts, and in diversification and biogeography in the context of the orogeny of the Andes.

Alessandra has experience with taxonomy of Rubiaceae. She did a PhD in the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), under the supervision of Dr. Ruy José Válka Alves and co-supervised by Alexandre Antonelli, working with Taxonomy, Phylogeny and Biogeography of Remijia (Rubiaceae – Cinchoneae).

Beatriz was a post-doc working on the evolution of Vriesea bromeliads in association with their pollinators. She aimed at reconstructing the phylogeny of the genus using RAD-seq data, to investigate shifts among hummingbird and bat pollination syndromes and test its correlation with habit and habitat type. She did her PhD at the Museu Nacional-Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) on systematics, taxonomy, and morphology of Vriesea.

Diogo’s main interest is on ecological and evolutionary processes that shape ecological communities at distinct spatial scales. He also has interests in phenotypic evolution of anurans and how trait evolution may change how species interact and dictate species coexistence in local communities. He finished his PhD in Ecology and Evolution at the Federal University of Goiás, Goiânia, Brazil. Before going to Goiânia, he obtained a Master’s degree from the São Paulo State University, working on metacommunity dynamics of larval anurans. He has been working with the ecology and morphology of Brazilian anurans since 2006. He is now on a short term post-doc with the Antonelli lab supported by CNPq, working with biogeography of Brazilian Atlantic Forest anurans, aiming to understand the joint effects of Plio-Pleistocene refugia and environmental variables on the species distribution along this biome.

Fernanda has experience in different groups of Brazilian Asteraceae. During her MSc studies she worked on the taxonomy of Vernonieae – Sipolisiinae. Her current interest is in the taxonomy of Senecioneae. She did her PhD hosted at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil, under the main supervision of João Aguiar Nogueira Batista, working on the Systematics and Taxonomy of Senecio (Asteraceae), co-supervised by Alex Antonelli in Gothenburg.

Mats defended his thesis entitled “Phylogenetic and Phyloclimatic Inference of the Evolution of Potentilleae (Rosaceae)” at the University of Gothenburg in 2010. He then did a post-doc at Paul Jarvis Lab, University of Leicester, where he investigated the origin and evolution of chloroplasts. He acted as aa bioinformatician at the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences and regularly collaborated with our group on bioinformatic projects. He left the group to pursue his own research and set-up his group to study genome evolution.