We also have a strong interest in colonization and biological invasion, especially as it bears on the evolution of reproductive strategies. Here are three of the research projects we are currently working on. For more information see our website. The shift from outbreeding to inbreeding is probably the most frequently trod evolutionary pathway in flowering plants, and there has been much theory exploring the forces involved in this transition. Sex is a complex trait that probably involves hundreds or thousands of genes and significant material investment by individual organisms.
Most perennial plants reproduce both sexually through seed and asexually through vegetative cloning.
Under some ecological conditions, reproduction through seed is so rare that we expect sexual functions to be lost much in the same way as eyes and pigments are lost in cave-dwelling organisms. We make a lot of use of the Queen's University Biological Station. Functional Ecology, in press. American Journal of Botany, in press. Ecology, in press.