Recent Book Traces Evolution of Plant Form
Posted in Books: Past and Present on November 25, 2013 by Barbara Ambrose
Barbara A. Ambrose, Ph.D., is the Cullman Assistant Curator in Plant Genomics at The New York Botanical Garden. Among other things, she is currently researching the genetic basis for the evolution of leaves in certain fern species.
How did plant life evolve on Earth to form hundreds of thousands of species with a vast diversity of shapes and structures? The explosive growth of DNA sequencing and the dramatic expansion of our ability to analyze huge quantities of sequencing data are making it possible to address fundamental questions about plant evolution more authoritatively than ever before.
The Evolution of Plant Form brings together for the first time in a single book the plant scientists who study morphology—the forms and structures of plants, such as leaves and flowers—and molecular geneticists. The classical morphologists know the interesting questions in plant morphology, and the molecular geneticists have the tools to address those questions.