The Prairie Research Program (PReP) includes projects related to natural resource management, ecology, native vegetation, and stewardship of prairie and rangeland habitats. We collaborate with landowners to investigate plant biodiversity metrics, often associated with disturbance events (past and present).
As models for symbiosis, lichens contain many completely unrelated associates with separate evolutionary histories. Lichen systematics can therefore produce phylogenies that reconstruct the history of the fungal partner, the photosynthetic partner, or from other microorganisms.
Our understanding of microbiome diversity and functionality in organisms and systems has rapidly advanced as new technologies have been developed and have become more accessible. Lichens have been the subject of these studies for over a decade now, but there is still much left to do.
The study of distinct lineages as part of the lichen symbiosis opens a myriad of interesting and yet to be explored questions. A few that I am interested are regarding Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT) among the symbionts and detecting genes responsible for lichenization in Basidiomycota.
Please visit Dr. Dal Forno’s website or the main NSF-project page for the most updated content on this research
We are interested in what the species of ferns and lycophytes are and where they occur—something often poorly known for tropical species—and the evolutionary relationships among the species. We generate phylogenetic trees based on DNA sequences that show how the species are related and use the trees as a framework for answering questions about character evolution, biogeography, and evolutionary processes.
Texas is home to more than 127 native species of ferns and lycophytes
The evolution of leaves changed life on Earth. We study the expression and phylogeny of leaf development genes in lycophytes and ferns to better understand the evolution and development of leaves in the land plants.
Madagascar is one of the world’s hottest biodiversity hotspots, home to an incredibly diverse and endemic flora. Much of my research is focused here, where I am interested in understanding the evolution of plant diversity in the ecological and geographic context. My work uses phylogenomic tools to elucidate rapid radiations in the myrrh genus, Commiphora (Burseraceae) and more broadly in endemic lineages from the sunflower family (Asteraceae). These lineages are also characterized by disjunct distributions in South America and I’m interested in comparing diversification strategies in dry and seasonally dry tropical forests found here.
The Philippines archipelago contains unique floral and faunal diversity that is critically threatened by habitat loss, with only 3-7% of original habitat remaining. To address the urgent need for further documenting this diversity in the face of impending large-scale species extinction, I am working with colleagues from the U.S. and the Philippines on a four-year project to document the land plants and lichens of the southern Philippines through a series of large field expeditions and subsequent taxonomic study. T
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