Dissertation Research: A Revision of Agenium and Homozeugos Integrating Cladistic Analysis and Geographic Information Systems

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9423452 Judd Graduate student Gerald Guala, under the guidance of Prof. Walter Judd of the University of Florida, is studying the taxonomy, phylogeny, and ecology of two genera of grasses found in savanna regions of South America and Africa. He is combining technologies from two modern analytical approaches: cladistic analysis of characters to infer likely evolutionary relationships among the species; and computer- based geographic information system (GIS) analyses to map soil and climate measurements for individual populations onto the cladograms of taxa. Comparisons between the two genera, Agenium in South America and Homozeugos in Africa, are designed to reveal whether similar climatic patterns are correlated with the sequence of speciation (cladogenetic or splitting) events in the two groups of savanna grasses. The study is a pioneering application of GIS methodology to the analysis of phylogenetic patterns in two grass genera, occupying similar habitats in South America and Africa. ***