Dissertation Research: Systematics and biogeography of Sabiaceae with emphasis on Meliosma

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The flowering plant family Sabiaceae comprises three genera and about 150 species of trees and shrubs that are distributed throughout the Neotropics and Southeast Asia. This group has not been subject to modern evolutionary research, and thus questions remain about the relationships among its members, as well as about the placement of the family among flowering plants. The main goal of this study is to generate a phylogenetic framework across taxonomic levels that will answer these questions and also allow the study of other aspects of the biology of the group, such as biogeography and the evolution of reproductive characters. To achieve this, modern methods, such as the comparison of gene sequences and phylogenetic dating using fossil information, will be used.This study will generate data that will improve our understanding of a recalcitrant part of the angiosperm tree of life. Furthermore, this study will test biogeographic hypotheses that have been proposed for other groups of plants with similar disjunct distributions, and fossil-based dating will provide geological timeframes in which the divergence and evolution of the family took place.