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

开花植物Sabiaceae包括3属约150种乔灌木，分布在新热带和东南亚。这一类群尚未成为现代进化研究的对象，因此，关于其成员之间的关系以及该科在开花植物中的位置的问题仍然存在。这项研究的主要目标是建立一个跨分类学水平的系统发育框架，以回答这些问题，并允许研究该群体生物学的其他方面，如生物地理学和生殖特征的进化。为了实现这一目标，将使用现代方法，如基因序列比较和利用化石信息进行系统发育定年。这项研究将产生的数据将提高我们对被子植物生命树中一个顽固性部分的理解。此外，这项研究将测试生物地理学假说，这些假说是针对其他具有类似不相交分布的植物群提出的，基于化石的年代测定将提供该家族发生分化和进化的地质时间框架。

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.