What’s up?
Regular updates from fieldwork, the lab and our Melastome Seminar Series -Virtual!
Busy fall: proposals, papers, analyses, meetings
After all the fieldwork in summer, fall was about crunching deeply into data analyses, paper and proposal writing... we have some exciting results to share about Merianieae diversification in the Neotropics from the modelling...
A fun side project with high-school student Leah Maier
Local students from Boulder High School are supposed to do applied science projects - how fun! Finally, fellow Smith-lab postdoc Miranda Sinnott-Armstrong and I could team up to combine our interests in two incredibly important...
Summer fieldwork 2022, part 2: pollination of co-flowering Rhexia!
At the beginning of July, I travelled from Colorado to Florida (what a move to make for a climber in the middle of summer ;-)) to work on the Melastomataceae genus Rhexia (meadow beauties)! This is a small genus of only about 11...
Fieldwork summer 2022 – part 1: pollinator communities and reproductive biology of Peruvian Melastomes!
I am lucky to get to the field twice this summer! 😀 The first fieldtrip featured joint work with Fabián Michelangeli and Juan Angulo from The New York Botanical Garden and Robín Hilario from Lima in the frame of the...
The role of geographical, phenological and ethological isolation in maintaining species boundaries in Rhexia
Closely related plant species frequently occur in sympatry and overlap in ecological characters. This overlap may lead to resource competition (i.e. for pollinators) and result in character displacement (i.e. divergence in...
Systematics, Evolution and Ecology of Melastomataceae
Today is a big day in the world of Melastomataceae! 😀 Finally, after about two years of work, Melastomatologists across the world have put together 34 chapters in a book soon to be published by Springer! Special thanks to the...
The predictive power of pollination syndromes
This has been such a fun project! Thanks to José Valverde, whom I had the pleasure to co-advise during his licenciate thesis at Universidad de Costa Rica, we now know the pollinators of Meriania macrophylla! This species is...
CU Boulder – a new (scientific) adventure!
In the frame of my new 3-year postdoc project "Modelling abiotic and biotic drivers of a plant radiation", I will spend one year at the University of Colorado Boulder working in tight collaboration with Stacey Smith! My first...
Another student joining the lab! Welcome José Miguel Valverde-Espinoza!
José did his licenciatura degree at the University of Costa Rica, working on the pollination biology of Meriania macrophylla. There, José confirmed yet another shift to passerine pollination in the Merianieae. He decided to...
Welcome Constantin Kopper, our new PhD student!
I am happy to welcome Constantin Kopper as new PhD student in the Schönenberger lab! Constantin will be working with me on floral evolution and pollination syndromes in the plant family Melastomataceae, which contains more than...