Paula Kover

Dr. Paula X. Kover is a Reader in Plant Evolutionary Genetics at the University of Bath and the Milner Centre for Evolution. She has studied Biology and Genetics as an undergraduate and Mres. student at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brasil), and obtained her PhD from Indiana University (USA). Throughout her career she has always been interested on how selection interacts with genetics to shape complex traits such as flowering time, disease resistance and seed size. She is also involved in broadening the understanding of Evolution through the organization of workshops and science fairs.

The current focus of her lab is to understand how genetics interacts with an organism's ecology to determine the evolution of traits under natural selection. They investigate the genetic basis of evolutionary relevant traits such as flowering time, plant architecture and seed traits under different environments. They also use a direct approach to determine the adaptive value of candidate genes, using experimental evolution. To study genetic and ecological effects they perform research in both field and laboratory settings.