Maria Clara Castellanos

Our research is focused on the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms that cause and maintain the high diversity of flowering plants. Our main interest is in plant interactions with animals (mostly pollinators) and with environmental factors (mostly fire) in wild populations. We do field work in tropical, temperate and Mediterranean environments.

Current work combines field and greenhouse observations with genomic markers to study evolutionary potential in natural populations. We also study the ecological and evolutionary consequences of wildfires on plants and their intreactions with animals. All this is important to understand how populations evolve under natural and human-induced changes such as pollinator declines and increased fire frequencies.