Maria Mayol Martínez

 

I am interested in many aspects of evolution and conservation of plant diversity in the Mediterranean Basin. Ongoing research in our group focuses on understanding how the high plant diversity is of this area has generated, and try to evaluate the relative contribution of evolutionary processes (selection, drift, gene flow) to population divergence and speciation.

 

To address this topics we investigate a variety of species with different life cycles and areas of distribution, including long-lived Tertiary relicts and narrow-range endemics. Methodological approaches integrate studies of molecular variation in neutral markers to determine demographical processes, the study of the genetic basis in functional and life-history traits combining genomic tools and quantitative genetic methods, and demographic analyses to identify the main ecological factors affecting the performance of species under study.