Evolution of plant defenses and local adaptation

I am fascinated by the natural history of how plants can defend themselves against their natural enemies and how they cope with abiotic factors. The current advancest of Mass spectrometry, DNA sequencing, and phenomics provide wonderful opportunities to study in detail the evolution and the chemical ecology and genomics of plant-herbivore interactions. I am interested in investigating the genome evolution of the species. In particular, to elucidate how genomic changes are related to phenotypic changes. I use greenhouse and field experiments, quantitative genetics with modern tools (HPLC-MS, genomics, bioinformatics) to address evolutionary questions, including generating new complete genomes for the species, my blog for science communication (www.plantiverso.com).