Dr. Felix Forest
Contact Details
Leslie Hill Molecular Systematics Laboratory
Kirstenbosch Research Centre
South African National Biodiversity Institute
P/Bag X7
Claremont 7735
South Africa
Tel +27-(0)21-799-8658
During my PhD studies at the University of Reading, I worked on the molecular systematics of the large Cape genus Muraltia from the Polygalaceae family using biogeographical and molecular dating tools, with a particular interest in the evolution of seed dispersal, in particular by ants (myrmecochory). I am currently the Smuts Memorial Botanical Fellow at the Botany Department of the University of Cape Town, but I am based here at SANBI in Kirstenbosch. I am reconstructing the tree-of-life of the angiosperm genera of the Cape flora using the plastid gene rbcL. My collaborators and I have collected and sequenced more than 730 of the ca. 940 genera found in the Cape. The resulting large phylogenetic tree is being used to calculate the amount of evolutionary history (or phylogenetic diversity) in the Cape. I am particularly interested in the use phylogenetic diversity in conservation planning and in the consequences of environmental pressures on the evolutionary history of biomes.
