Systematics and Biodiversity

The Systematics and Biodiversity discipline investigates the diversity, evolution, and classification of life across a wide range of organisms. Research spans the systematics and biogeography of flowering plants, the phylogenetic relationships of unicellular dinoflagellates and papillomaviruses, and the population genetics and ecological genomics of lichen-forming fungi and their photosynthetic partners. Zoomorphological work reconstructs the evolution of body organisation and developmental diversity in arthropods using fossil and modern specimens, while vertebrate phylogenomics applies genomic and bioinformatic approaches to understand the origin and diversification of fish and other vertebrates. Together, the discipline combines fieldwork, advanced imaging, molecular sequencing, and computational methods to document and explain biodiversity across evolutionary time — with relevance to conservation, taxonomy, and our understanding of life's history.