The eFLOWER initiative: A framework for understanding the evolution and diversification of flowers
- Project leader: Hervé Sauquet (Université Paris-Sud) and
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Jürg Schönenberger - Maria von Balthazar (University of Vienna)
eFLOWER is a collaborative, international research project aimed at answering key questions on the evolution of flowers.
- What were flowers like in deep nodes of the angiosperm tree?
- Which floral innovations are linked with major increases in diversification rates?
- How are floral characters correlated with one another?
- To what extent has floral diversification been driven by pollination?
- Where do fossil flowers fit on the phylogeny of extant angiosperms?
To answer these questions, we are building a database of floral traits for a large sample of angiosperm species. eFLOWER is currently coordinated by a team of researchers from France and Austria.