Research

My principal research interests are the systematics of Crataegus sections Crus-galli and Douglasianae, particularly the relationship between phenetic variation, genetic variation, and breeding system; also in the integration of developmental data in systematic studies, morphometric analyses of shape variation, numerical taxonomy and cladistics, and comparative morphology. Current research projects include: Crataegus phylogeny (in collaboration with postdoctoral fellow Mehdi Zarrei and S. Stefanović); rangewide morphological variation in Crataegus section Douglasianae; reproductive biology of Crataegus (in collaboration with ROM research associate Nadia Talent); and application of morphometric and other multivariate methods to problems in systematic and developmental biology.