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Program in Plant Systematics

The Biology Graduate Program has had a long-standing collaboration with the Missouri Botanical Garden for training Master's and Doctoral students in plant systematics. This program has been expanded dramatically with the appointment in 1996 of Professor Susanne S. Renner and in 1998 of Professors Elizabeth A. Kellogg and Peter F. Stevens, in addition to generous funding from the Desmond E. Lee Family Foundation.

Systematics training is part of the graduate program in ecology, evolution, and systematics. Core courses listed below are taught by Profs. Renner, Kellogg, and Stevens, and by Mick Richardson (Missouri Botanical Garden). Additional curators at the Missouri Botanical Garden have Adjunct Appointments in the Department of Biology and are available to act as dissertation advisors and members of graduate committees. In addition to the outstanding herbarium and library at the Missouri Botanical garden, the Department of Biology has a state-of-the-art DNA sequencing facility to support molecular systematics and population genetics.


Core Courses in Plant Systematics

Seed Plant Evolution (to be taught by Susanne Renner in WS 1999)

Perhaps one of the most significant events in the history of plant life is the origin of the seed. This course investigates the evolution of seed plants, including the evolution of morphological structures and functional morphology. Both fossils and extant organisms are considered. The course includes an introduction to cladistic methods.

Biological Systematics (to be taught by M. Richardson in FS 1998)

Theory and practice are intertwined in systematics. This course addresses both aspects and will cover the theory of classification, the schools of systematics, methods of phylogeny reconstruction, and species concepts. The discipline transcends kingdoms and therefore examples will be taken from botany, zoology, and microbiology.

Plant Taxonomy (to be taught by Peter Stevens in FS 1999)

The flowering plants dominate the earth's land surface. This course will cover the phylogeny and diversification of the flowering plants, emphasizing families represented in the North American flora, with briefer coverage of plants of the Neotropical flora. Morphology and anatomy will largely be presented in the context of current molecular phylogenies, and field recognition of families will be stressed.

Molecular Systematics and Evolution (to be taught by Elizabeth Kellogg in WS 1999)

Study of macromolecules has revolutionized our view of evolution. This course covers the generation and analysis of molecular data, focusing particularly on information from DNA sequences. A combination of lab, lecture, and discussion sections will cover basic techniques and contemporary issues in methodology.



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