MrTheodore Brook

Pronouns: he/him

PhD student on the NERC Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet (SSCP) Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) hosted by the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. Based at Silwood Park and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Supervisors: Prof. Vincent Savolainen (Silwood Park, Imperial College), and Prof. Martin Bidartondo (Silwood Park, Imperial College/Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew).

I'm interested in speciation - the process that generates the diversity of life on Earth - and its genomic basis. The system I am researching is Lord Howe Island (LHI), a small, remote island home to over 240 endemic plant species. This offers the ideal setting to study speciation with gene flow (sympatric speciation), a process long considered improbable. I'm specifically interested in how a radiation within the coffee family (Coprosma, Rubiaceae) on this tiny island produced 6 species!

More broadly, I'm interested in phylogenetics, taxonomy and systematics, evolutionary genetics, and speciation genomics. I'm also interested in the more applied side of botany, including seed science, conservation assessments, and plant breeding.