Macroevolution of Nitrogen Fixation

The association of nitrogen fixing bacteria with flowering plants is the most successful symbiosis on Earth, yet it is contained in a single clade of Angiosperms. Although much has been speculated about the origin and diversification of the nodulating nitrogen-fixing trait, most hypotheses have not been tested with well-sampled, clade-wide phylogenies.

Working with the NitFix team, we are assembling a massively sampled phylogeny of the NitFix clade, which we will use to test hypotheses about the origin of the trait and its environmental and physiological drivers.