More scenes from our spooky F.A.C and afterparty!

Spooky scenes from this year’s Halloween F.A.C. and afterparty!

There was some holiday in Italy yesterday, and apparently the Italian President (Premier?) was in Venice, so, naturally they cordoned off all of St. Mark’s square and marched around and gave speeches. The band was pretty good, according to Claire and Caye…

Magdalena Vaio’s recent poster on the phylogenetic relationships and cytogenetic characteristics of the creeping Oxalis, sections Ripariae and Corniculatae. She has discovered that these species split into two main clades, one with a base chromosome number (x) of 6, and the other with 5 (fig. 2), apparently derived from the ancestral condition of 6 and of much larger size (fig. 1).

Sao Joaquim Araucarias.

Pedro collecting Oxalis articulata.

Pedro and Magda collecting Oxalis brasiliensis 3681 at the border of Aparados da Serra, in Rio Grande do Sul.

A good team: Pedro Fiaschi (the taxonomist), Magdalena Vaio (the cytogeneticist), and Andy Gardner (the gringo).

Pedro was nearly eaten whole by the Gunnera.

In the old center of Sao Paulo with Pedro’s parents. His dad is in the right foreground.

Magdalena uncovers Oxalis bifrons, of section Ripariae.

Jane’s organic acid extractions look like something out of Alien…

Sam and Elle.

Sam, Elle, and Jane.

Today was my first presentation at Evolution Seminar Series.  I teamed up with Emily Sessa, Brian Sidoti, and Evie Williams to talk about our research on ecological cladogenesis: diversification, morphological adaptation, hybridization and polyploidy, distribution modeling and more.

evolution.wisc.edu