The lab of Plant and Fungal Evolution and Biogeography

This research group was established in 2018 by Marek Slovák, who came to the Department of Botany of Charles University in Prague as an assistant professor. The major focus of our team is to investigate evolutionary histories, biogeography, and stematics of vascular plants as well as lichenized and non-lichenised fungi. We are interested in processes and factors that shaped the present-day diversity of organisms, their diversification dynamics and speciation processes that lead to the evolution  of novel biological entities. In the field of biogeography, we study genetic and cytotype patterns of studied model systems to uncover their diversification centers, refugial sites, migration routes, contact zones including mutual interactions within and between species level. To answer the addressed questions we use a combination of various approaches encompassing the multivariate morphometrics, karyological and cytogenetic analyses, molecular-genetic methods (Sanger sequencing of plastid mitochondrial and nuclear regions, RADseq Hyb-Seq) and ecological niche modeling analyses.