Testing hypothesis of morphological convergence in Mimosa (Fabaceae) with models of adaptive evolution.

• Grant number: 25/03318-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: July 01, 2025
• End date: December 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Botany
• Principal Investigator: Leonardo Maurici Borges
• Grantee: Thiago Takeshi Goto
• Supervisor: Fabio de Andrade Machado
• Host Institution: Centro de Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde (CCBS). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Oklahoma State University, United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 24/00323-9 - Morphological convergence after entering a new biome: A quantitative test with independent lineages of Mimosa (Fabaceae) from Cerrado, BP.MS

Abstract

Selective pressures of a particular biome can favor the emergence of convergent morphological characters in independent lineages. In the Cerrado, a relatively young biome, adaptive convergences related to fire protection are well documented. However, it is not known whether and how vegetative and floral characters responded to other environmental pressures that distinguish the Cerrado from surrounding and evolutionarily older biomes. Here we propose to use Mimosa (Fabaceae), a megadiverse genus (600 species) with high diversity in the Cerrado (250 species distributed in almost ten independent lineages) to test the presence and variation in the degree of convergence of vegetative and floral characters. For that, we will analyze morphological data in a comparative phylogenetic context using evolutionary models to test for variations and convergence in adaptive optima among different lineages of Mimosa from the Cerrado. This research will form a master in comparative biology and answer open questions about the role of convergence for the morphological evolution of plants.