Current Research

My main research interests center on the origin and maintenance of high biodiversity systems that occupy narrow ecological confines. Examples of this include plant species within the sagebrush steppe of western North America, the legume family within tropical forests, and viruses within Yellowstone National Park hot springs. If speciation is analogous to a mutational process and species turnover in a biological community is akin to genetic drift, then biodiversity within a particular community or ecological setting (e.g., sagebrush steppe or seasonally dry tropical forest) is predicted to be patterned according to island biogeographic principles. As such, communities that are dispersal limited for whatever reason (e.g., patchy in distribution) will have a diversity profile that is different from communities that are not dispersal limited. The viral communities of Yellowstone National Park hot springs (collaborative work with Mark Young's lab) illustrate a biodiversity extreme, which has both a very high biodiversity generating capacity combined with no dispersal limitation results in seemingly isolated hot springs being highly prone to immigration from the global viral metacommunity. Plant diversity in the seasonally dry tropical forests and the sagebrush steppe illustrate the opposite end of the spectrum, where isolated patches of vegetation often develop endemic species and communities and where globally rare species are locally common. Such biodiversity research requires that molecular phylogenetics and systematics be combined with community ecological approaches because spatially or temporally distributed sample sites often share few or no species or genotypes in common. Such an approach to community ecology draws a parallel from population genetics, where the stochastic behavior of the system (e.g., dispersal limitation) needs to be identified before deviations from this behavior can be detected and attributed to a deterministic process (e.g., niche conservatism).

Selected Publications

2009. Schrire, B., M. Lavin, F. Forest. Phylogeny of the tribe Indigofereae (Leguminosae-Papilionoideae): geographically structured more in succlent-rich and temperate settings than in grass-rich environments. American Journal of Botany 96: in press.

2008. Lavin, M. and A. Beyra-Matos. The impact of ecology and biogeography on legume diversity, endemism, and phylogeny in the Caribbean region: a new direction in historical biogeography. The Botanical Review 74 (1): 178-196.

2008. Mohatt, K. R., C. L. Cripps, and M. Lavin. Ectomycorrhizal fungi of whitebark pine (a tree in peril) revealed by sporocarps and molecular analysis of mycorrhizae from treeline forests in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Canadian Journal of Botany 86(1): 14-25.

2008. McClean, P., M. Lavin, P. Gepts, S. A. Jackson. Phaseolus vulgaris: a diploid model for soybean, chapter 4: 55-76. Genetics and Genomics of Soybean, Series: Plant Genetics and Genomics: Crops and Models , Vol. 2, Gary Stacey (ed.). Springer, New York, New York.

2007. Snyder, J. C., B. Wiedenheft, M. Lavin, F. F. Roberto, J. Spuhler, A. C. Ortmann, T. Douglas, M. Young. No Boundaries: virus movement maintains local virus population diversity. Proceedings of the National Academy, USA 104 (48): 19102-19107.

2007. Ribeiro, R. A., M. Lavin, J. P. Lemos Filho, C. V. Mendonça Filho, F. R. Santos, M. B. Lovato. The Genus Machaerium (Leguminosae) is more closely related to Aeschynomene sect. Ochopodium than to Dalbergia: relationships inferred from combined sequence data. Systematic Botany 32: 762-771.

2006. Pennington, R. T., J. E. Richardson, and M. Lavin. Insights into the historical construction of species-rich biomes from dated plant phylogenies, neutral ecological theory and phylogenetic community structure. New Phytologist 174 (4): 605-616.

2006. Delgado-Salinas, A., R. Bibler, and M. Lavin. Phylogeny of the genus Phaseolus (Leguminosae): A recent diversification in an ancient landscape. Systematic Botany 31 (4): 779-791.

2006. Lavin, M. Floristic and geographic stability of discontinuous seasonally dry tropical forests explains patterns of plant phylogeny and endemism, Chapter 19. Pp. 433-447 In Neotropical savannas and seasonally dry forests: plant biodiversity, biogeographic patterns and conservation. Eds. R. T. Pennington, J. A. Ratter, G. P. Lewis. CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida.

2005. Lavin, M., P. Herendeen, and M. F. Wojciechowski. Evolutionary rates analysis of Leguminosae implicates a rapid diversification of lineages during the Tertiary. Systematic Biology 54 (4): 530-549.

Collaborators:

R. Toby Pennington, Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, UK
Brian Schrire, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK
Alfonso Delgado-Salinas, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City, Mexcio
Martin F. Wojciechowski, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA

Lavin research site

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