Mike Crisp's lab

Information for potential students

 

 I supervise research students in my main areas of interest (plant systematics, biogeography and comparative biology) and also in related areas with specialist co-supervisors (ecology and systematics of non-plant organisms).

Currently my group includes five Ph.D. students (Ed Biffin, Richard Carter, Robert Edwards, Bobbie Hitchcock, Andrew Thornhill), an M.Phil. student (Senilolia Tuiwawa) and an Honours student (Melita Baum). In the past I have supervised 24 research students to completion of their degrees.

More information about the Honours program in the School of Botany and Zoology

More information about the post-graduate program in the School of Botany and Zoology

Potential Honours projects:

Potential Postgraduate projects

Australia's monsoon tropical flora: invader or relict?
Australia's tropical north lies close to Asia and thus most of the world's land-mass. Potentially it is a getway through which flora could have invaded from the north over the last 15 million years. But Australia also has a unique flora that has evolved in situ from ancient Gondwanan ancestors. The key question is how much of the northern flora has evolved from each source? I have funding for molecular biogeography projects on tropical plant groups, such as the cycads and spinifex grasses.
Radiations of the Australian flora: a molecular phylogenetic approach
During the Tertiary period, from about 34 million years ago, dramatic climate changes altered the face of Australia's flora, as dominant rainforest gave way to the drier heathlands, woodlands and deserts of today. By reconstructing the rates of change in the DNA of plants, we can ask what effect climatic events had on the evolutionary radiation and extinction of the flora. I have the resources to study any of several key groups, including the saltbushes (chenopods), pea-flowered legumes and cypress pines.

 

 

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Date last modified: Saturday, 20 March 2003
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