
Professor
Email: bbaldwin@berkeley.edu
Phone: (510) 643-7008
Lab Webpage: http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/Baldwin-Lab.html
Research Description
My research program encompasses vascular-plant systematics, floristics, and conservation biology, with an emphasis on biosystematic and phylogenetic studies. I am particularly interested in systematic questions that address evolutionary processes, historical biogeography and ecology, and relationships of California plants and their descendant lineages elsewhere (e.g., Hawaii). My research on the California tarweeds and the Hawaiian silversword alliance (Compositae: Madiinae) has involved testing of hypotheses concerning diversification processes and rates, chromosomal and morphological evolution, ecological shifts, dispersal events, and the evolutionary importance of hybridization. I am also involved in collaborative investigations focused on evolution of breeding and pollination systems in flowering plants. Laboratory techniques used in my research include DNA sequencing and cytogenetic and morphological analyses. Recent theoretical and technological advances in systematics offer exciting opportunities for studies of California plant evolution and relationships. The rich diversity of the California flora and the extensive literature from evolutionary research on California plants pose well-defined and important systematics research problems for graduate study.
Selected Publications
Baldwin, B. G. 2014. Origins of plant diversity in the California Floristic Province. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 45: 347--369.
Armbruster, W. S., J. Lee, M. E. Edwards, and B. G. Baldwin. 2013. Floral paedomorphy leads to secondary specialization in pollination of Madagascar Dalechampia (Euphorbiaceae). Evolution 67: 1196--1203.
Baldwin, B. G., D. H. Goldman, D. J. Keil, R. Patterson, T. J. Rosatti, and D. H. Wilken (eds.). 2012. The Jepson manual: vascular plants of California, second edition. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Baldwin, B. G., S. Kalisz, and W. S. Armbruster. 2011. Phylogenetic perspectives on diversification, biogeography, and floral evolution of Collinsia and Tonella (Plantaginaceae). American Journal of Botany 98: 731--753.
Baldwin, B. G. and W. L. Wagner. 2010. Hawaiian angiosperm radiations of North American origin. Annals of Botany 105: 849--879.
Armbruster, W. S., J. Lee, and B. G. Baldwin. 2009. Macroevolutionary patterns of defense and pollination in Dalechampia: Adaptation, exaptation, and evolutionary novelty. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 106: 18085--18090.