Bruce Baldwin

Professor

Lab: Baldwin Lab

Email: bbaldwin@berkeley.edu
Office phone: 643-7008

Full contact information

Research interests

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, restriction site mapping, 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. 2003. A phylogenetic perspective on the origin and evolution of Madiinae. In Tarweeds and Silverswords: Evolution of the Madiinae, ed. S. Carlquist, B.G. Baldwin, and G. Carr, 193-228. St. Louis: Missouri Botanical Garden Press.

Baldwin, B.G., B.L. Weese and J. Panero. 2002. Nuclear rDNA evidence for major lineages of helenioid Heliantheae (Compositae). Systematic Botany 27: 161-198.

Baldwin, B. G. and B. L. Wessa. 2000. Origin and relationships of the tarweed-silversword lineage (Compositae-Madiinae). American Journal of Botany 87: 1890-1908.

Armbruster, W. S. and B. G. Baldwin. 1998. Switch from specialized to generalized pollination. Nature 394: 632.

Baldwin, B. G. and S. Markos. 1998. Phylogenetic utility of the external transcribed spacer (ETS) of 18S-26S rDNA: congruence of ETS and ITS trees of Calycadenia (Compositae). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 10: 449-463.

Baldwin, B. G. & M. J. Sanderson. 1998. Age and rate of diversification of the Hawaiian silversword alliance (Compositae). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 95: 9402-9406.