Andrea Berardi, Postdoctoral Fellow

I am broadly interested in the processes of adaptation and speciation, with a particular focus on the role floral color in creating reproductive barriers. I am currently working on a project to understand the evolution of red flower color in North American Silene species, specifically whether access to hummingbird pollinators and/or polyploidy events played the biggest roles.  I did my graduate research and doctoral dissertation at the University of Virginia with Doug Taylor working on the influence of the flavonoid pathway on local adaptation within a single widespread species, Silene vulgaris. I then moved on to study how changes in floral anthocyanin pigmentation across species affect the production of other compounds of the flavonoid pathway in leaves the Iochrominae in a postdoc with Dr. Stacey Smith (CU Boulder). Most recently, I completed a postdoc with Dr. Cris Kuhlemeier at the University of Bern, Switzerland where I focused on the genetic mechanisms of two independent re-gains of floral color in sister species of Petunia.