Faculty Support: Melinda Peterson

My research focuses on the organismic interfaces between developmental, phylogenetic and evolutionary biology. Armed with hypotheses of relationships among clades, I seek to explore how patterns of morphology, anatomy and reproductive biology have evolved through the modification of developmental processes. My work is primarily focused on the origin and subsequent diversification of flowering plants, and in particular, the establishment of double fertilization and endosperm as defining biological features of angiosperms.  In addition to my interest in evolutionary history, I continue to be fascinated by the history of evolutionary thought in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, leading up to the time of publication of On the Origin of Species.

Recent Publications

Povilus, R.A., P.K. Diggle and W.E. Friedman.  2018.  Evidence for parent-of-origin effects and interparental conflict in seeds of an ancient flowering plant lineage. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 285; DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2017.2491.

Friedman, W.E.  2017.  Insights into how the world turned green.  New Phytologist 215: 505-507.

Losada, J.M., J.B. Bachelier and W.E. Friedman.  2017.  Prolonged embryogenesis in Austrobaileya scandens (Austrobaileyaceae): its ecological and evolutionary significance.  New Phytologist 215: 851-864.

Schoonderwoerd, K. and W.E. Friedman.  2016.  Zygotic dormancy underlies prolonged seed development in Franklinia alatamaha (Theaceae): a most unusual case of reproductive phenology in angiosperms.  Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society181: 70-83.

Pirone-Davies, C., N. Prior, P. von Aderkas, D. Smith, D. Hardie, W.E. Friedman, and S.  Mathews.  2016.  Insights from the pollination drop proteome and the ovule transcriptome of Cephalotaxus at the time of pollination drop production.  Annals of Botany 117: 973-984.

Friedman, W.E., M.S. Dosmann, T.M. Boland, D.E. Boufford, M.J. Donoghue, A. Gapinski, L. Hufford, P.W. Meyer and D.H. Pfister.  2016.  Developing an exemplary collection:  a vision for the next century at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. Arnoldia 73(3): 2-18.

Courses Taught

OEB 168R Sociobotany (co-taught with David Haig)
OEB 386 Organismic and Evolutionary Plant Biology