Departmental Position: Postdoctoral Fellow

Status: Professional

Personal Profile
I am presently involved in the preparation of a comprehensive, contemporary revison of the Apiaceae for the Flora of Australia - the first such treatment in over 100 years. The DELTA software package is being facilitated in the revision to produce both interactive keys and hard-copy treatments. My main interests in the family are within the Hydocotyloideae, to which about 75% of Australian species belong, with particularly high endemism. My PhD was on Xanthosia and the allied genera Pentapeltis, Schoenolaena, Chlaenosciadium and Brachyscias, which together form and endemic Australian group with an unusual inflorescence structure. Both specific and generic delimitation was examined morphologically and phylogenetically, and a DELTA data set produced from which an interactive key was generated. Between completing my PhD and recently commencing as a Post Doctoral Fellow at the University of Sydney, I held the 1998 Ferdinand
Mueller Fellowship at the National Herbarium of Victoria, Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, where I constructed a computerised interactive identification key to the Victorian Alpine Herb Flora using LucID software.