Comparative wood anatomy and evolution of Apocynaceae and Sapotaceae

In my research, I used a comparative wood anatomical approach to address wood evolution of the (largely) tropical flowering plant families Apocynaceae and Sapotaceae. Both families were chosen because they have valuable timber species that are well-represented in wood collections, occur in diverse habitats, have species with different growth forms, but for which the wood anatomy was understudied. I sectioned and stained wood samples following standardised protocols after which the I described the anatomical variation using light-and scanning electron microscopy. These descriptions were combined with existing ones and I performed ancestral state reconstructions on a large set of wood traits with modern comparative modelling methods that use phylogenies based on molecular differences. This allowed me, for the first time, to present the most complete wood anatomical overview of both families. I made comparisons among species of the same family to investigate intrafamilial relationships and to reconstruct wood anatomical evolutionary trends. Moreover, I investigated the impact of growth form and plant size on wood anatomical variation.<br>