Investigating the interplay between convergence and divergence in the Caribbean plant Euphorbia tithymaloides

In this talk, I will start by assessing patterns of historical divergence around the Caribbean in the plant Euphorbia tithymaloides, a putative ring-species. Then, I will examine morphological variation in the context of geography and history in this system, which appears to exhibit convergent geographic trends in the evolution of floral traits across independent lineages, and end by sharing our current progress in evaluating potential drivers of patterns we observe. This talk is 'organismal' and 'integrative' in the sense that we focus on understanding multiple types of diversity in this biological system through a combination of approaches and data, including analyses of DNA sequences, ecological observations from the field, and data derived from specimens and databases. Through the talk I examine the often overlooked phenomenon of convergence in systems with circular distributions, such as ring-species.