Erika Edwards

About

Erika Edwards is a Professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at Yale University. She serves as the Curator of Botany at the Peabody Museum of Natural History and is the Director of Marsh Botanical Gardens. Additionally, she holds the position of Acting Director of the Peabody Museum for the years 2025-2026. Her work involves the study of plant diversity and evolution, as well as plant structure and function. She is involved in teaching courses related to collections of the Peabody Museum, laboratory for plant diversity and evolution, and laboratory for plant structure and function. Her research and professional activities are centered around understanding plant biology and contributing to the academic and scientific community at Yale.

Research topics

• Biology
• Ecology
• Evolutionary biology
• Paleontology
• Agronomy
• Botany

Selected publications

• Developmental and biophysical determinants of grass leaf size worldwide

  Nature · 2021 · 115 citations

  DOI

• Spatial resolution of an integrated C ₄ +CAM photosynthetic metabolism

  Science Advances · 2022-08-05 · 73 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  C 4 and CAM photosynthesis have repeatedly evolved in plants over the past 30 million years. Because both repurpose the same set of enzymes but differ in their spatial and temporal deployment, they have long been considered as distinct and incompatible adaptations. Portulaca contains multiple C 4 species that perform CAM when droughted. Spatially explicit analyses of gene expression reveal that C 4 and CAM systems are completely integrated in Portulaca oleracea , with CAM and C 4 carbon fixation…

  PublisherDOI

• The CAM lineages of planet Earth

  Annals of Botany · 2023-09-12 · 66 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  BACKGROUND AND SCOPE: The growth of experimental studies of crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) in diverse plant clades, coupled with recent advances in molecular systematics, presents an opportunity to re-assess the phylogenetic distribution and diversity of species capable of CAM. It has been more than two decades since the last comprehensive lists of CAM taxa were published, and an updated survey of the occurrence and distribution of CAM taxa is needed to facilitate and guide future CAM resear…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Joint Phylogenetic Estimation of Geographic Movements and Biome Shifts during the Global Diversification of <i>Viburnum</i>

  Systematic Biology · 2020 · 65 citations

  Phylogeny, molecular sequences, fossils, biogeography, and biome occupancy are all lines of evidence that reflect the singular evolutionary history of a clade, but they are most often studied separately, by first inferring a fossil-dated molecular phylogeny, then mapping on ancestral ranges and biomes inferred from extant species. Here we jointly model the evolution of biogeographic ranges, biome affinities, and molecular sequences, while incorporating fossils to estimate a dated phylogeny for a…

  DOI

• Gene co-expression reveals the modularity and integration of C4 and CAM in <i>Portulaca</i>

  PLANT PHYSIOLOGY · 2022-03-11 · 40 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  C4 photosynthesis and Crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) have been considered as largely independent adaptations despite sharing key biochemical modules. Portulaca is a geographically widespread clade of over 100 annual and perennial angiosperm species that primarily use C4 but facultatively exhibit CAM when drought stressed, a photosynthetic system known as C4 + CAM. It has been hypothesized that C4 + CAM is rare because of pleiotropic constraints, but these have not been deeply explored. We ge…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Phylogeny and evolutionary exploration of the C3-CAM phenotypic space in Calandrinia (Montiaceae)

  NSF · $21k · 2016–2017

• CAREER: Defining the evolutionary trajectory of CAM photosynthesis in Portulacineae (Caryophyllales)

  NSF · $800k · 2013–2017

• Phylogeny and the evolution of succulence in the Portulacineae (Caryophyllales)

  NSF · $535k · 2010–2014

Frequent coauthors

• Felipe Zapata

  758 shared

• Austin Mast

  756 shared

• Erick Matsen

  Yale University

  754 shared

• Edward Susko

  Dalhousie University

  754 shared

• Brian M. Wiegmann

  North Carolina State University

  754 shared

• Dan Faith

  University of Connecticut

  754 shared

• Thomas J. Near

  Yale Peabody Museum

  754 shared

• Sebastian Höhna

  Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

  754 shared

Similar researchers at Yale University

• Walter Jetzh-111
• Richard Prumh-82