Dr. Tania Hernandez is interested in the origin, evolution and diversification of the cactus family. Originally from Mexico City, she performed her studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where she got inspired to focus her studies on the cactus family with her botany teacher, Dr. Leia Sheinvar, working and studying the cctus and succulent collection at the Jardin Botanico UNAM.
The part of her work Tania enjoys the most is doing field work. “Experiencing the plants in the wild provides invaluable information to understand the evolution of lineages, their distribution, diversification, ecology, and their adaptations.”
“I wish our network grows and allows us new wonderful experiences to study and better understand this interesting plant family”

I did a PhD working on root development in Cactaceae species at UNAM, México; under the advise of Svetlana Shishkova. We sequenced and de novo assembled the root transcriptome of Pachycereus pringlei in three developmental stages, and inferred a transcriptional regulatory network.
I am currently a posdoc. My work is now focused on the evolution of gene regulatory networks controlling root development in different plant taxa, including Cactaceae.

Matias is an Early Career Researcher, plant evolutionary biologist, best defined as Botanist. He has a Master's and a PhD's degree in Botany, and is currently a postdoc with Dr. Marcelo Reginato at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. His research focuses on the evolutionary relationships of plants through the use of molecular phylogenetic methods as well as morphology and cytology testing questions regarding the biogeographic history, community assemblage, morphological and genome evolution, origins of species, and species boundaries within groups. Most of his research with cacti has focused on the prickly pears (Opuntia spp.) and local floristic inventories.

I am an associate professor at the Biology Department of the Federal University of São Carlos, São Paulo, Brazil. My main interest is to investigate the evolutionary forces creating and maintaining the enormous biodiversity in Neotropics. I focus my studies on biogeography, phylogeny, and phylogeography of Cactaceae to study biologically relevant questions, such as species boundaries, hybridization, conservation genetics, trait evolution, and shifts on geographic distributions.

The goal of my research is to investigate the evolutionary process underlying species diversification, especially those found in xeric and open areas of the Neotropical region. To this end, I have been exploring different aspects of evolutionary genetics of cactus species, including projects related to population genetics, biogeography, phylogenomics and, more recently, transcriptomics.

I am a plant biologist interested in the evolution of development, particularly in cacti. We study cacti organs like flowers, roots and beyond using cutting-edge technologies. My lab is established in the Biology Institute and the botanical garden of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. We combine high dimensional data from morphology and DNA/RNA sequencing to reveal how different structures are formed using models like Mammillaria, an endangered cactus species.

My topics of interest are genetic, cytogenetic and ecological variations in Cactus species from Argentina to elucidate systematic, evolutionary issues and identify natural hybrids. To approach these studies, I mainly use cytogenetic techniques (conventional, fluorescent chromosome banding, fluorescent and genomic in situ hybridization), sequence analysis, bioinformatics, and determination of DNA content.

Bárbara is a conservation scientist, she studies the family of Cactaceae at the global level and specialises in Chihuahuan Desert species. She is passionate about conservation biology, biogeography, macroecology and range and abundance rarity. Bárbara has ample experience assessing species extinction risk and using this information to guide conservation actions.

Lucas Majure is a broadly-trained plant systematist specializing in the evolution of tropical montane and dryland floras of the Americas. Within Cactaceae, he has focused much of his research on the Opuntioideae clade, as well as select clades in Cactoideae, with a focus on Caribbean species. He is broadly interested in plant evolution, speciation, reticulate evolution and polyploidy and morphological adaptation to novel environments.

I am an undergraduate researcher, illustrator and science communicator interested and motivated by plants. I am pursuing an Agri-Genomics bachelor's degree at the National Autonomous University of México (UNAM) and am working on Agave and Saguaro's genomics at Tania Hernández-Hernández lab.