Photoperiodic transcriptomics

Grasses (Poaceae) represent an unparalleled evolutionary success story and are particularly well adapted to the environmental challenges posed by temperate habitats. Crucial to their evolutionary success in temperate ecosystems is their ability to align phenological events co- ordinating growth and reproduction with predictable, seasonal variations in temperature and daylength. However, only a few subfamilies of grasses have spread to temperate niches, a biogeographic bias that renders grasses a good system for comparative analyses of physio- logical and phenological traits that facilitate adaptive radiations in temperate habitats. The aim of this study is to employ comparayive transcriptomic to identfy and characterise the molecular mechanisms that determine the rules for seasonal flowering, driving one of the most successful adaptive radiations among flowering plants.