Heritiana S. Ranarivelo

My research interests focus on the taxonomy, systematics and biogeography of the Malagasy flora. I am conducting ongoing research on the St. John’s wort family, Hypericaceae, and the princess flower family, Melastomataceae, and am also investigating the relationships between Malagasy species and closely related groups from mainland Africa and the New World. The questions I am asking focus on the origins, historical biogeography, and the biological processes driving the movement of these plant families in and out of Madagascar to better understand their contribution to the assembly and composition of the Malagasy flora. Currently I’m focusing on species delimitation using integrative taxonomy, which combines both morphological and molecular data, with a special interest in exploring and using new statistical tools and techniques.