Principal Investigator
Lucas C. Majure, Ph.D.
Curator, University of Florida Herbarium,
Associate Curator, Florida Museum of Natural History
M.S., Mississippi State University, 2007
Ph.D., University of Florida, 2012
Lucas is a plant systematist focusing on the evolution of aridlands and montane forests of the Americas, with a specific emphasis on several groups of plants, including Cactaceae, Melastomataceae, and grasses (Poaceae), as well as the Caribbean flora.
Current Students
José Esteban Jiménez Vargas
Ph.D. Candidate
Esteban received his B.S. and M.S. from the Universidad de Costa Rica, where he studied Aristolochiaceae and the flora of Central America. Esteban started his Ph.D. at UF in Fall 2022 and is studying the systematics (including phylogenomics) of the species rich clade, Peperomia (Piperaceae), with a special focus on Central and northern South American taxa.
Malu Ore Rengifo
Ph.D. Candidate
Malu received her B.S. from the University of San Marcos, Lima, Perú, where she studied the taxonomy of Sangre de Grado (Croton, Euphorbiaceae). Malu started in the lab in Fall 2021 on our NSF-funded project to understand global phylogenetic patterns in Melastomataceae. She is studying the evolution of the genus Chaetogastra (Melastomataceae), with a special focus on high elevation, Andean species from Colombia to Bolivia.
Lab Alumni
Thomas Murphy, Ph.D.
Thomas worked in the lab from Fall 2020-Summer 2025. He focused on the American tropical clade of the genus Smilax (Smilacaceae), where he uncovered new species and probed the complex evolutiontary history of the clade using phylogenomic data. Thomas is a current post-doc at the International Center for Tropical Botany, where he is continuing his work in tropical botany.
Yuley Encarnación Piñeyro, Ph.D.
Yuley worked in the lab from Fall 2019-Fall 2024. She studied the leafy cacti of the genera Pereskia and Leuenbergeria, outlining their evolutionary history using phylogenomics. She also produced a checklist of the family Cactaceae for Hispaniola. She is currently herbarium curator at Selby Botanical Gardens.
Ayress Grinage, Ph.D.
Ayress completed her M.S. degree while in the lab, where she focused on the genus Sabal (Arecaceae). She went on to pursue a Ph.D. at Cornell, also focusing on palms, where she finished up in summer 2025. She is now working as a Florida botanist for the Department of Plant Industry.
Sipho Mbonani
Ph.D. Candidate
University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. Sipho interned in the lab from Fall 2023-Spring 2024 as a Fulbright scholar and worked on the cytogenetics and genome size estimation of non-native, invasive prickly pears in South Africa.
Matias Köhler, Ph.D.
Matias interned in the lab in 2019 focusing on the systematics and chloroplast genome evolution of the southern South American prickly pear cacti (Opuntia) for his Ph.D. work at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. He is currently an assistant professor at the Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul, where he is continuing his work on cacti.
Post-doctoral Researchers
Monique Romeiro-Brito, Ph.D. – Monique was a post-doc in the lab from 2023-2025, working on our NSF-funded global phylogeny of Melastomataceae. She received her Ph.D. from Universidade Federal de Sao Carlos, where she worked extensively on the phylogenomics of the tribe Cereeae of the cactus family.
Lucas de Freitas Bacci, Ph.D. – Lucas worked on our NSF-funded project on the global phylogeny of Melastomataceae from 2020-2022. Lucas received his Ph.D. from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas.
Andre Naranjo, Ph.D. – Andre worked as an NSF post-doc in the lab from 2020-2021, where he focused on phylogenetics of the flora of Hispaniola. Andre received his Ph.D. from the University of Florida. He is now a researcher at Florida International University.
Serena Achá, Ph.D. – Serena was a post-doc in the lab from 2020-2021. She worked on the phylogenomics of Cactaceae during her time here, publishing one of the first probe sets for the family. Serena received her Ph.D. from the University of Missouri-St. Louis.