Koen Verhoeven

Dr. Koen Verhoeven

Senior Researcher
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Visiting Address

Droevendaalsesteeg 10
6708 PB Wageningen

+31 (0) 317 47 34 00

The Netherlands

About

I am an ecological geneticist with a broad interest in plant adaptation. I study the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms by which plants cope with, and adapt to, a rapidly changing world.

Biography

Human activities have a massive impact on the environment. The majority of the earth's land surface has been transformed in the last few centuries, and climate change and biological invasions pose important challenges to ecosystems. Understanding the response of ecosystems to these challenges has an ecological and an evolutionary component: which species fit together in the modified environments, and how well do the individual species adapt and change their traits to fit the modified environments? My research focuses on the micro-evolutionary component. We use genetic and genomic tools to understand how plant populations respond to rapidly changing environments. One of my research interests is in ecological epigenetics: what role does epigenetic variation play in rapid responses and adaptation to changing environments? Other topics that I work on include urban evolution in plants, genetic and ecological aspects of plant invasions, the evolutionary ecology of asexually reproducing plants, and intraspecific variation in plant-microbiome interactions.

Research groups