Contemporary and future studies in plant speciation, morphological/floral evolution and polyploidy: honouring the scientific contributions of Leslie D. Gottlieb to plant evolutionary biology

摘要

This special commemorative issue is dedicated to the life and scientific contributions of Leslie D. Gottlieb. Dr Gottlieb's contributions to our understanding of plant evolution were many and varied, from which we selected some of the most influential to be included in this special issue honouring his career. Gottlieb's studies were largely hypothesis driven, and he invariably spelled out the rationale for the design of his research and how the results could be used to test his hypotheses. His research was of general interest and attracted widespread attention because it focused on central issues in plant evolution. Though Gottlieb used applicable state-of-the-art methods for that time period, the tremendous methodological and technical advances since his work, especially in the areas of molecular biology, genetics and now genomics, make it possible to examine in greater depth the questions that most intrigued him. The papers in this special issue, contributed by leading workers using largely cutting-edge methods, document that Leslie Gottlieb's work was indeed visionary and that it remains as relevant today as it was when published (figure 1).