Postdoctoral Scholar, Looy Lab
Dori’s research aims to document past biodiversity of plants, illuminate the evolutionary and ecological history of lineages and ecosystems, and understand how those histories have shaped the modern world. Her work spans the levels from organisms to ecosystems, and is heavily rooted in new fossil plant collections and the reconstruction of ancient environments. She is especially interested in understanding changes in the ecological structure of communities during periods of turnover in the dominance regimes of major plant groups. Her current work focuses on landscapes of the Late Cretaceous, as as flowering plants (angiosperms) diversified and expanded their ecological roles.
Dori also works extensively on the evolution of conifers, including their past diversity, structural and ecological evolution, and the systematic relationships between fossil and living conifers. Much of this work has focused on Mesozoic conifers of the cypress family (Cupressaceae).
Selected Publications
- Contreras, D.L., I. Escapa, R. Irabarren, R. Cuneo. 2019. Reconstructing the early evolution of the Cupressaceae: a whole plant description of a new Austrohamia species from the Cañadon Asfalto Formation (early Jurassic), Argentina. International Journal of Plant Sciences 180(8): 834−868. Read it
- Contreras, D.L. 2018. A workflow and protocol describing the field to digitization process for new project-based fossil leaf collections. Applications in Plant Sciences. 6: e1025. Read it
- Contreras, D.L., I.A.P. Duijnstee, S.L. Ranks, C.R. Marshall, C.V. Looy. 2017. The evolution of dispersal strategies in conifers: convergence and divergence in the morphology of diaspores. Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics. 24:93−117. Read it
