Dr Tiina Särkinen, Biodiversity Scientist
My expertise is Solanaceae taxonomy and morphology, general plant identification, and molecular phylogenetics. I coordinate the taxonomic expert network of Solanaceae (SolTEN) that brings together >20 specialists from across the world, contributing to global taxonomy of the family via World Flora Online and SolanaceaeSource. Our taxonomy underpins the globally used genepool concepts for potato, tomato, aubergine, and Capsicum in US National Plant Germplasm System. Our work underpins many studies of traits, genes and genomes in Solanaceae (e.g., Benoit et al. 2025, Satterlee et al. 2024, and Wu et al. 2023.
Publications from our team include an overview on our current understanding of Solanum phylogeny (Gagnon et al. 2022) and morphology (Hilgenhof et al. 2023). We also keep up the global Solanum identification keys available online for Solanum groups and species.
I also work on general plant diversity patterns (e.g., Moonlight et al. 2024, Delves et al. 2023), as well as tropical dry forests (e.g., Sullivan et al. 2024], Marcelo-Peña et al. 2024).
Contact: tsarkinen@rbge.org.uk