I study the evolution of the mustard family (Brassicaceae), the plant family of cabbage, rapeseed, mustard and the model plant Arabidopsis. With some 4,000 species, it is a family full of surprises. Many of its small, herbaceous plants evolved into woody shrubs, and some can grow on toxic soils and store large amounts of metal in their leaves. What fascinates me is that such traits evolved again and again, in different branches of the family. To understand how, I built a family tree, the Brassicaceae Tree of Life, which shows where and when these changes happened. Next, I want to find the genes behind them.
Much of my work starts in the herbarium. Dried plants, some collected more than a century ago, are real treasures. Each sheet records where and when a plant grew, and still holds its DNA and the elements it took up from the soil. That lets me study thousands of species without having to collect each one in the field.
Keywords
Repeated evolution, convergent evolution, metal hyperaccumulation, Brassicaceae, phylogenomics, comparative genomics, herbarium genomics, X-ray fluorescence (XRF), derived woodiness, natural history collections
Researchinterest
Behind all this lies one central question: how predictable is evolution? When the same trait evolves many times, each case is like nature repeating the same experiment. That lets me ask whether evolution keeps using the same genes, or finds a new solution every time. The mustard family is ideal for this. It has many traits that evolved repeatedly, and thanks to Arabidopsis, one of the best-studied plants in the world, we already know a lot about its genes.
I did not start out as a botanist. For my PhD I studied tiny land snails on limestone hills in Borneo, which are like islands in a sea of forest. In 2019 I switched to plants, first at Osnabrück University (Germany) and since 2023 as an NWO Veni fellow at Naturalis. Along the way I built BrassiToL, the family tree of the mustards, and used it to study why so many of its species became woody. Plants that store metals are my next step.
Currenttopics
A selection of the topics I am working on currently.
Exploring massive parallel evolution and diversification of derived woodiness in the Brassicaceae
Keypublications
Hendriks, Kasper P, Christiane Kiefer, Ihsan A Al-Shehbaz, et al. 2023. ‘Global Brassicaceae Phylogeny Based on Filtering of 1,000-Gene Dataset’. Current Biology 33 (19): 4052-4068.e6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.08.026
Hendriks, Kasper P, Terezie Mandáková, Nikolai M Hay, et al. 2021. ‘The Best of Both Worlds: Combining Lineage-Specific and Universal Bait Sets in Target-Enrichment Hybridization Reactions’. Applications in Plant Sciences 9 (7). https://doi.org/10.1002/aps3.11438
Dominicus, Lisa J M A, Ihsan A Al-Shehbaz, Dmitry A German, ..., Kasper P Hendriks. 2025. ‘Mitoplastomic Discordance in Brassicaceae Phylogenomics Confirms the Complex Evolutionary History of the Family’. Annals of Botany, mcaf084. https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcaf084
German, Dmitry A, Kasper P Hendriks, Marcus A Koch, et al. 2023. ‘An Updated Classification of the Brassicaceae (Cruciferae)’. PhytoKeys 220: 127–44. https://doi.org/10.3897/phytokeys.220.97724
Zuntini, Alexandre R., Tom Carruthers, Olivier Maurin, ..., Kasper P Hendriks, et al. 2024. ‘Phylogenomics and the Rise of the Angiosperms’. Nature, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07324-0
Merckx, Vincent S F T, Kasper P Hendriks, Kevin K Beentjes, et al. 2015. ‘Evolution of Endemism on a Young Tropical Mountain’. Nature 524 (7565): 347–50. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14949
Castillo-Lorenzo, Elena, Kasper P Hendriks, Flora Gilmour, et al. 2025. ‘A Phylogenetic Approach to Prioritizing Crop Wild Relatives in Brassiceae (Brassicaceae) for Breeding Applications’. Annals of Botany, mcaf201. https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcaf201
Hay, Nikolai M, Michael D Windham, Terezie Mandáková, Martin A Lysak, Kasper P Hendriks, et al. 2023. ‘A Hyb-Seq Phylogeny of Boechera and Related Genera Using a Combination of Angiosperms353 and Brassicaceae-Specific Bait Sets’. American Journal of Botany 110 (10): e16226. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajb2.16226
Kiefer, Markus, Dmitry A German, Christiane Kiefer, Kasper P Hendriks, et al. 2025. ‘Capacity Building in Crucifer Research—from BrassiBase to a Taxonomic Expert Network (BrassiTEN)’. Plant Systematics and Evolution 311 (5): 30. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00606-025-01964-z
Mabry, Makenzie E, R Shawn Abrahams, Ihsan A Al-Shehbaz, ..., Kasper P Hendriks, et al. 2023. ‘Complementing Model Species with Model Clades’. The Plant Cell, koad260. https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koad260
Thomas, Shawn K, R Shawn Abrahams, Daniel Robert Kick, ..., Kasper P Hendriks, et al. 2025. ‘Mesopolyploidy as a Taxonomic Clade Marker for Brassica and Relatives (Tribe Brassiceae)’. Annals of Botany, mcaf170. https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcaf170
Teachingactivities
I am actively involved in the supervision of international master students.
I have travelled to Borneo with students various times, teaching about evolution and fieldwork in the tropics.
In themedia
In 2012, I joined a large expedition to Mount Kinabalu & the Crocker Range on Borneo. The aim of the expedition, jointly organized by Naturalis and Sabah Parks, was to collect species new to science, and to reconstruct the general evolutionary patterns of plants and animals on the slopes of the mountain. The expedition was widely covered in the international media, such as Science, National Geographic, and various newspapers, and resulted in a letter in Nature.
