About

Hi, my name is Siri and I am an associate professor in plant evolutionary genomics at the Natural History Museum in Oslo, where I have led a research group since 2024. Welcome to our page! We study how plant diversity arises, with a particular focus on adaptation, speciation and convergent evolution in Arctic-alpine plants. By exploring the molecular basis of these processes, we aim to understand how plants evolve and adapt to some of the most extreme environments on Earth.

Lab news

• October 26: New preprint led by our postdoc Cassandra Elphinstone: “Shared genomic signatures of Arctic adaptation among distantly related plant lineages”. Cassandra generated a chromosome-level genome of mountain sorrel (Oxyria digyna) and compared it with three other Arctic plants and 16 non-Arctic relatives. Despite being only distantly related, the Arctic species show shared genomic signatures of adaptation, suggesting that evolution in extreme environments repeatedly targets similar genomic features. 🌱 Link
• October 26: We took part in the Norwegian Symposium of Biosystematics in Tromsø! PhD student César Herrero González gave his first conference presentation, and Siri gave a keynote on convergent evolution in Arctic plants. Link
• September 26: We were excited to host the kick-off meeting of the Nordic Convergent Evolution Network (NCEN) in Drøbak! More than twenty early career researchers from Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland came together for flash talks, workshops and excursions. Link
• August 26: We are offering two new MSc projects! Join us to study Arctic-alpine plant evolution and adaptation: 1) Resolving the hybrid origin of the Arctic-alpine plant Draba incana Link 2) Physiological adaptation to cold and extreme photoperiods in Arctic-alpine plants Link Come work with us!
• July 26: Our PhD student César Herrero González took part in a collaboration between the Natural History Museum (NHM) and Westerdals Institute for Communication and Design. Together with a design student, he created a research-inspired poster that is now on display as part of the exhibition in the Botanical Garden in Oslo. Link
• July 26: New paper published in Nature Communications: “Comparative regulomics of wood formation across dicot and conifer trees” Link
• June 26: We are at SMBE 2026 in Copenhagen! Our group is presenting: 1) RepeatOBserver: Tandem repeat visualisation and putative centromere detection in 2,000 genomes from across the tree of life - Cassandra Elphinstone 2) An updated perspective: What genes make a tree a tree? - Siri Birkeland
• June 26: Our team spent June conducting fieldwork in the Dovre Mountains together with Professor Emeritus Christian Brochmann, visiting one of Norway’s botanically richest regions and several historically important botanical localities.
• June 26: Congratulations to our intern Fenna, who successfully defended her thesis today! We are very proud of you, Fenna!
• March 26: We are delighted to welcome César Herrero González to the lab! As a new PhD student, César will investigate adaptation and convergent evolution in Arctic plants.
• March 26: Our latest popular science article highlights the potential of herbaria to reveal new insights into plant distribution changes and evolutionary processes. Link
• February 26: Siri presented a talk on the evolution of trees to the Friends Association of the Botanical Garden.
• February 26: We are excited to be starting a new NordForsk network, the Nordic Convergent Evolution Network (NCEN), bringing together early career researchers across the Nordics. Link
• December 25: Check out our popular scientific article on the evolution of trees in forskning.no! Link
• October 25: New paper in Trends of Plant Science “An updated perspective: what genes make a tree a tree?” Link
• October 25: In memory of Richard Abbott: “Phylogeography of Arctic plants: where are we after 35 years, and where to go?” Link
• October 25: Congratulations to our new postdoc, Cassandra Elphinstone, for winning the audience prize for her presentation during the MSc, PhD, and postdoc days at the Natural History Museum!
• October 25: We are thrilled to welcome Cassandra Elphinstone, who is joining us during her NSERC postdoctoral fellowship! We look forward to working with you, Cassandra!
• September 25: This week we were very lucky to host Levi Yant! He gave a fascinating talk in our Tangled Bank seminar series entitled “A Polyploid Paradox: Might Polyploid Diversity Arise from Maladapted DNA Replication and Repair?” Thank you, Levi!
• September 25: We are very pleased to welcome Fenna Sondorp to the lab. Fenna is an intern from the Inholland University of Applied Sciences and will stay with us until May.
• July 25: Super happy to finally see our opinion piece on pathway convergence out in Trends in Genetics Link. Written together with colleague and friend, Peter Hoitinga.
• July 25: We are excited to announce an opening for a PhD Research Fellow in Plant Evolutionary Genomics. The position offers the opportunity to explore evolutionary processes in Arctic plants using experimental and population genomic approaches. Link
• June 25: Excited to share two new preprints: “1000 conifer genomes: Genome innovation, organisation and diversity” Link 🌲 and “Comparative regulomics provides novel insight into the evolution of wood formation across dicot and conifer trees” Link 🌳
• June 25: We were pleased to welcome Dr. Elizabeth Stunz from the University of Gothenburg for a visit to the lab. She delivered an excellent Tangled Bank Seminar titled “Landscape resistance and gene flow dynamics of widespread Arctic sedge and shrub species in Alaska, USA.”
• Februrary 25: New paper! “Moisture-responsive root-branching pathways identified in diverse maize breeding germplasm” is now published in Science! This is the result of a fun collaboration with the Dinneny lab at Stanford University. A big congrats to José Dinneny and lead author Johannes Scharwies! Link
• February 25: Visit from Assistant Professor Barnabas Daru, Stanford University. @Barnabas: Thank you so much for giving a very interesting workshop on “The Hidden Potential of Herbarium Specimens for Biogeography and Ecology” for us at the Natural History Museum in Oslo!
• February 25: We have two visitors to the group this spring: PhD student Tereza Koberová from the Kolář group in Prague, Czechia and postdoc Lucia Moreyra from the Susanna group at Institut Botànic de Barcelona, Spain - Welcome!
• August 24: Siri gave a presentation about the evolution of cacti to the Norwegian Botanical Association. Link
• July 24: New publication in collaboration with the Yant lab “Impact of whole-genome duplications on structural variant evolution in Cochlearia” out in Nature Communications Link Tremendous effort by Tuomas Hämälä!
• July 24: PhD student Lise Huseby had her first conference presentation at the XX International Botanical Congress this summer - Congratulations Lise!
• July 24: Lovisa Gustafsson gave a poster presentation of our new paper “How does selfing affect the pace and process of speciation?” at the XX International Botanical Congress in Madrid.
• April 24: New publication in collaboration with Alina Sartorius in the Quintana lab at UiO: “An evolutionary timeline of the oxytocin signaling pathway” is now out in Communications Biology. Link Congratulations, Alina!
• April 24: New publication: “How does selfing affect the pace and process of speciation?” is now out in Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology! Link
• April 24: I’m starting up the lab! :)