The biodiversity factory

The extraordinary biodiversity of our planet is the result of billions of years of history. The evolutionary mechanisms of this diversity give rise to very diverse forms of life.

Biodiversity offers highly diverse, complex and sometimes surprising forms of life. But not everything is known, and many facets of this long history remain to be discovered.

This exhibition presents two research projects currently being carried out at the CJBG and supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). The first seeks to understand how the interaction between plants and pollinators has generated the great floral diversity found in the Gesneriaceae family, and what the mechanisms are. The second aims to retrace the evolutionary history of a group of trees endemic to Madagascar in the Sapotaceae family, in a context of massive deforestation that is endangering species and ecosystems.

These two projects deal with variation, natural selection and genetic drift. Although these processes play a key role in the genesis of biodiversity, they are often poorly understood. That's why the exhibition also invites the public to play with these mechanisms of evolution with the interactive video game installed at the back of the Interpretation Centre.