The two year grant was awarded from the National Science Foundation

Jonathan Myers (Associate Professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences), Sebastian Tello (Missouri Botanical Garden), Christine Edwards (Missouri Botanical Garden), Stephen Smith (University of Michigan), Amy Zanne (George Washington University), and collaborators from The Madidi Project (http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/plant-science/plant-science/south-america/the-madidi-project.aspx) were awarded a two-year EAGER grant from the National Science Foundation for their project “Disentangling the effects of ecological clade sorting and adaptive diversification to the assembly of regional biotas". This project will explore why environmental changes associated with the uplift of the Andes Mountains influenced the distribution, diversification, and diversity of tree species in the tropical Andes, one of earth's most species-rich biodiversity hotspots.

Read more about the project on the National Science Foundation website: 

https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1836353&HistoricalAwards=false