For her Ph.D. Brenda will be the looking at the multiple evolutions of the climbing habit in the second most diverse group of land plants, the ferns. As a completely different lineage of vascular plants, where secondary growth is currently absent, we still ignore all the main modifications climbing ferns have undergone. Brenda will be actively collecting plants in the field, processing them in the lab, and working with phylogenetic comparative methods to unravel which anatomical modifications make the climbing habit special in ferns.