9  Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to all those who assisted me in this research project. I would like to thank my supervisor Camille Truong for her steady assistance, patience in reviewing my work and expertise in guiding the project. I am also greatly appreciative to have had the co-supervision of Benjamin Schwessinger and his insightful feedback and guidance. I am extremely grateful to Abigail Graetz for her generous investment of time in my lab training, performing much of the laboratory work, sharing protocols, data and much more. I am very appreciative of Chris Jackson and the Royal Botanic Gardens of Victoria for providing computing resources and technical support. I would also like to acknowledge the contributions of Jinghang Feng, Rita Tam and Austin Bird for generating data used in this project.