The project is focused on pseudometallophytes, i.e. plant species that can grow on metal-contaminated and normal soils.  The emphasis is put on hyperaccumulators, i.e. plants which can take up and accumulate large amounts of heavy metals in their leaves (e.g. Thlaspi caerulescens). The contribution of our lab is to test if populations from normal soil and from calamine soil (enriched in Zn, Pb) have evolved contrasting life history traits, metal uptake capacity and root growth in response to heterogeneous distribution of metals in soil.