New York Flora Association Blog

From Dr. Warren Wagner – We are pleased to announce the line-up of speakers for the 2012 Smithsonian Botanical Symposium “Transforming 21st Century Comparative Biology using Evolutionary Trees,” which will be held at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, on April 20-21, 2012.

Over the last 20 years great progress has been made toward assembling a phylogeny of life on Earth and our expanding knowledge of evolutionary relationships is transforming 21st century biology. The Symposium will address the question: How do we put the knowledge of evolutionary relationships to work to better describe and understand the diversification of life on Earth? The invited speakers will cover a wide range of organisms and topics to illuminate how molecular phylogenetics can be used to understand evolutionary and ecological processes.

–    Scott V. Edwards, Harvard University, “Resolving the Tree of Life through phylogenomics and the multispecies coalescent model”
–    Charles F. Delwiche, University of Maryland, “Illuminating the origin of land plants with algal genomes”
–    James W. Horn, Department of Botany, Smithsonian Institution, “Diversification and structural innovation in Euphorbia”
–    Karen Osborn, Department of Invertebrate Zoology, Smithsonian Institution, “Discoveries in the deep and their usefulness for studies of invertebrate evolution”
–    David D. Ackerly, University of California, Berkeley, “Traits, communities, and history: what do we learn from phylogenies?”
–    Richard Ree, The Field Museum, “Phylogeny and the evolution of floral diversity in Pedicularis (Orobanchaceae)”
–    Michael Donoghue, Yale University, “Adventures in plant phylogeny and prospects for the future”

Abstracts, additional details, and online registration are available on the Symposium Web site: http://botany.si.edu/sbs/. The deadline for registration is 13 April 2012.

This entry was posted on March 8, 2012 at 10:53 am and is filed under Classes and Workshops. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.