[Taxacom] Evolutionary Plant Radiations Meeting, Zurich, 13-14 June 2014

[colin.hughes at systbot.uzh.ch]

  Evolutionary Plant Radiations Meeting
  Institute of Systematic Botany, University of Zurich, Switzerland
  13-14 June 2014
    Recent developments are providing exciting new insights into the evolutionary dynamics of species diversification and the importance of evolutionary radiations, or rapid episodes of lineage diversification. The aim of this meeting is to explore questions about where, when and why plant evolutionary radiations happen, and how they proceed. The meeting will bring together contributions spanning: (i) new models of species diversification, including paleodiversity and trait evolution, and the increasingly sophisticated and powerful tools available for testing hypotheses about diversification trajectories and their causes; (ii) the proliferation of new molecular phylogenetic data, for more and larger plant clades spanning broader taxonomic, geographical and temporal levels, as well as opportunities for unprecedented phylogenetic resolution of rapidly evolving clades coming from genome-scale DNA sequence data; (iii) assembly of more comprehensive species geographic distribution, functional and life history trait data sets that are enabling more accurate and complete reconstruction of biogeographic and trait evolution histories and interactions; (iv) empirical studies of key plant radiations  for understanding the contributions of biotic interactions (pollinators, herbivores, pathogens) as drivers of radiations, the interplay between ecological opportunity and evolutionary innovation in driving radiations, and the mechanisms of radiations in terms of underlying population ecology and speciation.
    Speakers
  Tim Barraclough, Imperial College, London, U.K.
  Mark Carine, Natural History Museum, London, U.K.
  Elena Conti, University of Zurich, Switzerland
  Michael Crisp, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
  Michael Donoghue, Yale University, U.S.A. 
  Erika Edwards, Brown University, U.S.A.
  Luke Harmon, University of Idaho, U.S.A.
  Colin Hughes, University of Zurich, Switzerland
  Steven Johnson, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
  Daniel Kissling, Aarhus University, Denmark / University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
  Christian Lexer, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
  Peter Linder,  University of Zurich, Switzerland
  Santiago Madriñán, Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia
  Toby Pennington, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, U.K.
  Daniel Rabosky, Cornell University, U.S.A.
  Richard Ree, Field Museum, Chicago, U.S.A.
  Susanne Renner, University of Munich, Germany
  Robert Ricklefs, University of Missouri, U.S.A.
  Daniele Silvestro, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
  Tanja Stadler, ETH Zürich, Switzerland
  Tony Verboom, University of Cape Town, South Africa
   
  There will be an opportunity to present contributed posters.
   
  Registration for the meeting will open at the beginning of December 2013, the website will be
  http://www.systbot.uzh.ch/static/congresses/radiations
    

Programme
  Thursday 12 June
  Evening welcoming icebreaker
  Friday 13 June & Saturday 14 June
  Presentations and posters; Saturday evening conference dinner
  Sunday 15 June
  Post-conference one-day excursion to Schynige Platte, an alpine botanical garden situated at 1970 m, which boasts an almost complete collection of Swiss alpine plant species, and offers a stunning alpine panorama of the Eiger Northface, Mönch and Jungfrau.
   
  Pre-Conference Workshop
  Thursday 12th June
  One-day Workshop on computational methods in macroevolutionary analysis – led by Dan Rabosky