ID: 613 / 180

Category: Symposia

Track: Pending

Proposed Symposium Title: PLANT DIVERSITY IN SPECIALIZED HABITATS - ECOLOGY TO EVOLUTION

Abstract: Large landscapes in specialized habitats provide unique opportunities to understand morphological innovations in plants from their phenology to ecology. These landscapes also are host to many unique plant-animal and plant-plant interactions that can inform us of how sympatric speciation may shape morphological specializations in closely related taxa while also resulting in shared similar traits among unrelated taxa. In this symposium we hope to highlight some unique landscapes and habitats such as the laterite plateaus of India (also known as skyislands), Karst forests of Asia, Dipterocarp dominated forests of India and South East Asia, Shola forests of India, Fynbos of South Africa, temperate grasslands of Europe, and similar landscapes across other regions of the world. The symposia will focus on understanding taxonomic diversities in these specialized habitats, the reproductive and vegetative phenology of the plants, as well as the ecological interactions in this region. The attempt to draw parallels across these different regions will hopefully allow us to understand the origin of diverse traits in plants as well how these traits may be maintained due to ecological selections or stochastic processes.

Speaker 1: Vinita Gowda IISER Bhopal Synchrony and specialization of plant-pollinator interactions across taxa in laterite plateaus of India gowdav@iiserb.ac.in

Speaker 2: Jeff Ollerton jeff.ollerton@gmail.com Pollinators and plants across landscapes

Speaker 3: Yuval Sapir Yehuda Naftali Botanic Garden School of Plant Sciences and Food Security Curator, The Herbarium, The Steinhardt Museum of Natural History Tel-Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 69978 Israel sapiryuval@gmail.com While I do not have confirmation yet from the following two speakers they have been contacted and I hope to hear from them and I would like to replace one of the speakers with either one of them. Dino Martin (Princeton University, EEB) dmartins@princeton.edu Plant-pollinator interactions in Africa or Angela Moles (UNSW Sidney) a.moles@unsw.edu.au Plant-animal interactions in Australia and changing landscapes

Topics (Up to three): Ecology and plant communities

Topic 2: Reproductive biology

Topic 3: Global change ecology

Justification: The symposium is being proposed to highlight the role of unique habitats in species assembly and how diversity may be maintained in these habitats. With changing landscapes it is becoming very critical to argue for the protection of large landscapes and not just individual taxa, and this symposium hopes to explore this need and to create a space where researchers will come together from the tropics and regions that have been understudied (Africa, and Asia) and landscapes that are well known (India, Australia and South East Asia) for their diversity and interactions. There are very few landscape scale studies of interactions and therefore this will be a unique symposia highlighting it.