ID: 613 / 98

Category: Symposia

Track: Pending

Proposed Symposium Title: THE SPECIAL AND ENDURING VALUE OF MODEL CLADES IN EVOLUTION AND ECOLOGY

Abstract: It is widely appreciated that studies of individual model species, such as Drosophila melanogaster and Arabidopsis thaliana, can provide deep insights into the rules of life. We think that “model clades” can and should play a similar role with respect to understanding evolution and ecology. Yet, this is sometimes questioned on the grounds that it is unclear how knowledge of any one clade can be broadly generalized. Instead, it has been argued that broad generalizations require more “global” studies spanning large chunks of the tree of life. The aim of our proposed symposium is to highlight the special value of deep studies of particular clades, especially when these are underpinned by comprehensive phylogenetic knowledge and draw together teams of scientists from different disciplines. Our strategy is to include presentations by several established scientists who have devoted their careers to understanding individual clades, but then to combine these with talks by botanists at earlier career stages who are in the process of building their own model clades. The overall objective is to showcase how such clades can become attractors for testing evolutionary and ecological hypotheses of all sorts, and how they can provide a platform for involving specialists from different disciplines. Overall, these talks will help our botanical community to better appreciate the enduring value of such long-term efforts and how these serve to compliment “global” macro-scale studies. Each of the talks will provide concrete examples of the use of model clades in deriving and testing particular hypotheses and will also highlight the holistic nature of the model clade approach. With a thoroughly sampled phylogeny as the organizing principle, model clades promote the study organisms from multiple different angles and expand well beyond the bounds of standard taxonomic/systematic studies, especially to include aspects of whole organism development and function.

Speaker 1: Professor Lucia Lohmann Department of Botany, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil email: llohmann@usp.br Tentative title: Bignonieae as a model clade

Speaker 2: Professor Qiuyun Jenny Xiang Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA email: jenny_xiang@ncsu.edu Tentative title: Cornus as a model clade

Speaker 3: Professor Erika Edwards Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA email: erika.edwards@yale.edu Tentative title: Viburnum as a model clade

Topics (Up to three): phylogenetics and phylogenomics

Topic 2: macroevolution

Topic 3: systematics

Justification: As many botanists around the world focus on understanding particular clades, we anticipate exceptional interest in this symposium. The talks will showcase the insights that can be gained by engaging a team of collaborators from multiple disciplines. Our confirmed speakers are established scientists, but we will compliment them with botanists at earlier career stages. The invited speakers are women. One is Brazilian and another is a Chinese scientist with exceptionally strong ties to colleagues in China. These presentations will demonstrate how comprehensive phylogenetic knowledge can connect scientists from multiple disciplines, including, for example, developmental biology, physiology, ecology, chemistry, and physics.