ID: 613 / 148

Category: Symposia

Track: Pending

Proposed Symposium Title: ACROSS LAND AND WATER: UNDERSTANDING PLANT GENE FLOW AT A LANDSCAPE SCALE

Abstract: The 60th anniversary of the publication of EB Ford’s landmark book, Ecological Genetics, will fall in 2024, coinciding with XX IBC. Building upon the Neo-Darwinian synthesis the book set out the need to describe the basis of genetic polymorphisms and their influencing factors in space and time. It set the agenda for much of the following work. Since its publication, significant technical innovations have revolutionised work in this field. The introduction of molecular markers within the genome which mutate at different rates, GIS applications allied to the computer power to analyse the extensive data obtained from these sources. The incorporation of these approaches has led to the emergence of a new sub-discipline, termed Landscape Genetics. This discipline seeks to understand large scale patterns of genetic variation in the context of topography, climate, and land use alongside recognised influences on population variation such as selective pressures, population size and structure, propagule dispersal, pollination syndrome, and breeding system. While these new techniques allow long established theoretical questions to be addressed there is now an urgency for a fuller understanding of these processes. Climate change and the biodiversity crisis have created an urgent need to restore genetic processes in plant populations with human influenced landscapes. Hence, we need to understand these processes to enact effective conservation. The aim of this symposium is to bring together a range of researchers from different regions of the world to explain the work they are carrying out in the broad field of landscape genetics; to share problems and solutions, to identify common findings, and to identify how these findings can inform conservation. Given the topicality of landscape genetics, its relative novelty, and wide applications it should be of considerable interest to delegates in Madrid.

Speaker 1: Prof Paul Ashton, Edge Hill University, Dept of Biology, St. Helens Rd., Ormskirk, Lancs. L39 4QP UK ashtonp@edgehill.ac.uk Talk Title: Down River? Genetic variation in riverine landscapes.

Speaker 2: Dr. Yessica Rico, INECOL, Michoacán, Mexico, yessica.rico@inecol.mx Talk Title: Tropical dry forests at risk: how landscape genetics can inform conservation and restoration?

Speaker 3: Iris Reinula University of Tartu, Iris.reinula@ut.ee Talk Title: Adaptive and neutral genetic diversity of grassland plants - two players on the stage of landscape change

Topics (Up to three): Population Genetics

Topic 2: Biogeography / Phylogeography

Topic 3: Conservation Biology

Justification: The speakers and organisers incorporate individuals from Europe and the Americas. It includes a senior male (PA), co-author of the text Ecological Genetics: Design Planning and Applications and two mid-career females (YR and TA). One speaker (IR) will be a female PhD, hence starting her research career. It is envisaged that additional contributors will add to the diversity of geography and career. The symposium is primarily allied to Topic 27 Population Genetics. Given its basis in understanding broad scale geographic genetic patterns it is central to Biogeography and Phylogeography (Topic 3). It also has applications in Topic 7 Conservation Biology.