ID: 613 / 197

Category: Symposia

Track: Pending

Proposed Symposium Title: RANUNCULALES: FROM MORPHOLOGY TO PHYLOGENOMICS AND EVO-DEVO

Abstract: Ranunculales, the sister group to all other eudicots, exhibits a remarkable diversity in arrangement, number, type, shape and color of floral organs. In recent years, with the application of whole genome sequencing and other cutting-edge techniques, Ranunculales is emerging as a new model system to address important evolutionary developmental questions that cannot be easily answered by existing models. This symposium aims to broadly cover the recent advances on the diverse species of Ranunculales from various perspectives, including phylogeny, genomic evolution, evo-devo of flowers, pollination ecology, and so on. Up to now, four leading researchers in this field have confirmed to give talks in this symposium. They will present their new findings on the genetic basis of floral novelty in Aquilegia, the mechanisms underlying the making of highly specialized Delphinieae flowers, and the relationship between the evolution of flower morphology and pollination system in Thalictrum, and genomic evolution in the Ranunculales. We hope this symposium will be of great appeal to biologists interested in Ranunculales, evo-devo of flowers, evolutionary genomics, and pollination ecology and will provide an opportunity to discuss the directions for future research in this field.

Speaker 1: Elena Kramer Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University ekramer@oeb.harvard.edu Exploring the genetic basis of floral novelty in Aquilegia

Speaker 2: Verónica S. Di Stilio Department of Biology, University of Washington distilio@uw.edu Flower morphology as a predictor of pollination mode in a biotic to abiotic pollination continuum

Speaker 3: Annette Becker Institute of Botany, Justus-Liebig-University annette.becker@bot1.bio.uni-giessen.de RanOmics: genomic tools for studying evolutionary innovations on the molecular scale in Ranunculales

Topics (Up to three): Macroevolution

Topic 2: Phylogenetics and Phylogenomics

Topic 3: Comparative Genomics / Transcriptomics

Justification: We think that the proposed symposium will be welcomed by the audience of IBC, for three reasons. First, this symposium aims to broadly cover the recent advances on the various aspects of Ranunculales, a phylogenetically important lineage that shows dramatic diversity in flowers. Second, the theme of this symposium fits well for a few topics of IBC, including “Macroevolution”, “Phylogenetics and Phylogenomics”, and “Comparative Genomics / Transcriptomics”. Third, all the invited speakers are leading researchers in their respective fields. We therefore believe that this symposium will be of great appeal to participants with diverse backgrounds.