Alun SaltTweets from the International Botanical Congress in Melbourne. You can find out more including plenty of photos at the Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ibc2011
| “ | And we’re off for the last full day. Well-deserved award to Mike Crisp, who put Austrailan flora into evolutionary & world context #ibc18 | |||
|
| “ | 5 days, 5 cafes, 5 bloody decent coffees. The penultimate day of the 18th International Botanical Congress today http://j.mp/1al8qc #ibc18 | |||
|
It’s the last full day, and it looks like another busy day. It starts with Nancy Burbidge Memorial Lecture, Australasian Systematic Botany Society: Evolution of the Australian flora through the last 65 million years and an award for Professor Mike Crisp.
| “ | Mike Crisp receiving Nancy Burbidge Medal from Australasian Systematic Botany Society – 1st am plenary at #ibc18 | |||
|
| “ | Judy West announcing Mike Crisp recipient of Nancy Burbidge Medal, and she’s known him for 40 yrs (I thought they were both younger) #ibc18 | |||
|
| “ | Mike Crisp introduces his talk as ‘the rest of my acceptance speech’ for Nancy Burbidge Medal. #ibc18 | |||
|
| “ | Crisp: oligotrophic soils important factor in Aust’s diverse & extensive sclerophyll flora. #ibc18 | |||
|
| “ | Crisp reminds us that basal lineages in cladogram don’t indicate areas of origin (lots of extinctions, fossils sometimes help). #ibc18 | |||
|
| “ | Crisp: Factors independent of phylogeny e.g. fossil record & ecology important for understanding patterns in Aust flora. #ibc18 | |||
|
| “ | Mike crisp #ibc18. Found 95% Sth hemisphere disjunctions inferred as cross ocean dispersal because too young for continental vicariance. | |||
|
| “ | #ibc18. Mike Crisp. Oz Rainforest biome, in the Cenozoic much like today’s Patagonia. Sclerophyllous biomes had origins back then too. | |||
|
| “ | Misuse of phylogenies to tell stories about history a major thread of conference: either demonstrating (!) or warning against. #ibc18 | |||
|
| “ | Mike Crisp and Eucalyptus’ supreme adaptation to fire with meristematic buds deeps inside the bark, ready to regenerate. #ibc18 | |||
|
| “ | Crisp: evolution of fire-adaptive traits in both eucs and banksias dated to c. 60 mya. #ibc18 | |||
|
| “ | Crisp: Australia separates from Antarctica > major extinction of plants liking warm-wet & diversification of cool-dry liking plants. #ibc18 | |||
|
| “ | and no phytogeographic story of Australia would be complete without Nothofagus. a major eocene extinction. ditto gymnosperms. #ibc18 | |||
|
| “ | Crisp: Gymnosperm crown groups younger than those for angiosperms, paradoxical given perception of gymnos as "ancient". #ibc18 | |||
|
| “ | Crisp: Many egg and bacon peas also go extinct in Eocene (but return later as English breakfast…) #ibc18 | |||
|
| “ | Crisp: Aust plants of Gondwanic origin had to shift biomes, while many ‘alien invaders’ did not. #ibc18 Relevant to future adaptation. | |||
|
| “ | Crisp: why is SW Australia flora so diverse: stable environment, diverse soil niches, adaptation, radiation? #ibc18 | |||
|
| “ | Crisp: hypotheses on why flora of SW WA is so diverse. Uhoh, he put Acacia in quotes. It’s on. #ibc18 | |||
|
| “ | Crisp: The arid zone is Australia’s largest biome, but Australia’s youngest. #ibc18 | |||
|
| “ | Crisp: accelerated rates of speciation relative to extinction –> diversity? eg Eucalyptus More in Crisp: http://bit.ly/qtnIEE #ibc18 | |||
|
| “ | Crisp final shock: Livistona mariae not left over from rainforests but Finke River colonised < 31,000 yrs ago (human transport?) #ibc18 | |||
|
And then the next plenary lecture.
| “ | Chris Somerville up next: cellulose synthesis. #ibc18 | |||
|
| “ | Chris Somerville: Cellulosethe most abundant macromolecule compound on Earth – 160 billion tonnes produced (by plants) annually. #ibc18 | |||
|
| “ | #ibc18 plenary. Chris Somerville on cellulose synthesis. plants make it easily, humans struggle to. | |||
|
| “ | Somerville: cellulose hard to image. Maybe it keeps blinking? #ibc18 | |||
|
| “ | Watching golgi apparati and vesicles flickering through cells – quite mesmorising… #ibc18. Chris Somerville asks us to ‘stare at it’. | |||
|
| “ | Somerville taking drug discovery screen of millions to microtubules. One called morlin blocks cellulose synthase/shows mt attachment #ibc18 | |||
|
| “ | Now MicroTubules flapping around (under influence of Morlin). Sommerville says this demonstrates cellulose synthesis attached to MTs.#ibc18 | |||
|
| “ | Enjoying Somerville’s analogies for cellular processes– trains, treadmills, doughnuts, "flapping around in the cytoplasmic stream". #ibc18 | |||
|
That concludes the plenary session for this morning. I’ll close this stream with a blog post from Chris Freeland that I missed.
| ChrisFreeland.com: BHL at IBC18 in Melbourne
I am an employee of the Missouri Botanical Garden and the views expressed on this site are mine alone and do not necessarily represent the views of the Missouri Botanical Garden.
|
