#IBC18 Friday Plenary session

Tweets 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
Pathh1
July 28, 2011
5 days, 5 cafes, 5 bloody decent coffees. The penultimate day of the 18th International Botanical Congress today http://j.mp/1al8qc #ibc18
TimEntwisle
July 28, 2011
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
EveEmshwiller
July 28, 2011
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
TimEntwisle
July 28, 2011
Mike Crisp introduces his talk as ‘the rest of my acceptance speech’ for Nancy Burbidge Medal. #ibc18
TimEntwisle
July 28, 2011
Crisp: oligotrophic soils important factor in Aust’s diverse & extensive sclerophyll flora. #ibc18
IBC11
July 28, 2011
Crisp reminds us that basal lineages in cladogram don’t indicate areas of origin (lots of extinctions, fossils sometimes help). #ibc18
TimEntwisle
July 28, 2011
Crisp: Factors independent of phylogeny e.g. fossil record & ecology important for understanding patterns in Aust flora. #ibc18
IBC11
July 28, 2011
Mike crisp #ibc18. Found 95% Sth hemisphere disjunctions inferred as cross ocean dispersal because too young for continental vicariance.
danieljmurf
July 28, 2011
#ibc18. Mike Crisp. Oz Rainforest biome, in the Cenozoic much like today’s Patagonia. Sclerophyllous biomes had origins back then too.
Jim_Croft
July 28, 2011
Misuse of phylogenies to tell stories about history a major thread of conference: either demonstrating (!) or warning against. #ibc18
TimEntwisle
July 28, 2011
Mike Crisp and Eucalyptus’ supreme adaptation to fire with meristematic buds deeps inside the bark, ready to regenerate. #ibc18
Pathh1
July 28, 2011
Crisp: evolution of fire-adaptive traits in both eucs and banksias dated to c. 60 mya. #ibc18
IBC11
July 28, 2011
Crisp: Australia separates from Antarctica > major extinction of plants liking warm-wet & diversification of cool-dry liking plants. #ibc18
TimEntwisle
July 28, 2011
and no phytogeographic story of Australia would be complete without Nothofagus. a major eocene extinction. ditto gymnosperms. #ibc18
Jim_Croft
July 28, 2011
Crisp: Gymnosperm crown groups younger than those for angiosperms, paradoxical given perception of gymnos as "ancient". #ibc18
IBC11
July 28, 2011
Crisp: Many egg and bacon peas also go extinct in Eocene (but return later as English breakfast…) #ibc18
TimEntwisle
July 28, 2011
Crisp: Aust plants of Gondwanic origin had to shift biomes, while many ‘alien invaders’ did not. #ibc18 Relevant to future adaptation.
TimEntwisle
July 28, 2011
Crisp: why is SW Australia flora so diverse: stable environment, diverse soil niches, adaptation, radiation? #ibc18
Pathh1
July 28, 2011
Crisp: hypotheses on why flora of SW WA is so diverse. Uhoh, he put Acacia in quotes. It’s on. #ibc18
IBC11
July 28, 2011
Crisp: The arid zone is Australia’s largest biome, but Australia’s youngest. #ibc18
Jim_Croft
July 28, 2011
Crisp: accelerated rates of speciation relative to extinction –> diversity? eg Eucalyptus More in Crisp: http://bit.ly/qtnIEE #ibc18
Pathh1
July 28, 2011
Crisp final shock: Livistona mariae not left over from rainforests but Finke River colonised < 31,000 yrs ago (human transport?) #ibc18
TimEntwisle
July 28, 2011
And then the next plenary lecture.
Chris Somerville up next: cellulose synthesis. #ibc18
IBC11
July 28, 2011
Chris Somerville: Cellulosethe most abundant macromolecule compound on Earth – 160 billion tonnes produced (by plants) annually. #ibc18
TimEntwisle
July 28, 2011
#ibc18 plenary. Chris Somerville on cellulose synthesis. plants make it easily, humans struggle to.
Jim_Croft
July 28, 2011
Somerville: cellulose hard to image. Maybe it keeps blinking? #ibc18
IBC11
July 28, 2011
Watching golgi apparati and vesicles flickering through cells – quite mesmorising… #ibc18. Chris Somerville asks us to ‘stare at it’.
TimEntwisle
July 28, 2011
Somerville taking drug discovery screen of millions to microtubules. One called morlin blocks cellulose synthase/shows mt attachment #ibc18
Pathh1
July 28, 2011
Now MicroTubules flapping around (under influence of Morlin). Sommerville says this demonstrates cellulose synthesis attached to MTs.#ibc18
TimEntwisle
July 28, 2011
Enjoying Somerville’s analogies for cellular processes– trains, treadmills, doughnuts, "flapping around in the cytoplasmic stream". #ibc18
IBC11
July 28, 2011

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.

Alun Salt

Alun (he/him) is the Producer for Botany One. It's his job to keep the server running. He's not a botanist, but started running into them on a regular basis while working on writing modules for an Interdisciplinary Science course and, later, helping teach mathematics to Biologists. His degrees are in archaeology and ancient history.

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