AAAS conference briefs:
American Association for the Advancement of Science
PAPER: Macroevolution of the Green Plants
AUTHOR: Michael Sanderson, associate professor, Section of Evolution and Ecology
SYMPOSIUM DATE AND TIME: Friday, Feb. 16, 2:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m.
SYMPOSIUM NAME: Deep Green: Phylogeny, Evolution and Genomics of the Green Plants
ONLINE PROGRAM: http://www.aaas.org/meetings/2001/6088.00.htm
Species diversity is not distributed randomly in time, space or across the phylogenetic tree of life. Some groups, such as flowering plants, have very large numbers of species, but are relatively recent; other groups are much older but, surprisingly, have far fewer species. New insights about patterns in green-plant species richness have been achieved by combining phylogenetic methods with data from the fossil record and estimates of the timing of ancient events based on molecular variation. This talk reviews patterns of species diversity at three scales: across all flowering plants, a group dating back 140 million years; within one very species-rich family of flowering plants, the legumes, dating back perhaps 60 million years; and within a much more recent radiation of plants in Hawaii, which is probably less than 10 million years old.
Contact: Michael Sanderson, Evolution and Ecology, 530-754-9229, mjsanderson@ucdavis.edu.
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Contact: Andrew Fell
ahfell@ucdavis.edu
530-297-0581
University of California - Davis
8-Feb-2001