Pollination Biology Course

Where: Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, CZ
When: 25-27 January 2010

Organisers: Jana Jersáková (1) and Sílvia Castro (2)
(1) Faculty of Science, Univ. of South Bohemia, České Budějovice; Institute of System Biology and Ecology ASCR, České Budějovice, Czech Republic
(2) Centre for Functional Ecology, Department of Life Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

In the first two days the course will cover topics related to main concepts in plant pollination biology such as pollination syndromes, mating strategies and sexual systems, pollinator effectiveness, visual, olfactory and tactile cues used in pollinator attraction. On the third day we will present two more specialized topics based specific examples of studies dealing with Deception and floral mimicry in plants and sexual polymorphisms. The course will be accompanied by discussions of review papers, student’s presentations of case studies and practical sessions showing some techniques widely used in pollination studies.

2nd Workshop on Invasive Alien Plants in Mediterranean Type Regions of the World

02-06 August 2010, Samsun, Turkey

The first announcement is now available on the EPPO website at: http://archives.eppo.org/MEETINGS/2010_conferences/mediterranean_ias.htm

The Workshop has several objectives: to be a global platform for networking, an opportunity for discussing specific plant invasions issues, a place to learn about varied topics within biological invasions and a chance for raising awareness on this issue in the Mediterranean Type regions of the World.

Organization: This workshop will be co-organized by the Turkish Plant Protection Organization, the Council of Europe and EPPO. The workshop will consist of 2 days of presentations and discussions, and will be followed by 2 days of field work to create inventories of the exotic flora of the Samsun area to contribute to the knowledge on invasive alien plants.

Evolutionary ecology of polyploids: understanding species coexistence at the contact zones

The polyploid Aster amellus

Polyploidy has long been recognized as a major mechanism in plant speciation and evolution, occurring in up to 70% of the flowering plants and being distributed in numerous plant lineages. As new evolutionary entities can arise in a single genetic event, polyploidy has been proposed as an important mechanism of sympatric speciation. Facing the potential of polyploidy for sympatric speciation, several studies have addressed the ecological and genetic conditions governing the interactions between diploid and polyploids in mixed populations. The theories preview that under random mating, the establishment of a new cytotype will be subjected to strong frequency-dependent selection (minority cytotype exclusion) and new cytotype establishment and maintenance in mixed populations will occur only if a set of breeding barriers and/or ecological features promote assortative mating.

Figure 1. A. Flower of Aster amellus being visited by a Diptera. B. Experimental crosses between cytotypes being performed under controlled conditions at the experimental garden.

In this frame work, we are studying the breeding barriers involve in the maintenance of a diploid-hexaploid contact zone of the polyploidy Aster amellus (Figure 1A). Data on cytotype distribution, habitat and temporal segregation, pollinator behaviour and preferences, ability to cross (Figure 1B) and viability of the offspring is being investigated. This project is being developed by Sílvia Castro and Zuzana Münzbergová at the Department of Botany of the Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic).

6th European Conference on Biological Invasions NEOBIOTA 2010

Organised by Johannes Kollmann, Hans Peter Ravn and Lotte Endsleff (University of Copenhagen)

Biological Invasions in a Changing World - from Science to Management

NEOBIOTA 2010 focuses on biological invasions in a changing environment, including contributions from science and management across all species groups, habitats or regions. The conference will take place on 14-17 September 2010 in Copenhagen, Denmark, starting with an invited evening keynote lecture presented by Richard J. Hobbs from the Murdoch University in Western Australia.

Registration deadline: 15 March 2010
For further information on program, organizers and scientific committee, conference venue, oral and poster contributions, registration and other details, visit the conference website at http://cis.danbif.dk/neobiota2010.

VII Meeting of the group Ecology and Floral Evolution (ECOFLOR) in La Laguna (Tenerife)

Official language: Spanish


VII reunión del grupo de trabajo ECOFLOR en La Laguna (Tenerife)

La VII reunión del grupo de Ecología y Evolución Floral (ECOFLOR) se celebrará en La Laguna (Tenerife) durante los días 28 y 29 de Enero de 2010 en el Instituto de Productos Naturales y Agrobiología (campus de Ciencias de la Universidad de La Laguna, http://www.ipna.csic.es/).

Siguiendo el formato de las convocatorias anteriores, la idea es organizar no más de 20 charlas (de 15-20 min salvo alguna excepción) para que haya tiempo para debates y discusiones, siendo las charlas de estudiantes especialmente bienvenidas.

Para inscripción, propuestas de temas para talleres y/o charlas contactar Dr. Alfredo Valido (alfredo.valido@urjc.es; avalido@ebd.csic.es).