[Taxacom] Symposium: When is a hierarchical model not appropriate in plant systematics

[Bengt Oxelman]

Symposium: When is a hierarchical model not appropriate in plant  
systematics

Botanists have for long been aware that new lineages sometimes are  
formed by fusion, rather than splitting of ancestral lineages.  Even
the late Linnaeus suggested that new plant species could arise  
through hybridization.

A well-known and important evolutionary process for plant formation  
is allopolyploidy, that is, the fusion of unreduced
nuclear genomes from separate parental lineages. However, recent  
evidence suggests that homoploid hybrid speciation and horizontal  
gene transfer may be
of higher significance than previously thought. To better understand  
such processes, we need powerful tools and techniques that will allow  
us to analyse data that bear
the telltale signs of such processes.

With this in mind, the aim of this symposium is twofold. First, it  
will present empirical results where a network
rather than a tree is more appropriate to explain the observed data.  
Second, it will present novel tools and techniques regarding the  
analysis of such
data which are suspected to have arisen via reticulate evolution.

Please, see the webpage

http://www-conference.slu.se/eseb2007/

and register for the ESEB XI symposium in Uppsala August 20-25!

Welcome!

Bengt Oxelman
Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences
Göteborg University
Box 461
SE-40530 Göteborg
Sweden

and

Department of Systematic Botany
Evolutionary Biology Centre
Norbyvägen 18D
SE-75236 Uppsala
Sweden