Former meetings of the Section Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology

The symposium of our Section Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology took place from 23rd to 26th August 2023 at the University of Gießen in the lecture halls of the Hermann Hoffmann Academy.  Altogether 94 scientists participated (only 4 last-minute cancellations), 34 of them students. With two international keynote speakers the organizers Prof. Dr. Volker Wissemann, Prof. Dr. Elvira Hörandl, Dr. Anže Žerdoner Čalasan, and Dr. Natalia Tkach welcomed a European audience; with most participants from Germany. The programme encompassed 19 talks and 21 posters from students. Gender balance was a 2:2 male:female ratio with the invited keynote speakers, and 17 female compared to 13 male speakers, reflecting a strong presence of females at early career stages in systematics. Elvira Hörandl summarizes the scientific highlights, names the awardees and reports about the Section’s meeting and elections.

We would like to invite you to this year‘s International Conference of the German Society for Plant Science (DBG), which will take place from 28 August to 1 September 2022 in Bonn. Registration is open and abstracts can be submitted until 2. Mai 2022 via https://www.botanik-tagung.de.

Our Section will organize two symposia:

(R)evolution in Time and Space (chair: Anže Žerdoner Čalasan, co-chair: Julia Bechteler)
Keynote-Speaker: Tiina Särkinen (Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh). We welcome contributions dealing with resolving reticulate evolutionary histories of different plant groups caused by adaptive radiations or fast diversifications accompanied with hybridizations, ILS etc.

Evolution of Reproductive Systems (chair: Elvira Hörandl, co-chair: Thomas Dresselhaus)
Keynote-Speaker: Susanne Renner (Universität Washington, MO). We welcome contributions to all aspects of evolutionary mechanisms of plant reproduction (sexual, selfing, apomixis, sex chromosomes, etc.).

It would be great if our section is represented at the conference with many interesting contributions in these symposia. As we all know, many excellent early career scientists are members of our section. Thus, please forward this invitation to your PhD students as well.

To support participation of early career plant scientists in this International Conference, the DBG will award travel grants up to 350 € for participants who will actively take part in the conference with a talk or a poster.

The speaker of our Section, Prof. Dr. Elvira Hörandl (Göttingen), cordially invites you to the annual section meeting on August 30, 2022 at 7–8 p.m. The meeting will take place during the International Conference of the German Society for Plant Science (DBG) in Bonn, Germany, https://www.botanik-tagung.de

After missing the regular meeting in 2020, Section’s speaker, Prof. Dr. Dirk Albach, invites you to take part in the virtual meeting on October 5^th, 2021 from 9a.m. to 5 p.m. via Zoom. Please motivate your (co-)workers and colleagues to take part and submit an abstract until September 19^th (for details please refer to pdf file).

At the meeting new Section’s speakers will be elected to represent our Section Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology. Albach will not be running for the office, since he holds this position for 10 years by now.

Invitation and details (pdf file)

Die 24. Internationale Tagung der Sektion für Biodiversität und Evolutionsbiologie in der DBG fand zusammen mit der 18. Österreichischen Botanik-Tagung statt und wurde vom Naturwissenschaftlichen Verein für Kärnten und vom Landesmuseum für Kärnten vom 19. – 22. September 2018 an der Pädagogischen Hochschule Kärnten in Klagenfurt am Wörthersee organisiert.

zum Tagungsbericht der zweiten Sprecherin, Professorin Dr. Alexandra Müllner-Riehl

Während der Botanikertagung in Kiel fand kein Sektionstreffen statt.

23^rd Symposium on Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology

The Symposium Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology of the same name Section of the DBG took place in Munich, Bavaria, from 8^th to 11^th September 2016 in the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, the Institute for Systematic Botany and Mycology, the Herbarium and the Botanical Garden. The more than 100 registerd participants listended to international keynote speakers from Danmark, Czech Republic, and USA, as well as from a variety of extra-university research institutions. Prof. Dirk Albach, Prof. Alexandra Müllner-Riehl and Prof. Jochen Heinrichs were confrimed unanimously to be the Section's speakers. In parallel the second Eduard Strasburger Workshop of the DBG took place, organized by Dr. Susann Wicke, Universität Münster, and Dr. Dörte Harpke, IPK Gatersleben. The workshop focussed on "Phylogenomics – The next generation of evolutionary botany". An excursion at the last day to the external facility of the Botanical Garden at Schachen in the Alps at an elevation of more than 1800 meters a.s.l. rounded off the meeting.

In the course of the Botanikertagung „From Molecules to the Field“ in Freising, Germany, the section will convene for the lecture of keynote speaker Dr. Pamela Soltis (University of Florida, Monday, 8 31^st 2015, 11:15 a.m.), sessions “Biodiversity” (chair: Christian Wirth, Monday, 8 31^st 2015, 2:30 a.m.) and “Systematics” (chair: Susanne Renner, Wednesday, 9 2^nd 2015, 6:15 p.m.) and a workshop/symposium entitled “Chromosomal and biogeographic evolutionary patterns in plants” (Monday, 8 31^st 2015, 8:00 p.m.). We hope that the enticing area and diverse meeting contents will encourage many systematists to join the Botanikertagung.

The Conference of the Section Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology took place at Dresden Technical University from 24^th to 27^th March 2014 and was entitled BioDivEvo2014. The “22^nd International Symposium ‘Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology’ of the German Botanical Society (DBG)”. It was held in concert with the "15^th Annual Meeting of the Society of Biological Systematics (GfBS)".

read German conference gleainings

Professor Olaf Bininda-Emonds and Professor Dirk Albach from the departments „Biodiversität und Evolution der Pflanzen“ und „Systematik und Evolutionsbiologie“ of Oldenburg University, Germany invited to "The time for phylogenetics - inferring and applying timetrees in evolutionary biology". The symposium took place at Oldenburg from 22^nd to 24^th November 2013 ( [5]) and focused on:

• New advances in molecular clocks (Prof. Dr. Susanne Renner, Munich)
• Fossil dating and calibrations (Prof. Mike Benton, Bristol)
• Bayesian estimation of species divergence times (Dr. Mario dos Reis, London)
• A unified framework for inferring speciation and extinction rates from phylogenies with fossils (Dr. Tanja Stadler, Zurich)
• Timetrees and the historical biogeography of the “Rand Flora” (Dr. Isabel San Martin, Madrid)
• Co-evolution and timetrees (Dr. Chuck Bell, New Orleans)

The DBG supported the attendance of jung scientists.

The meeting of the Section took place in Mainz, Germany, from 16^th to 19^th September 2012: Booklet with topics and keynote speakers an all abstracts (pdf file)

read conference gleanings in DBG's Actualia

Members of the Section met at the "BioSystematics">BioSystematics 2011" in February in Berlin, Germany. This conference was jointly organised by the German Botanical Society (DBG: Deutsche Botanische Gesellschaft), the Gesellschaft für Biologische Systematik (GfBS) and the International Organization of Systematic and Evolutionary Biology (IOSEB).

The "Systematics" took place from 16^th to 19^th September 2010 in Vienna, Austria. Programm overview (pdf file)

read German conference gleainings