SIMPOSIO: BIODIVERSIDAD-ENFOQUES EN BIOLOGÍA MOLECULAR  | |
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The world's largest flowers, of the Southeast Asian Rafflesia genus, which mimic the smell and appearance of rotting flesh, evolved much more quickly and more often than botanists expected.
Todd Barkman of Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo and his team hypothesized that it would have taken a long time for the Rafflesia flowers to evolve from their smaller ancestors to their current maximum size of one metre in diameter because of the many structural and physiological changes required to support such large flowers. To their surprise, they found that the flowers of some Rafflesia species have more or less doubled in size during the past one million to two million years. As Barkman points out, it is hard to imagine a giraffe doubling the length of its neck in the same time frame. The scientists suggest that even bigger flowers could evolve in future.
Fuente de la información: Research Highlights, Nature 455, 1010 (23 October 2008) | doi:10.1038/4551010a; Published online 22 October 2008.
A meeting organised by the Department of Botany, School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
This meeting, organised on behalf of the Systematics Association and the Linnean Society, will provide a forum for systematists to present and discuss their research as it relates to the critical issue of Global Climate Change. The conference is open to everyone, whatever their chosen discipline within systematics.
This meeting will examine the problems posed by Global Climate Change and will centre on three themes: 1. Climate change and speciation/extinction; 2. Climate change and biogeography; 3. Climate change: documenting and conserving biodiversity.
We feel this meeting is timely because of interest in this topic at all levels in society, especially governmental. For example, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment states that 'By the end of the twenty-first century, climate change and its impacts may be the dominant direct driver of biodiversity loss and changes in ecosystem services globally' and 'Historically, habitat and land use change have had the biggest impact on biodiversity across biomes. Climate change is projected to increasingly affect all aspects of biodiversity, from individual organisms, through populations and species, to ecosystem composition and function'. The most recent IPCC report this year also highlights these issues. Therefore, global climate change needs to be addressed holistically by the systematics community.
Certainly the changes in the density and location of the World's biodiversity are likely to have impacts on speciation/extinction rates and on the ability of systematits to delimit, through Monographs, Faunas and Floras, the World's biodiversity.
Additional Information
More InformationOs anunciamos el lanzamiento del programa de Máster “Biodiversidad en Áreas Tropicales y su Conservación”. Se trata de un master oficial de un año de duración, con titulación de la Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo (UIMP-Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación de España), financiación del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) y qu se imparte en la Universidad Central del Ecuador (UCE). Participan profesores de 16 universidades e instituciones científicas de cinco países, y los alumnos pueden optar a becas y ayudas, cualesquiera sea su país de nacionalidad.
Las clases teóricas, seminarios, enseñanzas prácticas de laboratorio, debates y conferencias invitadas se desarrollarán en las instalaciones de la Universidad Central del Ecuador, del CLIRSEN y de las estaciones biológicas administradas por la propia UCE y por la Fundación Jatún Sacha, todo ello en uno de los países con mayor biodiversidad de todo el planeta: Ecuador.
La matrícula del programa cuesta 1300 euros ($2000 aprox.), que incluye todos los gastos del curso, incluidos los viajes internos a las reservas.
Toda la información, programa, preinscripción, precios, profesorado, becas... pueden encontrarse en la página del Máster.
