Plant evolutionary ecology: molecular genetics, global warming and invasions, and the novel approaches we are using to study adaptations

摘要

The 1 st Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology was an international meeting hosted jointly by the University of Ottawa and Carleton University (Ontario, Canada), that brought together nearly 2400 delegates from 45 countries representing the five major societies for evolutionary biology. As one might imagine, there was a very rich variety of research presented in all systems, asking a wide range of interesting questions in evolutionary ecology. Although there were abundant talks and posters (c. 1300and 650, respectively), several exciting areas of plant research stood out, including studies on the molecular genetics of complex traits, ecological responses to climate change, evolution in invasive plants, and species interactions. Collectively, the sheer breadth of plant research at the meeting — which we cannot cover fully here — highlights the progress being made in plant evolutionary biology and ecology.