Details

Speaker:
Prof. Thomas J. Givnish, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Monocots are one of the most diverse, ecologically dominant, and economically important of all plant lineages, and are directly orindirectly responsible for most of the human diet. I will discuss what we have learned about their broad-scale phylogeny over the past few yearsusing powerful new genomic data, and then focus on resulting insights into the evolution, historical biogeography, and drivers of speciesdiversification in two of the largest families of monocots, the bromeliads (ca. 3300 spp) and the orchids (> 25000 spp).
Thomas J. Givnish is the Henry Allan Gleason Chair in Botany and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Hisinterests revolve around speciation, molecular systematics and historical biogeography, adaptive radiation, and the determinants ofdiversity in plants, with a particular focus on physiology in an ecological and evolutionary framework. He is a Fellow of the LinneanSociety of London as well as of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Recent efforts include his work as the leadinvestigator of an international consortium to reconstruct the phylogenetic history of monocots to obtain unparalleled insights intopatterns of their evolution, adaptation, and geographic diversification.