5th International Conference on Comparative Biology of Monocotyledons

There was a notice in Cultivated Plant Taxonomy News, July 2013, that there would be a special Symposium on the systematics and population biology of Narcissus at this conference which was held at the New York Botanic Garden.  Does anyone know anything about this?

3 comments for “5th International Conference on Comparative Biology of Monocotyledons

  1. Here is an abstract from https://www.regonline.com/custImages/320000/329272/July8NYBGMonocotsVAbstractBook.pdf:

    Narcissus (Amaryllidaceae) as a Model System for Studying Ecology and Evolution of Plant Reproductive Systems

    Arroyo, Juan (1)* Pérez-Barrales, Rocío (1,2); Santos-Gally, Rocío (1); Simón-Porcar, Violeta (1)(1) Dept. of Plant Biology and Ecology, University of Seville, Spain. *  title= (2) School of Biological Sciences, University of Portsmouth, UK

    Daffodils have long interested naturalists due to their cultural significance and apparent biological complexity. Recently, evolutionary biologists have become interested, due to the intriguing combination of floral traits, which allows the long standing hypotheses on the evolution of some reproductive systems to be assessed.

    We show how ecological and evolutionary information is relevant to disentangle the complex floral morphology of the species, with particular reference to reciprocal style polymorphism, a trait which has intrigued naturalists including Darwin himself. We show how stigma-height dimorphism, a supposedly unstable state in the evolution to heterostyly, is common in Narcissus. Here, the abundance of stigma-height dimorphism is due to its good performance on the promotion of disassortative mating, the ultimate goal of heterostyly, despite the apparent limitation of the low reciprocity of sex organs. In particular our nvestigations of two groups, Sect. Apodanthi and Subgen. Hermione, have shed light on how complex interactions between (1) pollination by different pollinators with long and short proboscis, (2) late-acting self-incompatibility, (3) flower architecture, and (4) differentiation between montane and lowland habitats have played a role in determining that in some cases stigma-height dimorphism is stable and common, whereas in others it leads to typical reciprocal heterostyly or to the loss of polymorphism. We approach this research program at both macroevolutionary and microevolutionary levels, showing its dynamics at different temporal scales in the development of the Mediterranean region, where the genus diversified, and evaluating phylogenetic correlations among traits.

  2. Thanks for posting this information.  Let’s hope that some day we’ll learn the results of their research.

  3. Interesting in that  many years ago I posted a piece about Stuart Murray’s observation of heterostyly in triandrus and apodanthe. Maybe it has taken the scientific community 15 years to catch up on what an ordinary gardener had already observed in his own garden.

    Dave

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