GLF Report Natalie Cusimano 2007
From EESwiki
The conference “The Origin and Evolution of Biota in Mediterranean Climate Zones – an integrative Vision" has been organized by Prof. Elena Conti and her collaborators from the Institute of Systematic Botany of the University of Zurich. The duration of the conference was two days and it took place at the Institute for Systematic Botany, which is situated in the botanical garden of Zurich. About 150 persons participate at the conference, mainly from Europe with their study focus on the Mediterranean basin, but also from other places working on the other Mediterranean regions of the world (South Africa, Australia, Chile and California). Only invited talks were given by 25 of the leading researchers from different fields of study regarding the Mediterranean climate zones (e.g., evolutionary biology, systematics, ecology, paleontology, paleoclimatology, and paleogeology). The daily talk sessions were concluded by a final discussion. All other participants presented their research in poster form that should be watched and discussed for one and a half hour after the talk sessions with an aperitif offered by the organizers.
Unfortunately no one of the speakers respected the time limit of the talks, and also the final discussions took much more time as planned, resulting in a very narrow time frame for the poster sessions. They were not much frequented and the feedback was not as good as expected. Nevertheless I got in contact with a postdoctoral researcher, who is also working on Areae (Araceae) but focusing on the biogeography of the Mediterranean clades and we are both interested in establishing collaboration. Consecutively also the breaks were too short, and so the possibility to get in contact with other people, look at the posters or visit the nice botanical garden.
It was an interesting conference as it was held under a concrete main theme, the high biodiversity in Mediterranean regions, investigated and discussed under different points of view. It gave a nice overview on the field of work of established work groups as well as insides in analyzes and interpretation of data on different backgrounds. As the chromosome study is a new part of my work, I got much input and information about approaching my hypotheses and about interpretation of the data, by talks as well as by posters.
Natalie Cusimano July 2007
Link to "The Origin and Evolution of Biota in Mediterranean Climate Zones"
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