SEAMEO BIOTROP’s 2nd Quarterly Public Seminar Series: Global Patterns of Plant Biodiversity

Abstract:
With more than 400,000 species worldwide, plants are a megadiverse group and of outstanding importance for ecosystem functioning and human well-being. The biodiversity of plants is unevenly distributed across the globe. Strong differences in plant diversity at both local and regional scales, e.g., between the tropical and temperate zone, have fascinated ecologists for centuries. Explaining global diversity gradients remains a central issue in modern ecological research and is also of great importance for large-scale conservation. To date, global-scale analyses of plant diversity have been primarily hampered by the availability of suitable data sets. In this presentation, I will report on our research on global plant diversity using very large data bases of >1500 mainland and island floras worldwide in combination with phylogenetic, trait and environmental information. I will review our current knowledge about the centres of plant diversity, about how plant diversity is controlled and about how diversity is affected by anthropogenic factors. I will conclude with a critical outlook on how we can enhance our global biodiversity research by integrated various data sources.

About the Speaker

Holger Kreft is an assistant professor at the University of Goettingen, Germany. He is head of the Biodiversity, Macroecology and Conservation Biogeography group and has a keen interest in plant diversity from local to global scales. His current research focuses on tropical plant diversity and how it is affected by land-use change and on the factors and processes that cause global gradients in diversity .

Date of Event:
Thursday, 10 September 2015

Venue:
SEAMEO BIOTROP, JATI ROOM

Please register with:
Dr. Sri Sudarmiyati (sudarmiyati@biotrop.org or sritjitro@gmail.com)
Mr. Widodo (widodo@biotrop.org or cbd@outlook.co.id)

We only reserve for 50 seats on a first-come, first-served basis for FREE SNACKS AND CERTIFICATES OF ATTENDANCE !