ANBG Friends Plant Science Group - Technical Talk

Place: Theatrette, ANBG

Topic: Can we do biodiversity conservation without species?

Speaker: Dr Dan Rosauer, Post-doctoral Fellow, Moritz Group, Research School
of Biology, ANU.

Talk summary:   The idea of using evolutionary relationships to inform
conservation decisions is not new, but we are now at the point where it is
becoming seriously practical.  With global and regional examples, Dan will
show how knowledge of evolutionary relationships can support more effective
use of scarce conservation resources. He will argue that with genetic
information, we can often work around unreliable or incomplete taxonomy.  In
other words, we can map biodiversity and identify priority areas for
conservation, even if the species are not known.   Most of his recent work
happens to be on mammals and lizards, but the concepts work for plants too.