Botany Lunch

Format Change: Botany Lunch is currently a hybrid model, in person and online via Zoom. Invitations are sent weekly via the Botany Lunch Google Group. Sign yourself up using Berkeley bConnected (https://bconnected.berkeley.edu/), or if you are off campus contact Brent Mishler, BMishler@berkeley.edu.

Botany Lunch meets during the academic year on Fridays at noon in the herbaria seminar room, 1002 Valley Life Sciences Building (entrance in small corridor by north building entrance on ground floor).

Talks are already filling up for Fall 2022. Please contact Brent Mishler, bmishler@berkeley.edu if you are interested in giving a talk.

Spring 2022 schedule
Click here to view schedules from previous sessions.

Jan. 21  Brent Mishler, Director, University and Jepson Herbaria, University of California, Berkeley.
      An informal presentation/discussion of new ways to look at biodiversity in ecological and evolutionary context.

Jan. 28  Steve Leavitt, Curator of Lichens and Associate Director, Bean Life Science Museum, Brigham Young University.
      Confronting illusions of competence in biodiversity research.

Feb. 4  [no talk due to a schedule shift]
     ...

Feb. 11   Barbara Ertter, Curator of Western North American Flora, University and Jepson Herbaria, University of California, Berkeley; and Research Associate at both Boise State University and The College of Idaho.
     New Discoveries and What's Cool in the Boise Front

*Feb. 15 [Tuesday, 2050 VLSB]   Toby Pennington, Professor of Tropical Plant Diversity and Biogeography at the University of Exeter.
     21st century collections: systematics, ecology and conservation.

Feb. 25   [open due to a cancellation].
     TBA...

*Mar. 1 [Tuesday, 2050 VLSB]   Stephen Wright, Professor, Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto.
     More valuable than ever: herbaria research, teaching and outreach in a rapidly changing world.

*Mar. 8 [Tuesday, 2050 VLSB]   Andrew Hipp, Senior Scientist and Herbarium Director, The Morton Arboretum, Chicago.
     Local interactions, global exchanges, and the specimen as an instance of attention.

Mar. 11   Jason Alexander, Biodiversity Informatics Manager, University and Jepson Herbaria, University of California, Berkeley.
      Overview of the new and updated features of the CCH1 website.

*Mar. 15 [Tuesday, 2050 VLSB]   Lúcia Lohmann, Professor, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade de São Paulo.
     Biodiversity discovery and innovation: bringing herbaria to their full potential.

Mar. 25  No Botany Lunch. Spring Recess, Academic and Administrative Holiday

*Mar. 29 [Tuesday, 2050 VLSB]   Tia-Lynn Ashman, Distinguished Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Pittsburgh.
      Herbaria provide novel insights into plant reproductive phenotype and species interactions on a changing planet.

Apr. 8   Kathy Ann Miller, Research Associate, University and Jepson Herbaria, University of California, Berkeley.
     California seaweeds: building a flora.

Apr. 15   Robert Griffin-Nolan, Postdoctoral Fellow, Santa Clara University & University of California, Berkeley.
     Global intraspecific trait-climate relationships for grasses are linked to mean species traits.

Apr. 22   Kirsten Fisher, Professor and Chair, Department of Biological Sciences, California State University, Los Angeles.
     Between a rock and a moss place: microbial functional potential in desert hypoliths and biocrusts with Syntrichia caninervis.

Apr. 29  Forrest Freund, Graduate Student, Rothfels Lab, Dept. of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley.[finishing talk]
     The Genus Isoëtes L., evolution, diversification and population structure in a free-sporing heterosporous lycophyte.

May 6  [talk postponed due to IB faculty retreat].

May 10 [Tuesday]   Jose Cerca, Postdoctoral researcher in Evolutionary Genomics & Bioinformatics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
     A chromosome-resolved genome of Darwin’s giant daisies (Scalesia; Galápagos) shows the genomic basis of the plant island syndrome.

May 13  Javier Jauregui, PhD student, Mishler Lab, Dept. of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley.
     Systematics, ecology, and biogeography of Syntrichia (Musci)[finishing talk]

* = part of search for the new Herbaria director/IB faculty position. Note that Botany Lunch is Tuesdays those weeks. The exact time of day is still up in the air; further details forthcoming.