| Abstract Detail
Kaplan Memorial Lecture - M. Alejandra Gandolfo Gandolfo, Maria [1]. Understanding the Plant Fossil Record, Plant Morphology, and Plant Anatomy is critical in the genomic era. With the advent of molecular and genomic techniques, our vision on plant evolution and development has become focused on gene families and aspects of the whole genome principally because they provide the most comprehensive collection of data of an individual’s genetic variation as well as evidencing genome differences at the population level. Certainly, how genes are encoded within the genome is the reflection of the genetic code which, in the end, encode the overall morphology and anatomy of organisms. Nevertheless, what it is not obvious in genomic data is the influence of more than 2 billion years of evolution on the organisms. The plant fossil record is the only concrete evidence of plant evolution in deep time and provides a window to events related to biotic and abiotic factors that modeled past and modern life on Earth. Fossil plants give us insights into the massive and progressive morphological, anatomical, and developmental modifications that major groups underwent and how plant diversity has changed over the course of geological time. The causes of these changes are extremely complex and encompasses local scale stochastic processes on individual taxon (e.g. speciation events) to major extrinsic factors at global scale (e.g. glaciations). In this presentation, I will discuss how the fossil record, basically a goldmine of information, intersects with plant morphology and anatomy for delivering data on plant evolution that allow us to deduce evolutionary patterns and construct phylogenetic hypotheses while improving the accuracy of determining character evolution and postulating more robust phylogenetic relationships. Discoveries in the fossil record have altered our view on evolution, making pivotal knowledge available as they provide a wealth of morphological and anatomical data that have increased our understanding of extant taxa as whole.
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1 - Cornell University, L. H. Bailey Hortorium, Plant Biology Section, SIPS, 406 Mann Library Building, Plant Biology Section, Ithaca, NY, 14853, United States
Keywords:
none specified
Presentation Type: Special Presentations
Session: S09, Kaplan Memorial Lecture - M. Alejandra Gandolfo
Location: Virtual/Virtual
Date: Wednesday, July 21st, 2021
Time: 3:00 PM(EDT)
Number: S09001
Abstract ID:223
Candidate for Awards:None |
