ROYAL SOCIETY OF SOUTH AFRICA - Lecture Series 2014

 

Prof. Serban Proches will present a lecture with the title:

 

"Defining and mapping cosmopolitan lineages"

 

Wednesday, 22 October 2014

Time: 5.45 pm

Venue: John Bews Lecture Theatre,

Life Sciences Campus, Carbis Road, Pietermaritzburg.

 

 

A focus on the conservation of endangered species has meant that biogeography has been biased towards studying species with narrow distribution ranges. At the other end of the spectrum, very little has been done to study in a systematic way those animals and plants that are naturally widely distributed across the globe. This talk will present a first attempt at listing terrestrial tetrapod vertebrate lineages found throughout the world, and will provide insights into how they achieved such broad distributions. The speaker feels that a cosmopolitan lineage framework in biogeographical and ecological studies could add great depth to the understanding of evolutionary success, and would be highly relevant to the field of invasion biology.

 

Serban Proches hails from Romania, where he studied for his undergraduate and MSc degrees. He then relocated to South Africa where he completed his PhD and three postdoctoral projects (the last one, in 2007, with Prof. Steve Johnson at UKZN Pietermaritzburg). He has authored sixty publications, including articles in top journals such as Nature and Science. He has worked on plants, insects, mites and vertebrates in both marine and terrestrial systems, and has done fieldwork in Europe, the Middle East, southern Africa and south-east Asia. He is currently associate professor of Biogeography in the Discipline of Geography on UKZN’s Westville Campus.  

 

All welcome, please support!  Light refreshments will be supplied.

 

Enquiries: Prof. Mike Perrin, Tel. 033–260 5118 / 5435. OR Dr. Andreas Jürgens Tel. 033–260 6492