[Taxacom] Tropical field botany course

Tue Oct 4 14:52:07 CDT 2011

  *On behalf of * Ferry Slik [mailto:ferryslik at hotmail.com]
*
Plants of Tropical Asia ? XTBG Field Botany Course*

*Title:* XTBG Field Botany Course 2012

*Registration:* 
http://www.pfs-tropasia.org/courses/plants-of-tropical-asia-xtbg-field-botany-course-2012/

*Type:* Workshop

*Venue:* Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (near Jinghong), 
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Menglun, Mengla, Yunnan, China

*Dates:* 28 March ? 14 April 2012 (19 days)

*Organiser:* Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of 
Sciences <http://english.xtbg.cas.cn/> and Laboratory for Plant 
Geography, XTBG.

*Fees:* Developing countries RMB 5000 (ca. 780 US$)*, Developed 
countries RMB 8000 (ca. 1250 US$)*, XTBG members RMB 2500 (ca. 390 US$)  
(*includes accommodation and food)

*Fellowships:* Four fellowships for travel expenses and course fees are 
available for participants from developing countries. Since funds are 
limited most participants will have to obtain support from other 
sources, and fellowship will be awarded on a combination of merit and need.

This course is being held in association with the ATBC Asia-Pacific 
chapter meeting (24-27 March 2012) 
<http://www.tropicalbio.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=195&Itemid=95>at 
XTBG.

*Why take a course on the flora of Southeast Asia?*

Southeast Asia is one of the hottest hotspots of global biodiversity. 
There are over 40,000 vascular plant species, with a species density ten 
times that of the European flora, and the region is home to many well 
known and economically important plant taxa, such as rice, rattan, 
bananas, rambutan, nutmeg, meranti and yam. Being able to recognize 
plants is an essential skill for many aspects of ecology and 
conservation biology, but is problematic when the species diversity is 
so high, only a few plants are flowering at any one time, and regional 
floras are incomplete.

This course will arm students with an ability to identify plants in the 
field, thereby enhancing the quality of observations they may make in 
the course of their research. It is a course for non-plant taxonomy 
majors. Everyday we will collect plant material from the field and learn 
the field characters for identifying them. As we are collecting plants 
directly in the field, we will be dealing mainly with sterile material 
and sterile characters. This is deliberate since this is how plants are 
most often encountered. In the afternoons, we will review the day?s 
collecting, look at herbarium material, and arrange our observations 
within a systematic framework. In addition, we will have a series of 
lectures relating to the field study of plants, on topics ranging from 
DNA-barcoding to plant ecophysiology. The course also benefits from its 
location: XTBG has a phylogenetically diverse /ex-situ/ collection of 
over 12000 plant species, including many thematic collections, a 
herbarium with over 100000 specimens focused on tropical China and 
Indo-China, and research laboratories studying plant genomics, plant 
resources, plant geography, plant-animal co-evolution, ecology and 
conservation.

This course is targeted at senior undergraduate and postgraduate 
students interested in the botanical wealth of Southeast Asia. 
Participants will learn how to make good quality plant collections, how 
to describe field characters, and how to recognize the important plant 
families and genera. By the end of the course, participants will have 
learned to identify over 90% of the individuals in a forest to Family or 
Genus level.

No prior knowledge of botany or biology is assumed, and at the beginning 
of the course all the necessary botanical terms will be explained. The 
course is also, therefore, appropriate for anthropologists, 
environmental scientists, or conservation practitioners, as well as 
biologists, who wish to improve their ability to recognize plants.

Ferry Slik
Professor
Plant Geography Lab
??????????????
Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Menglun, Mengla,
Yunnan 666303, China
Tel. +86-15924688380

Website
_http://www.phylodiversity.net/fslik/_

Plants of Southeast Asia
http://www.asianplant.net <http://www.asianplant.net/>

Trees of Sungai Wain
_http://www.nationaalherbarium.nl/Sungaiwain/_

Asian plant species synonym website
http://www.phylodiversity.net/fslik/synonym_lookup.htm

Macaranga and Mallotus of Borneo
http://www.nationaalherbarium.nl/MacMalBorneo/index.htm