Ein gemeinsames Seminar des Lehrstuhls für Systematik, Biodiversität & Evolution der Pflanzen, der Botanischen Staatssammlung München und des Botanischen Gartens München-Nymphenburg
Wann? Mittwochs um 13:15 Uhr (während des Semesters, wenn nicht anders angegeben)
Wo? Raum 109 im Botanischen Institut, Menzinger Str. 67, 80638 München.
Dr. Thomas L.P. Couvreur, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), France.
Pushing the frontiers of the metaherbarium to understand tropical rain forest evolution
Tropical rain forests are the most diverse ecosystems on Earth, yet the origins of this extraordinary diversity remain one of biology’s enduring questions. How did this richness arise, and why is it distributed so unevenly across the tropics?
In this talk, I will share insights from the ERC-funded GLOBAL project, which uses the pantropical plant family Annonaceae, comprising around 2,500 species worldwide, as a window into the evolutionary history of tropical rain forests. By assembling a near-complete phylogenomic framework, including more than 80% of all species, we reconstruct a long-term view of how Annonaceae diversity has originated and diversified for during the 100 million years.
At the heart of this project lies the concept of the “metaherbarium”: herbaria and associated collections are viewed as a globally connected, data-rich system. By linking specimens, historical collections, modern genomic tools and novel approaches, we transform centuries of botanical exploration into a dynamic resource for addressing fundamental questions in biodiversity science. Notably, around 65% of our samples were obtained directly from herbarium specimens, including type material collected as early as 1795, highlighting the enduring scientific value of these collections.
Macroevolutionary analyses of this near-complete phylogenetic tree of Annonaceae reveals a more dynamic history of tropical rain forests than previously thought, with repeated phases of diversity expansion and decline rather than a simple constant accumulation of species over time. We also inferred that the processes shaping diversity are not uniform, but vary across regions, reflecting distinct environmental histories.
To understand what determines Annonaceae diversity, we analyzed over 100 environmental and evolutionary variables from local to global scales, uncovering large-scale geographic regions where similar processes structure biodiversity, even across different continents. At the same time, our work highlights how future biodiversity loss may disproportionately affect deep evolutionary lineages and key functional groups.
Finally, I will explore how new technologies are extending the reach of the metaherbarium even further. Near-Infrared Spectroscopy offers a rapid and non-destructive way to extract information from specimens, opening new possibilities for species identification and for prioritizing samples for genomic work. Together, our results show that herbaria are not only archives of the past, but living infrastructures for understanding and ultimately helping to conserve the future of tropical biodiversity.
Host: Dr. Luo Chen