Photo Credit: Ixchel Sarahi Gonzalez Ramirez
California Botanical Society
30th Graduate Student Symposium
Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo
Saturday, April 5, 2025
Please join us to celebrate students of California botany. All are encouraged to attend.
Schedule
Graduate Student Symposium, Saturday April 5, 2025,
8am – 5:00pm
The 30th Graduate Student Symposium will be held at Fisher Science Building at Cal Poly, SLO. Concurrent talk sessions, a poster session, and ample breaks for conversation and strolls up poly canyon will occur until 5pm. Lunch will be provided.
Annual Banquet, Saturday April 5, 2025, 6pm
SOLD OUT!
The Annual Society Banquet will be held in the Multi-Activity Center at Cal Poly. SLO. The keynote address will be delivered by Dr. Lúcia G. Lohmann, entitled “The Origin and Evolution of Amazonian Biodiversity: Why it matters for California and the World”. Dr Lohmann is the new President and Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden.
Field Trips
Friday, April 4, 2025 (2:30pm to ~5pm): Serpentine Rocks! with Dena Grossenbacher and Mike Butler
Park and meet at the trailhead by the Costco gas station, San Luis Obispo, 35.250889, -120.691507 (1540 Froom Ranch, San Luis Obispo, CA 93405).
Sunday, April 6, 2025 (8:30 – 11am): Shell Creek Road, a famous wildflower viewing location in Eastern San Luis Obispo County, with Jenn Yost and Matt Ritter. Trip information here.
Register and purchase tickets
Sponsors
San Luis Obispo Chapter California Native Plant Society
Dena Grossenbacher
Kathleen Kay
Naomi Fraga
Alison Colwell
Scott Hodges
Nearby accommodations
Mid-range hotel: Wayfare Hotel (recently renovated)
Budget hotels: Peach Tree Inn, San Luis Creek Lodge, Inn At San Luis Obispo, University Inn
Camping: El Chorro Regional Park (~6 miles from event; ~40$/night/site and allows up to 8 people per site; has restrooms and coin operated showers; reserve here)
Have Questions?
Calochortus obispoensis artwork by Emma Fryer.
The Origin and Evolution of Amazonian Biodiversity: Why it matters for California and the World
Amazonia is Earth’s most iconic hotspot of diversity and endemism and, arguably, the most crucial terrestrial biome for its contributions to global systems ecology. To understand the importance and future of Amazonian biodiversity to Earth’s systems biology, it is essential to place the present-day Amazonian biome in its historical context. Our understanding of how Amazonian biodiversity has been generated and assembled taxonomically and ecologically remains surprisingly meager. We reconstructed multiple time-calibrated phylogenies of plant, vertebrate, and invertebrate taxa and combined this information with new geological and environmental data to test the current hypotheses on the age of Amazonian taxa and ecosystems. Our findings contribute significantly to an improved understanding of the assembly and evolution of the Amazonian biodiversity.
Dr. Lúcia G. Lohmann, President and Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden
Born in Brazil, Lohmann earned her undergraduate degree in biology from the University of São Paulo, where she documented the biodiversity of the Amazon Basin. She later earned a master’s and PhD degrees in Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics from the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where she studied the biogeography and evolutionary history of the trumpet-creeper plant family.
After receiving her PhD, Lohmann worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development (CCSD) where she used specimens from the Garden’s globally renowned Herbarium and geospatial tools to address evolutionary, ecological, and conservation questions. Before her most recent tenure as Director of the University and Jepson Herbaria and Professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, Lohmann held a faculty position in the Department of Botany of the University of São Paulo, where she remains as an Adjunct Professor. Her research focuses on neotropical biodiversity, with a special focus on the Amazon basin. Lohmann is now the 8th President and Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, and a George Engelmann Professor of Botany at Washington University in St. Louis.
Lohmann is deeply involved in efforts to study and conserve biodiversity worldwide. In this context, she also serves as Executive Director of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) and President of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT).
Photos by Kathleen Kay
Graduate students organized the first graduate student meeting in 1973 for the purpose of encouraging graduate students in botany from throughout the state to get together and discuss their current research interest and ideas. Since then, the California Botanical Society has supported this event, holding a Graduate Student Meeting every other year in conjunction with our annual banquet. Undergraduate students were invited to participate beginning in 2019. These meetings are an excellent way for students to become familiar with current botanical research and to network with a diverse community of scientists.