Global Change and Plant Microevolution

Global environmental change does not only affect the ecology but also the evolution of plants. Climate change, land use and biological invasions affect the direction and strength of natural selection, as well as the amount and distribution of plant genetic diversity. The resulting microevolution could buffer or accelerate environmental change. Understanding this anthropogenic evolution might be important for our ability to predict global change impacts. However, evolutionary processes are still a very understudied aspect of global change biology. While there has been quite some recent research on evolutionary consequences of biological invasions, much less is known about evolution in response to climate change, and even less about evolutionary consequences of land use. The purpose of the workshop is to bring these questions together under a common conceptual framework, discuss the current research in this field, and develop an agenda for future research. The workshop will be divided into two parts: a symposium part where the invited speakers and some of the participants will give lectures, and a workshop part where participants, assisted by the invited experts, will form small discussion groups and jointly develop ideas for future research.