In the beginning of March 2020, just before COVID-19 took over Europe, we organised a Legume trait meeting at iDiv (Leipzig, Germany) which was also the PhD kick-off meeting for the PhD project of Francisco Velásquez Puentes. For his PhD, he will study the role of functional traits during biome transitions in Neotropical legumes, as well as diversification mechanisms in relation to drought adaptations and dispersal – from macro- as well microevolutionary (population genomic) points of view.
Our guests – all legume/trait/biome experts – travelled from the UK – University of Exeter (Toby Pennington), University of Edinburgh (Kyle Dexter, Flávia Pezzini) – and Switzerland – University of Zurich (Colin Hughes, Erik Koenen, Jens Ringelberg, Elin Ruetimann). The 3 day meeting was insightful and initiated new ideas and initiatives which will hopefully substantialize in the coming years.
Onstein is ON 