Key Information
When
11th September 2024
4pm - 5pm
Where
Crowther Lecture Theatre, building A3 Room 001, JCU Nguma-bada campus, Smithfield
Cost
Free
Audience
Public and Community
Contact
anabel.belson@jcu.edu.au
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TESS seminars feature international, Australian, and local JCU researchers whose work falls within Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Sciences. Speakers are typically established or postdoctoral researchers.
Islands are home to a disproportionate extent of global biodiversity, and they are also among the most threatened by global change. It is widely assumed that island plants have converged in phenotypes, giving rise to an "island plant syndrome," and that aspects of this syndrome are responsible for island plant declines. Yet, most island plants on most islands remain under-studied, and so the generality of the island plant syndrome idea remains unclear. I will present research conducted in the Hawaiian Islands investigating leaf functional traits within a diverse pool of forest species across steep environmental gradients. We have detected extensive functional trait variability in Hawai`i, comparable to that of continental floras and indistinct from the invasive plants established in Hawaiian forests. Implications for competition with invasive species and conservation of this endemic flora will be discussed.
About Professor Kasey Barton – University of Hawaii
Kasey Barton is a Professor of Plant Functional Ecology in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa. Kasey joined the faculty at UH-Mānoa in 2010, following a NERC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Royal Holloway, University of London. She obtained her PhD in 2007 from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Kasey's research investigates island plant functional ecology, particularly plant responses to climate stress (drought and sea level rise), invasive plant interactions, and seedling recruitment, within an evolutionary ecology framework. She is fortunate to be able to live and work in the Hawaiian Islands, the most remote archipelago in the world, on one of the most endemic and fascinating floras.
Please visit here for more information on The Centre of Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science (TESS).