The Amazon Rainforest: An Evolutionary Tale

A Talk by Lúcia G. Lohmann (Department of Botany, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil)

The Amazon Rainforest, also known as Amazonia, covers more than five million square kilometers of dense tropical forest. In addition, its river basin transports the largest volume of water of any river system, accounting for nearly one-fifth of the total water carried by rivers to the oceans worldwide. Plant growth is dense and species diversity is among the highest in the world. Ecological aspects as well as major geological and climatic changes that happened over the course of millions of years have driven both speciation and extinction in this region. The history of the Amazon basin is a complex one, requiring integrative studies that combine data from botany, zoology, ecology, evolution, geology, paleontology, and climatology, among others. Join us as Dr. Lohmann leads us on a journey through time, spanning 30 million years of species evolution, coupled with climatic and geomorphological changes through the Amazon basin.

March 30, 2022 - 8:00pm-9:15pm EST

Via Zoom - Register: https://cutt.ly/rainforest

Bio:

Lúcia G. Lohmann obtained her Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics from the University of Missouri-St. Louis (2003) and conducted her postdoctoral work at the Missouri Botanical Garden (2004). She has been a faculty in the Department of Botany at the University of São Paulo (Brazil) since 2004 and was a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley between 2017-2019. She is also the Executive Director of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC), a member of the São Paulo Academy of Sciences (ACIESP), and an international honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAA&S). Her primary research interest is to understand patterns of diversity and biogeography in the Tropics, especially in the Amazon basin.

This event is Part 1 of the Amazon Lab's symposium on Plants of the Amazon. Part 2 is a roundtable on "Plants of the Amazon: New Directions in Conversation," March 31, 3pm - info here: https://sites.fhi.duke.edu/amazonlab/event/plants-of-the-amazon-new-directions-in-conversation/