Symposium | Orchidaceae | Taxonomy, Diversification, and Biogeography

This is a hybrid day meeting, offering the option of in-person tickets or online. This day meeting supports a Special Issue in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society Orchids (Orchidaceae), with nearly 30,000 accepted species worldwide, are the largest family of angiosperms and one of the most ecologically and morphologically remarkable lineages in the plant kingdom. Orchids occupy an extraordinary diversity of habitats across all continents except Antarctica, displaying exceptional variation in life form, pollination biology, mycorrhizal associations, reproductive strategies, and genomic architecture. Their immense diversity and global distribution make them an ideal system for investigating the processes that generate, structure, and maintain plant biodiversity through time and space. At the same time, the family has a complex taxonomic history, shaped first by contrasting interpretations of morphological variation and more recently, by different perspectives arising from DNA-based classifications. This symposium will bring together diverse cutting-edge perspectives on orchid evolution, across taxonomic, temporal, and geographical scale. Speakers Richard M. Bateman (Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, UK) - An over-estimated diversity of species numbers and an under-estimated diversity of speciation mechanisms currently characterise European orchid studies Joris Bertrand (Universit é de Perpignan Via Domitia ) - Peculiar pollination strategies and complex genomes as drivers of adaptive radiation: Insights from Bee Orchids (genus Ophrys ) Gill and David Mathers (Mathers Foundation) - What is an orchid worth without a label? Taxonomy, provenance and pragmatic ex situ conservation Oscar Alejandro Pérez-Escobar (Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, UK) - The origin and speciation of orchids as seen through the orchid tree of life Melania Fernandez Campos (Lankester Botanic Garden, Costa Rica) - Ecological dimensions of orchid mycorrhizae: diversity, specificity, and recruitment Ar