SAAB and SASSB 2011
Prepared by Cornell Kortenhoeven, Gerda Fourie and Kershney Naidoo
The 2011 joint meetings of the 37th annual South African Association of Botanists (SAAB) and the 9th Southern African Society for Systematic Biology (SASSB) took place in the friendly and quaint town of Grahamstown from 16th to 21st January, 2011. The overall theme of these conferences, hosted by the Departments of Botany and Zoology at Rhodes University, was African Biodiversity with the specific theme of SAAB being “Plants in a changing world”. These meetings were attended by eight researchers from the CTHB and included Prof. Mike Wingfield, Prof. Jolanda Roux, Dr. Marieka Gryzenhout, Dr. Martin Coetzee, Kershney Naidoo, Cornell Kortenhoeven and Chrizelle Beukes.
The proceedings consisted of 40 poster presentations and 180 oral presentations. A series of plenary lectures was presented by world class speakers including Professors David Beerling, Peter Weston, Luciano Beheregaray, (Flinders University, Adelaide), Steve Goodman, (Field Museum, Chicago) and Tim Crowe, (DST/NRF Centre of Excellence in Birds at the Percy FitzPatrick Institute, University of Cape Town). Prof Mike Wingfield’s plenary lecture was aptly entitled “Global tree health: What next?”.
The research presentations were organized in concurrent sessions according to themes that included: Climate change, Biodiversity, Medicinal plants, Ecology, Plant pathogens and Biocontrol, Pollination, Plant invasion and conservation, Ecophysiology, Phytogeography and Systematics. The majority of presentations served to enlighten fellow researchers as to the current state of affairs regarding the influence of climate change on animals and plants with only a handful of presentations aimed towards the eukaryotic or prokaryotic microbes. Reference to state-of-the-art molecular approaches was, however, under-represented.
This conference was well organized with ample opportunities for interaction between delegates. The social events included a spit-braai, gala dinner and mid-conference field trip to nearby areas. Although exposure to research domains from other disciplines broadened scientific insights, major debates happened over a cold beer at the famous Rat and Parrot, which undoubtedly paved the way for thought-provoking scientific engagement.
