HAMILTON, MATTHEW B.*, PRESTON ALDRICH, W. JOHN KRESS, AND CHRIS DICK. Smithsonian Institution, National Zoological Park - Genetics, 3001 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20008 USA, , Department of Botany, MRC-166, National Museum of, Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560 USA, , Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, 22 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA. - Population genetics and gene flow in tropical plants.
The development of new genetic markers and their application to a
broad variety of species has allowed us to better evaluate the extent
of gene flow and genetic structure in tropical plants. In this
symposium we have asked speakers to address several questions directly
or indirectly in their presentations: 1) Where does the paradigm of
extensive gene flow and minimal population structure in tropical
plants stand given new methods and recent studies? 2) Should we expect
that tropical plants have different average levels of gene flow and
population structure compared to temperate plants for example? 3) Will
emerging techniques like DNA microsatellite markers change our views
about gene flow and population structure? 4) How can we increase
inferential power when testing hypotheses related to gene flow and
subdivision? Does the future lie in statistical methods, marker
improvement, development of tropical plant model systems or landscape
level experiments? This is a joint symposium of the Association for
Tropical Biology (ATB) and the Genetics and Tropical Biology sections
of the Botanical Society of America (BSA). Symposium organizers:
Matthew Hamilton, Preston Aldrich, John Kress and Christopher Dick.
Key words: none