Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, (CAS) 中国科学院西双版纳热带植物园

Dr. Cannon presents in webinar

chuck — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:23:58 +0000

Dr. Cannon will participate in an informative webinar on the topic of using flow cytometry to measure genome size entitled: “Using Flow Cytometry to Speed Determination of Eukaryotic Genome Sizes and Cell Type-Specific Gene Expression”

Broadcast Date: Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Time: 1:00 pm EST, 10:00 am PST

REGISTRATION IS FREE

http://www.genengnews.com/webinars/using-flow-cytometry-to-speed-determination-of-eukaryotic-genome-sizes-and-cell-type-specific-ge/151/

Dr. Cannon describes a new species of stone oak

chuck — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 14:32:10 +0000

A new species of stone oak (Lithocarpus pulongtauensis) has recently been published by the Annales Botanici Fennici. The species is named in honor of the recently gazetted protected area in the Kelabit Highlands, the Pulong Tau National Park, Sarawak, Malaysia. This species has been collected on the northern slopes of Mt. Kinabalu, where Dr. Cannon encountered a rather large population, and in the Kelabit Highlands. The nuts are enclosed in an unusual cupule, that is quite dark, the material is rather corky, and the large scales are fused.

Rubber and pulp are a double threat to Hainan forests

chuck — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 04:45:49 +0000

Zhai Deli’s study of land use change in the Changhua watershed on the island of Hainan was recently published in the Journal of Environmental Management. The article is entitled “Rubber and pulp plantations represent a double threat to Hainan’s natural tropical forests” and the work was completed with the following co-authors: Charles H. Cannon, J.W. Ferry Slik, Cui-Ping Zhang, and Zhi-Cong Dai.

Abstract

Hainan, the largest tropical island in China, belongs to the Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot and harbors large areas of tropical forests, particularly in the uplands. The Changhua watershed is the cradle of Hainan’s main river and a center of endemism for plants and birds. The watershed contains great habitat diversity and is an important conservation area. We analyzed the impact of rubber and pulp plantations on the distribution and area of tropical forest in the watershed, using remote sensing analysis of Landsat images from 1988, 1995 and 2005. From 1988 to 1995, natural forest increased in area (979–1040 sq km) but decreased rapidly (763 sq km) over the next decade. Rubber plantations increased steadily through the study period while pulp plantations appeared after 1995 but occupied 152 sq km by 2005. Rubber and pulp plantations displace different types of natural forest and do not replace one another. Because pulp is not as profitable as rubber and existing pulp processing capacity greatly exceeds local supply, considerable pressure exists on remaining upland forests. We recommend for future management that these plantation forests be reclassified as ‘industrial’, making a clear policy distinction between natural and industrial forestry. Additionally, the local government should work to enforce existing laws preventing forest conversion on marginal and protected areas.

The article can be viewed and downloaded from this link – http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301479711003847

AFEC-X 2011 – our third year begins!

chuck — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 04:56:37 +0000

AFEC-X 2011 has started! On Oct 22, 25 participants from 12 countries (Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, USA, DPR Korea, and of course China) arrived in XTBG. Deputy Director of XTBG, Dr Li Qingjun, gave a welcome address and introduction to XTBG at the course opening. Participants will spend the next two weeks in the beautiful botanical garden for lectures, discussions, and practicals over a range of topics, led by many leading experts. The course will then move to the field site in Mengsong, where the participants will spend more than two weeks designing and completing independent research projects.

My wordle

chuck — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 03:44:39 +0000

A wordle (http://www.wordle.net/) of the titles and abstracts from most of my publications. Cool!

Melissa Wong, visiting student from Malaysia, publishes in BMC Genomics

chuck — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 04:29:57 +0000

Melissa Wong, a PhD student from the National University of Malaysia and co-advised by Prof. Cannon and Prof. Wickneswari Ratnam, joined the Ecological Evolution group in 2009 for several months to learn bioinformatic techniques for analyzing next-gen sequencing techniques. Ms. Wong conducted her study on the whole transcriptome sequence from two parental species of Acacia to discover SNPs to use as breeding markers in a field-tested set of hybrids. The final published version of her paper is now available on the BMC Genomics website, where it is currently ‘Highly Accessed’.

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/12/342

Ecological Evolution group passes its four year assessment

chuck — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 03:06:42 +0000

On Aug. 12, 2011, Dr. Cannon presented the achievements of the Ecological Evolution group over the first four years of its existence to an academic committee of 11 colleagues. The committee approved of the group’s efforts and agreed to continue XTBG’s support, including adding an additional staff member as a reward for our success! Thanks and congratulations to our staff, students, and colleagues!

XTBG scientists attend the 18th International Botanical Congress

chuck — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 08:33:49 +0000

Several faculty and students from XTBG attended the IBC 2011 meeting in Melbourne, Australia. Drs. Cannon and Slik presented in a special symposium on “Historical biogeography of Malesia and its effects on current patterns of plant diversity”. The International Botanical Congress is held every six years and is one of the biggest botanical meetings in the world. Almost two thousand people participated in the meeting and twenty concurrent symposia ran each afternoon.

Dr. Slik extends the analysis of Sundaland biogeography in PNAS

chuck — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 03:32:31 +0000

Dr. Ferry Slik, formerly of the Ecological Evolution group and now leading the Plant Geography group at XTBG, has published an analysis of 111 floristic inventory plots across the Sundaland region in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. The major findings indicate that the marked biogeographic difference between western (Malay Peninsula and Sumatra) and eastern (Borneo) Sundaland was more related to plant species with coarse-soil tolerance rather than drought tolerance, suggesting that exposed sandy sea-bed soils acted as the major dispersal barrier in central Sundaland, not a savanna corridor. This finding makes it clear that proposed biogeographic explanations for plant and animal distributions within Sundaland, including possible migration routes for early humans, need to be reevaluated.

The article can be obtained at the following link: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/07/08/1103353108.abstract

Visiting Professor Manuel Lerdau publishes in Nature

chuck — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 06:24:52 +0000

After a brief chat with Dr. Jacob Wickham at the Beijing meeting for Foreign Experts, Dr. Lerdau drafted a response to a recent article in Nature about invasive species. The article generated a great deal of response from the conservation community and Nature published three separate letters in response to the controversial article. These three articles will be included in the weekly press release by Nature. The article is available at the following website: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v475/n7354/full/475036d.html.

Dr. Yann Surget-Groba awarded a Visiting Foreign Junior Faculty Fellowship

chuck — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 07:03:47 +0000

Dr. Yann Surget-Groba, currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has been awarded a Visiting Foreign Junior Faculty Fellowship from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He will join the Ecological Evolution group in March, 2012. He will be assisting the group to develop lab-based and bioinformatic techniques to study the genomic evolution and diversification of two model groups for the study of tropical rainforests, the stone oaks (Lithocarpus) and the figs (Ficus).

Workshop on Tropical Biodiversity and Genomics comes to a successful conclusion

chuck — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 06:46:46 +0000

WTBG@XTBG 2011 was a great start to an exciting new era in tropical biodiversity research in the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The workshop was organized into a series of excellent research talks presented by leading scientists and participants. Several working groups focused on transcriptomics, comparative genomics, reference-free analysis, and the detection of selective elements. The participants also discussed future directions, possible collaborations, and the structure of upcoming proposals. Invited speakers included Mike Arnold (Kunming Institute of Zoology and University of Georgia), Jeff Boore (Genome Project Solutions and University of California at Berkeley), Chuck Cannon (XTBG and Texas Tech University), David Galbraith (University of Arizona), Rhett Harrison (XTBG), Chai-Shian Kua (XTBG), Christian Lexer (University of Friborg, Switzerland), Hendrik-Jan Megens (Wageningen University), and Yann Surget-Groba (University of California, Santa Cruz). Three participants also gave presentations one evening: Ruan Jue (Beijing Institute of Genomics), Ye Cheng-Xi (XTBG), and Ye Sun (South China Botanical Garden).

Taylor Lockwood drops by

chuck — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 14:05:08 +0000

The world travelling fungi photographer, Taylor Lockwood, was spotted in the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Yunnan, China, last week. Even though he was happily minding his own business, his fame caught up with him even in this remote place. Prof. Cannon had the privilege of seeing one of Taylor’s presentations back in graduate school while taking a course in Mycology taught by Prof. Rytas Vilgalys at Duke University. After plying him with food and alcohol, Taylor agreed to give a short but wonderful presentation to an enthusiastic crowd in XTBG’s new auditorium.

Prof. Lerdau and Cannon attend the Home for Foreign Experts meeting

chuck — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 07:35:26 +0000

Drs. Lerdau and Cannon attended the Chinese Academy of Sciences meeting for Foreign Experts on June 9-10, 2011 in Beijing at the Friendship Palace. The meeting brought together the Senior and Junior Foreign Expert Fellows from across all of the CAS institutes. Dr. Lerdau gave a short presentation about his work and the two joined in tours of four CAS institutes, including Zoology, Microbiology, and Genomics. Dr. Lerdau is hosted by Dr. Cannon at the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden and is currently staying in the garden with his family until the middle of August. The two colleagues are working on the phenotypic and genomic relationship of isoprene emissions in figs (Ficus) and are co-supervising a PhD student at XTBG.

Liu Song publishes his first paper!

chuck — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 09:43:06 +0000

Mr. Liu’s paper has just been published on the Advanced Access page of the Forestry journal. Enjoy!

http://forestry.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/recent

Liu Song and
Charles H. Cannon

Impact of socio-economic status on the implementation of China’s collective forest tenure reform in Zhang Guying Township, Hunan: potential for increasing disparity

Liu Song passes his MSc defense

chuck — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 03:05:18 +0000

Liu Song successfully defended his MSc thesis entitled “Collective forest tenure reform in Yueyang County: familiarity, satisfaction and action”. Members of the defense committee included Cao Min (chair), Ma Youxin, Doug Schaeffer, Xu Jianchu, and Doug Schmidt-Vogt. He received two excellents and three good ratings. His first publication is currently in press in Forestry, an international journal of forestry research published by Oxford University Press. Congrats to our own Andy Lau!

Innovative Conservation Effort receives Whitley Fund for Nature award

chuck — Fri, 13 May 2011 15:24:31 +0000

Dr. Hotlin Ompusunggu received a Whitley Fund for Nature Award on behalf of the Health in Harmony program and for major contributions in co-founding the Alam Sehat Lestari (ASRI) organization. On the southern border of the Gunung Palung National Park, ASRI has established an innovative program to help subsidise rural health care through conservation activities. The program clearly links human health with environmental health. Gunung Palung is one of the last remaining populations of wild orang utans in lowland forests on Borneo. Mr. Loren Bell, a MSc student in the Eco-Evo group, is currently conducting research on the co-evolution of primates and fruit trees and has played a major role in maintaining the newly re-established field station. Ms. Deli ZHAI, a PhD in the Eco-Evo group, is conducting remote-sensing studies of Gunung Palung and its buffer zones to better understand both natural and human-caused disturbance patterns.

Read more about the award at the following web-site:

http://www.whitleyaward.org/

AFEC-X accredited by the Graduate University of CAS

chuck — Tue, 10 May 2011 03:15:45 +0000

Through the hard work of the Program for Field Studies, the Advanced Fieldcourse in Ecology and Conservation at Xishuangbanna has received accreditation from the Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences for 2 hours of credit. This is great news and will allow students to receive course credits for enrolling in our program! Thanks for everyone who contributed to this effort!

Registration open for AFEC-X 2011

chuck — Thu, 05 May 2011 01:49:42 +0000

Join us in our third year! This year, the course will run for six weeks to provide students with a better opportunity to conduct research and participate in group projects. Registration is now open. Please visit the link below for more information:

http://www.pfs-tropasia.org/courses/afec-x-china-2011/

Fan Huan accepted to “Quantitative Evolutionary and Comparative Genomics” workshop

chuck — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 08:46:13 +0000

Ms. Fan Huan has been accepted to participate in the OIST Summer School and Workshop in “Quantitative Evolutionary and Comparative Genomics” at the Okinawa Institute for Science and Technolog (http://www.oist.jp/qecg2011/doku.php). The aim of the OIST Summer School and Workshop “Quantitative Evolutionary and Comparative Genomics” is to provide opportunities for young researchers with quantitative interests, skills, or backgrounds to learn how they can contribute to the splitting edge of genome science. QECG is a combination of lectures and a workshop. We will invite around 34 graduate students and post-graduate researchers. OIST will provide lodging and meals during the course and support travel expenses. Ms. Fan has also been accepted into the Ph.D. program in the Department of Zoology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (USA) and will start a dual PhD program in the fall of 2011.