Abstract:
In this seminar, I want to introduce the shift of my academic focus from a Ph.D. candidate to an early-career scientist based on published studies from our lab. My research is involved with aquatic plants, which is a non-mainstream area compared with terrestrial plants. There are over three thousands of aquatic plants in the world, and 800+ species in China have been described as aquatic plants. Wuhan Botanical Garden has a long research history on aquatic plants with 400+ species alive in the germplasm resource center now. As a Ph.D. candidate, I have used submerged macrophyte as the core experiment material. Within the four life forms, submerged plants are more ecologically important than emergent, free-floating and floating-leaved plants since submerged plants can maintain a clear-water state based on positive feedback including reduction of sediment re-suspension and allelopathic effects on phytoplankton. Nevertheless, aquatic plants, especially submerged plants, have been disappearing in shallow lakes and rivers in China due to climate changes, eutrophication and other human interference during recent decades. Nowadays, in-situ investigation on natural plants community in fresh waters has become nearly impossible. Thus, numbers of mesocosm studies, especially short-term controlled experiments, on the ecological aspect of aquatic plants have soared. Meantime, most of my research has been conducted in these systems at an intermediate ecological scale. After ten-years focus on submerged plants, I extend my research focus to other life forms of aquatic plants alongside the increasing difficulties in discovering the submerged plants in natural conditions. Additionally, from a botanical aspect, lots of interesting topics emerged by the comparison between aquatic and terrestrial plants, such as hydraulic traits of floating-leaved plants or root pressure of emergent plants. During the past fifteen years of my research experience, I always wonder how to choose a topic for my future study and thus expect to have discussions about this with young Ph.D. and scientists in this seminar.
Speaker: Dr. Assoc. Prof. Yu Cao
Affiliation: Wuhan Botanical Garden
Time: 4:30 PM, Tuesday, July. 25, 2023
Venue: ZOOM 会议平台 会议 ID：312 430 8960 会议密码 PWD：666666
ZOOM
会议 ID：312 430 8960
会议密码 PWD：666666
