Conference Speakers

Professor of Plant Genetics and Co-director of MSc Plant and Fungal Taxonomy Diversity, Queen Mary University of London, UK

Professor Andrew Leitch has interests in biodiversity and conservation, and has worked on many groups of plants, including orchids, bluebells, baobabs and more. He has expertise in community ecology, particularly of grasslands, where he has been studying the impact of polyploidy and genome size on species occurrence. He has generated a database for the British Isles flora, called the ‘BI Flora Explorer’, which combines species characters, traits, distributions and genetics. The database with AI to determine the likely impact of fertilizers and climate change on species distributions. Prof. Leitch has also worked for many years on plant polyploidy and interspecific hybridisation, studying a range of systems, including in the plant genera Nicotiana, Prospero, Spartina and Tragopogon.

In recent years Prof. Leitch has championed the 'Sustainable Biodiversity Research Initiative (SUBRI)', which aims to coordinate international commitments to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework to conserve and enhance biodiversity.  He is currently working to re-wild the uplands of Kenya by planting sustainable, harvestable bamboo, which is urgently needed for people, wildlife, livelihoods and water security, as well as contributing towards reduced global carbon emissions.

School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

Professor Wayne Twine is an ecologist with over twenty years of research experience at the human-environment interface in common-property resource systems in southern Africa. His research focuses on natural resource use, rural livelihoods, resource ecology, community-based natural resource management, and sustainability in savanna socio-ecological systems. Wayne is based at the Wits Rural Campus in the central lowveld of Limpopo Province, where he manages the SUNRAE research programme (Sustaining Natural Resources in African Ecosystems).

This programme aims to generate knowledge, human resources and community support for sustainable use of natural resources in rural communities, to the benefit of the environment and the people.

Compton Herbarium, South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI)

Mr Thaabiet Parker is a researcher at the Compton Herbarium at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. His broader research interests include plant systematics, molecular phylogenetics and evolutionary biology, focusing primarily on genera of the Asteraceae (daisy family). Thaabiet is currently concluding his PhD in Biological Sciences at UCT on the evolution and taxonomy of the South African daisy genus Dimorphotheca.

His upcoming research is focused on integrating molecular data with morphological and ecological lines of evidence to understand the speciation process in highly diverse daisy genera (e.g. Senecio, Felicia), in a biogeographic context. Thaabiet received the ‘Best Young Botanist Award’ for his presentation at the 49^th SAAB Annual Conference in January 2024.

Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, University of Groningen, the Netherlands

Dr Casper van der Kooi is an evolutionary biophysicist whose research focuses on how flowers (and animals) create their colour and shine (glossiness) using pigment and structure, as well as how perception of these colours evolves in the eyes of their insect pollinators and potential predators (herbivores).

Casper uses various approaches and techniques to address these questions, including evolutionary theory, behavioural experiments, optics, and anatomy. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBQCf8wdWgI&ab_channel=UniversityofGroningen

School of Life Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg

Professor Steve Johnson is a pollination ecologist whose research focuses on pollinator-driven speciation and the evolution of functional floral traits, including chemical ecology. Amongst his many research interests are the formation of pollination ecotypes, floral mimicry in orchids and milkweeds, and convergent evolution in plants with specialized pollination systems. Steve’s influence in the field of pollination biology is immense – both globally and nationally; with more than 26 000 citations from over 500 published works.

Steve currently holds the DST-NRF SARChI chair in Evolutionary Biology and is an A1 NRF-rated scientist and a SAAB Gold medallist (2023) and Bronze medallist (1996).