BOT/PTG Plant Taxonomy and Phytogeography
Lecturers: Radim J. Vašut, Ĺuboš Majeský
Lecture: 2 hours/week + exercise 2 hours/week
Credits: 4
Summer semester
Form of course completion: exam
The course is introduction to the plant species diversity on Earth with emphasis on systematics & evolution of plants and their distribution in space and time.
The course consists of 2 major parts:
- Plant Systematics and Evolution;
- Phytogeography. The first part of the course includes: understanding the major classification approaches and principles in plant systematics and characterising major evolutionary groups of terrestric plants (mosses and its allies, ferns and the relatives, gymnosperms and flowering plants) and their evolutionary novelties (reproduction, morphology). We will discuss selected (evolutionary, ecologically or socially/economically) important plant species. The second part of the course focuses on the understanding the patterns of Plant distributions on Earth; we will discuss major biotic and abiotic factors influencing the spatial and temporal distribution of plants from the level of species to level of biomes. We will characterise major biomes and evolution of the Flora from Pleistocene to presence.
