Tue 13 Jun 2017: 2.00pm – Wang Yang on Predicting future plant distribution globally and developing a framework incorporating natural dispersal into MaxEnt”

Department of Biological Sciences, NUS
Qualifying Examination

“Predicting future plant distribution globally and developing a framework incorporating natural dispersal into MaxEnt”

Speaker:          Wang Yang (Graduate Student, Dept. of Biological Sciences, NUS)
Date:                 13 June 2017, Tuesday
Time:                2pm
Venue:             Seminar Room 1 (S3 Level 4, #04-14)
Supervisor:     Assoc Prof Webb, Edward Layman

Abstract: – Understanding the future distribution of plant species can provide fundamental information on future biodiversity, community structure and composition. However, the majority of previous distribution studies focused on small taxonomic groups or small geographical range, and the few large scale studies were outdated in terms of data and methodology used. Therefore, my PhD aims at summarizing previous studies on species distribution modelling (featuring MaxEnt), predicting future distributions of more than 2000 species on the global scale through MaxEnt, investigating the effects of climate change on invasive plant species, and developing a new framework for incorporating natural dispersal process into MaxEnt from the perspective of dispersal vectors.

All are welcome