Ep. 352 - Shared Floras a World Apart

In Defense of Plants Podcast

In Defense of Plants

Science & Medicine, Natural Sciences

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2022

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Eastern North America and eastern Asia share a surprising amount of plant lineages. Termed the "eastern Asian–eastern North American floristic disjunction," this phenomenon has fascinated botanists for centuries. Interestingly, eastern Asia usually boasts more representatives of these shared genera than North America and our guest today has spent some time trying to figure out why. Joining us is Dr. Anthony Melton, an evolutionary biologist who uses phylogenetics to explain the evolutionary history of these shared floras. Tune in and learn just how similar and different these two floras can be! This episode was produced in part by Christie, Carlos, Paleo Fern, Levi, Sylvia, Lanny, Ben, Lily, Craig, Sarah, Lor, Monika, Brandon, Jeremy, Suzanne, Kristina, Christine, Silas, Michael, Aristia, Felicidad, Lauren, Danielle, Allie, Jeffrey, Amanda, Tommy, Marcel, C Leigh, Karma, Shelby, Christopher, Alvin, Arek, Chellie, Dani, Paul, Dani, Tara, Elly, Colleen, Natalie, Nathan, Ario, Laura, Cari, Margaret, Mary, Connor, Nathan, Jan, Jerome, Brian, Azomonas, Ellie, University Greens, Joseph, Melody, Patricia, Matthew, Garrett, John, Ashley, Cathrine, Melvin, OrangeJulian, Porter, Jules, Griff, Joan, Megan, Marabeth, Les, Ali, Southside Plants, Keiko, Robert, Bryce, Wilma, Amanda, Helen, Mikey, Michelle, German, Joerg, Cathy, Tate, Steve, Kae, Carole, Mr. Keith Santner, Lynn, Aaron, Sara, Kenned, Brett, Jocelyn, Ethan, Sheryl, Runaway Goldfish, Ryan, Chris, Alana, Rachel, Joanna, Lori, Paul, Griff, Matthew, Bobby, Vaibhav, Steven, Joseph, Brandon, Liam, Hall, Jared, Brandon, Christina, Carly, Kazys, Stephen, Katherine, Mohsin Kazmi Takes Pictures, Manny, doeg, Daniel, Tim, Philip, Tim, Lisa, Brodie, Bendix, Irene, holly, Sara, and Margie.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone and welcome to the Indefensive Plants Podcast, the official podcast of IndefensivePlants.com.
0:05.6	What's up? This is your host Matt, welcome to the show. How's everyone doing this week?
0:10.0	If you're a gardener or a botanizer that's spent any time in Eastern North America or Eastern Asia,
0:15.1	you may have noticed there is a lot of overlap in the flora. These two areas of these
0:20.8	respective continents share a lot of plant families and genera. There is a pattern among some of this,
0:27.7	which usually equates to Eastern Asia having far more representatives of different genera
0:32.9	than Eastern North America, but that is by no means the rule. Regardless, this is a pattern that
0:37.6	has fascinated scientists for over a century, and our guest today has chipped off his own chunk
0:44.3	in trying to understand why we see these patterns across flora shared between different continents.
0:51.5	Joining us to discuss this is Dr. Anthony Melton, and you're going to hear all about his
0:55.5	fascinating approach to understanding the so-called Eastern North America, Eastern Asia,
1:00.6	floristic, disjunction. I don't want to steal any of his thunder, so let's just jump right into it.
1:05.2	Without further ado, here's my conversation with Dr. Melton. I hope you enjoy.
1:09.8	All right, Dr. Anthony Melton, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I will admit this is
1:28.8	round two. Our attempt is unfortunately technology being what it is through us a little bit of a
1:34.2	roadblock, and you're an amazing sport for wanting to do this again. But welcome to the podcast
1:38.3	for those of you that haven't heard the non-existent file we recorded before. How about we start
1:43.4	off with an introduction. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what it is you do.
1:48.1	Awesome. Well, thank you for having me on again. My name is Anthony Melton. I am a post-doc at
1:53.2	Boise State University. Currently, I am working on genomics of drug adaptation in
1:58.3	Artamazia Tritontata based in Big Sage Brush. So I'm broadly an evolutionary biologist
2:04.7	interested in plants and how they've adapted pretty much just gotten to where they are.
	...

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