Joint 6th Annual Meeting on Plant Ecology and Evolution & COBECORE meeting

29th September 2022

The 6th Annual Meeting on Plant Ecology and Evolution (AMPEE6) will be jointly organized with the COBECORE meeting.

AMPEE is an initiative of the Royal Botanical Society of Belgium and Meise Botanic Garden, who also collectively publish the international diamond open access journal Plant Ecology and Evolution. AMPEE is an open and lively meeting with a wide range of plant scientists from Belgium and elsewhere. It is an excellent occasion for promoting your research, and for meeting and sharing your research ideas with other botanists. We particularly encourage young researchers to participate, but everyone is welcome.

COBECORE is a Belgian Science Policy Office funded project on Congo basin eco-climatological data recovery and valorisation that brings together an interdisciplinary network of partners with the objective to establish baseline measurements necessary in long-term ecological and climatological research by valorising unexplored historical data. More information can be found on the COBECORE website.

The AMPEE-COBECORE meeting will take place on Thursday, 29th September 2022 in the Castle of Bouchout, Meise Botanic Garden. The COBECORE workshops will take place on Friday, 30th September 2022.

Feel free to circulate this information among your colleagues. We are looking forward to welcoming you at the meeting!

Registration (now closed)

Register here

🡒 Deadline for registration and abstract submission for oral presentation: 5th September 2022 (CLOSED)

🡒 Deadline for registration and abstract submission for poster presentation: 22th September 2022, 4pm CET (CLOSED)

🡒 Deadline for registration (without abstract): 22th September 2022, 4pm CET (CLOSED)


Registration is free for members of the Royal Botanical Society of Belgium and for members of the COBECORE project. For non-members, the registration fee is 10 euro and includes coffee, lunch, and a reception. The registration fee is payable upon arrival at the meeting.

If you have questions about the meeting, please contact:

Organizing committee

  • Meise Botanic Garden: Frederik Leliaert, Ann Bogaerts, Brecht Verstraete

  • COBECORE: Filip Vandelook, Steven Janssens, Piet Stoffelen, Kim Jacobsen

  • Royal Botanical Society of Belgium: Renate Wesselingh

Program & abstracts

Thursday 29th September 2022

9:00-9:40: Registration / Coffee

9:40-9:50: Opening welcome - Frederik Leliaert (Meise Botanic Garden) and Renate Wesselingh (Botanical Society of Belgium)

9:50-10:15: Keynote Marijn Bauters (UGent) Understanding tropical forest ecology through biogeochemistry

10:15-11:15: Contributed talks (Chair: Steven Janssens, Koen Hufkens)

10:15-10:30 - Jonas Depecker (KU Leuven) The association between rainforest disturbance and recovery, tree community composition, and community traits in the Yangambi area in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

10:30-10:45 - Claire Baudoux (ULB) Invasion dynamics of the neotropical tree Cecropia peltata L. (Urticaceae) in Cameroon

10:45-11:00 - Félicien Meunier (UGent) A first Dynamic Global Vegetation model to simulate the carbon dynamics of the Congo Basin rainforests

11:00-11:15 - Assumpta Mukandera ULB Mushrooms of the African Great Lakes Region. Ethnomycology, sensory analysis and nutritional composition

11:15-11:35 - Coffee break

11:35-12:35 - Contributed talks (Chair: Brecht Verstraete, Sofie Meeus)

11:35-11:50 - Paul Kagame (UGent) Taxonomic Review of the east Africa Ipomoea L. and Sweet Potato Wild Relatives (Convolvulaceae)

11:50-12:05 - Rizinde Jean-Claude (UCL) Preliminary results on the revision of the African Laetiporus

12:05-12:20 - Ruben De Blaere (RMCA) SMARTWOOD ID: Smart classification of Congolese timbers – On the why and how of digitizing wood collections

12:20-12:35 - Marc Sosef (Meise BG) Central African Flora's

12:35-12:50 - 90-second lightning talks to introduce the posters

12:50-14:00 - Lunch & group photo

14:00-15:30 - Parallel session 1: From lichen diversity to plant genomics (Chair: Frederik Leliaert, Ann Bogaerts)

14:00-14:15 - Luiz Henrique Martins Fonseca (UGent) Generation time explains molecular evolutionary pace in Annonaceae

14:15-14:30 - Quinten Bafort (UGent) Do the immediate effects of whole genome duplication facilitate polyploid establishment in stressful environments?

14:30-14:45 - Luca Borgato (UGent/Meise BG) The role of climate and fungal taxonomy in the lichenized Trentepohliales communities

14:45-15:00 - Elise Lebreton (ULiège) Photobiont diversity and specificity in family Gomphillaceae (lichenized Ascomycota) reveals the importance of Heveochlorella (Trebouxiophyceae) in tropical environments.

15:00-15:15 - Lea Mouton (ULiège) Patterns and drivers of beta diversity across geographic scales and lineages in the Macaronesian flora

15:15-15:30 - Sébastien Mirolo (ULiège) Where do macaronesian bryophytes come from?

14.00-15.30: Parallel session 2: COBECORE (Chair: Filip Vandelook, Kim Jacobsen)

14:00-14:15 - Bhely Angoboy Ilondea (INERA-RDC) Variation in onset of leaf unfolding and wood formation in a Central African tropical tree species

14:15-14:30 - Basile Luse Belanganayi (RMCA/ULiège) Daily and seasonal rhythms of stem shrinkage and swelling in Luki rainforest

14:30-14:45 - Chadrack Kafuti (UGent) Drivers of variations in height-diameter allometry of an emergent tropical tree species

14:45-15:00 - Lisette Mangaza (ULiège) Impacts of land use change on biomass and diversity in the forest landscape of Yangambi Biosphere Reserve, DRC

15:00-15:15 - Emmanuel Kasongo Yakusu (UGent) Analysis of climate change in the forests of the Congo Basin: from local to regional scales

15:15-15:30 - Alain Kadorho (UGent/RMCA) Untangling forest history in the Yangambi Biosphere Reserve (Tshopo, D.R. Congo) through fossil charcoal analysis.

15.30-15.50 - Coffee break

15.50-15.55 - Journal presentation: Plant Ecology and Evolution (Brecht Verstraete, Meise BG)

15.55-16.15 - Proclamation of the E. Van Rompaey award

16.15-16.20 - Closing address

16:20-18:30 - Posters, reception proclamation of best student poster awards


Friday 30th September 2022: COBECORE workshop

9:00-10:30 - Presentations

10:30-10:45 - Coffee

10:45-12:45 - Stomata workshop

12:45-13:45 - Lunch

13:45-15:45 - WoodID workshop

Twitter #AMPEE6

Banner photo by Zain Fiaz (Unsplash)