EUNOPS-2025

The European Network of Palm Scientists cordially invites all researchers with interests in palms to join us for our annual meeting in Cambridge on 8-9th May 2025. The meeting will feature talks and posters from all areas of palm science, as well as informal discussions aiming to foster future collaborations on palms. This informal meeting is intended to be a supportive environment for researchers at all career stages to present their findings, but especially students and early career researchers. EUNOPS and its meetings are not exclusive to European researchers – researchers from any part of the globe are extremely welcome to participate. The 2025 meeting is organised by Cambridge University Botanic Garden and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

There is no registration fee to attend this meeting. A modest fee is charged for the conference dinner (optional).

About EUNOPS

EUNOPS is an informal association of biologists with a wide spectrum of research interests in palms (Arecaceae or Palmae). The network, established in 2001, exists to facilitate exchange of information on palm research taking place in Europe, and to promote integration and collaboration. EUNOPS meetings have been held annually since the network’s inception providing a regular forum for face-to-face discussions and research presentations. The meetings have taken place at different European venues each year and have a strong emphasis on student/postdoctoral research and lively debate.

Thursday 8 May 

8.30 Registration 

9.30 Session 1: Taxonomy and morphology

• 9.30 Sam Brockington: Welcome  
• 9.50 Louis Aureglia: Preliminary observations on the taxonomy of Ravenea in Madagascar
• 10.10 Benedikt Kuhnhäuser: Towards a new classification of Calamus, the most species-rich genus of palms
• 10.30 Zainab Vawda: Recurating Calamus: a workflow for navigating major taxonomic changes
• 10.50 Anna Mikhaylova: Fruit diversity of coryphoid palms

11.15 Coffee Break

12.00 Keynote talk

• Bill Baker: The future of the plant tree of life

13.00 Lunch Break

14.00 Session 2: Traits and adaptations

• 14.00 Sreetama Bhadra: Functional traits and genome size impact palm speciation through adaptation and allometry
• 14.20 Renske Onstein: The consequences of the Late Quaternary megafauna extinctions for megafruit palms
• 14.40 Chloe Fuson: Predicting and testing the climatic vulnerability of the date palm wild relatives
• 15.00 James Tregear: Progress in characterising the genome of pacaya palm (Chamaedorea tepejilote) and its variability within the species (+ poster flash talk)

15.30 Tea Break

16.00 Session 3: Diversity and distributions

• 16.00 Wolf Eiserhardt: Towards a “Palm Atlas”: building a central resource for palm species distribution data
• 16.20 Hanchen Shuai: Mapping the distribution of global palms based on GBIF occurrence records
• 16.40 Dylan Fuller: Fiji’s unique palm flora – an update on taxonomy conservation status, plus reflections on the past 30 years and what the future might look like for Fijian palms
• 17.00 William Baker: Palms of the Comoro Islands

17.30 Close

19.00 EUNOPS Dinner (Brown’s)

Friday 9 May

9.00 Tour of Cambridge University Botanic Garden and Herbaria (CGE and CGG) 

10.30 Coffee break

11.00 Session 4: Phylogenetics and evolution

• 11.00 Yaël Assassa: Abiotic and biotic drivers of the diversification of the neotropical palm genus Geonoma
• 11.20 Adrian Hill: Phylogenetic insights into the hyperdominant palm genus Euterpe and their implications for Neotropical biodiversity
• 11.40 Jeronimo Cid: Phoenix phylogeny – advances in establishing relationships in a tricky genus
• 12.00 Kristine Kristensen: Resolution of phylogenomic trees is limited by both difficulties in gene tree estimation and gene tree incongruence
• 12.20 Paola de Lima Ferreira & Wolf Eiserhardt: Palm phylogenomics and the origins of rainforest hyperdiversity

13.00 Lunch 

14.00 Session 5: Identification and ethnobotany

• 14.00 Sidonie Bellot: Palm identification tools – what we have and what we need
• 14.20 Thomas Couvreur: Peach palm (Bactris gasipaes var. gasipaes) in Ecuador
• 14.40 Fanny Katumu Massally: Preliminary ethnobotanical survey on Raphia hookeri in Sierra Leone

15.00 EUNOPS business session

15.30 Tea break

16.00 Session 6: Conservation

• 16.00 Viktoria Keller: Human impact on biodiversity over time focusing on palms of the genus Pritchardia
• 16.20 Hannah Wheatcroft: Evaluating the extinction risk of rattan palms from Sulawesi, Borneo, and Vietnam
• 16.40 Francesco Dal Grande: Goethe’s Palm: Genomic insights and conservation of Chamaerops humilis

17.00 Close

The meeting will take place at the Sainsbury Laboratory, located at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden.

Getting to the Botanic Garden and the Sainsbury Lab

The nearest airport to Cambridge is London Stansted and the name of the train station is Cambridge. Access to the Botanic Garden and the Sainsbury Lab is through the gate at 47 Bateman St.

Registration to the meeting is now closed. Please contact Ángela Cano (ac2202@cam.ac.uk) if you have any questions.