Legume Phylogeny Working Group

Meeting Summarized by Anne Bruneau Edited by Colin Hughes

A Legume Phylogeny Working Group (LPWG) virtual meeting was held on September 30th, 2021 to update the community on progress with the LPWG Working Groups, discuss new research initiatives and announce upcoming publications and events. 105 participants from 27 countries attended the meeting. The meeting was organised and introduced by Anne Bruneau (Université de Montréal). It was encouraging to see many veteran legume systematists alongside many young new legume researchers who were attending the meeting for the first time.

The LPWG was founded in 2010 with the objective of fostering collaboration and facilitating sharing of material and ideas amongst legume systematics researchers. Subsequent to the online meeting organised by Colin Hughes (University of Zürich) and Manuel de la Estrella (Universidad de Córdoba) in May 2020, five working groups - Taxonomy, Occurrence Data, Traits, Phylogenomics and Open Tree of Life - were established to advance research collaboration in these five areas which were considered of particular importance to understand the systematics and evolution of legumes. Updates and progress reports from each working group are presented below with the aim of encouraging other researchers to collaborate and contribute.

Anyone who is interested in collaborating with one or other of the Working Groups and projects is encouraged to contact the relevant working group coordinators.