Susanne Renner

Susanne Sabine Renner is a German botanist. Until October 2020, she was a professor of biology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich as well as director of the Botanische Staatssammlung München and the Botanischer Garten München-Nymphenburg. Since January 2021, she lives in Saint Louis, where she is an Honorary Professor of Biology at Washington University and a Research Associate at the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Susanne Sabine Reiner
Photo of Susanne Renner
BornOctober 5, 1954[1]
Tübingen
Alma materUniversity of Hamburg
Scientific career
ThesisPhänologie, Blütenbiologie und Rekombinationssysteme einiger zentralamazonischer Melastomataceen (1984)

Education

Renner received her M.Sc. degree in biology in 1980 and her Ph.D. in 1984, both from the University of Hamburg. She qualified as Professor in Systematic Botany in 1992.[2]

Career

From 1987 to 1992 Renner was associate professor at the Botanical Institute at the University of Aarhus. From 1993 to 1996 she was Professor at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. From 1996 to 2006 she was professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, affiliated with one of the largest botanical gardens worldwide, the Missouri Botanical Garden. Since 2003 she is professor for systematic botany at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich as well as director of the Botanische Staatssammlung München, the Botanischer Garten München-Nymphenburg and the University Herbarium (MSB).[2] As of 2021, she retains an emeritus position at the University of Munich and is an honorary professor at Washington University in St. Louis.[3]

Research

Renner's research interests focus on the phylogenetics, mating system evolution, and biogeography of flowering plants, in both temperate and tropical regions. Renner's early research was on the phylogeny[4][5] and reproductive biology of plants.[6] She has also worked on dioecy[7] and sex chromosomes in plants.[8][9] The use of genetic tools enables Renner to track the movement of plants across ocean basins,[10][11] define the separation of land masses following the breakup of Pangaea 153 million years ago,[12][13] and define the origin of agricultural crops including cucumbers and melons[14] and gourds.[15] Renner's work on watermelons[16] revealed that they originate from the northeast Africa in the Kordofan area and not South Africa as previously indicated.[3][17] She has tracked the relationship between Philidris nagasau ants and Squamellaria plants over the past 3 million years,[18] an interaction that is a type of farming because the ants place seeds into tree bark and then return later to eat the resulting growth.[19] Her research followed the co-evolution between sword-billed hummingbirds and passion flowers, an interaction that has been gained and lost multiple times over the past 11 million years.[20][21] In urban areas, her research on bees, how they collect pollen,[22] and the role of flower strips in attracting bees[23][24] is relevant given the impact of climate change on interactions between plants and insects.[25][26]

Selected publications

Awards

Renner is a member of several notable science academies. In 1999, she was elected to the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.[1] In 2005 she was elected as a foreign member to the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters.[27] In 2009 she was elect to Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in Germany.[28] In 2018 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[29] In 2021, she was elected corresponding member of the Gesellschaft Naturforschender Freunde zu Berlin (founded in 1773). From 2011 to 2020, she was President of the Bavarian Botanical Society.

Personal life

Renner is married to American ornithologist and ecologist Robert Ricklefs.[31]

References
  1. "Leopoldina CV" (PDF). Retrieved October 4, 2021.
  2. "Renner page at University of Missouri St. Louis". April 1, 2017. Retrieved October 4, 2021.
  3. Charles Bergquist (June 4, 2021). "Where Did Watermelon Come From?". Science Friday (Podcast). Retrieved October 4, 2021.
  4. Chanderbali, Andre S.; van der Werff, Henk; Renner, Susanne S. (2001). "Phylogeny and Historical Biogeography of Lauraceae: Evidence from the Chloroplast and Nuclear Genomes". Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden. 88 (1): 104–134. doi:10.2307/2666133. ISSN 0026-6493. JSTOR 2666133.
  5. Renner, Susanne S. (1993). "Phylogeny and classification of the Melastomataceae and Memecylaceae". Nordic Journal of Botany. 13 (5): 519–540. doi:10.1111/j.1756-1051.1993.tb00096.x. ISSN 1756-1051.
  6. Renner, Susanne S. (1989). "A Survey of Reproductive Biology in Neotropical Melastomataceae and Memecylaceae". Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden. 76 (2): 496–518. doi:10.2307/2399497. ISSN 0026-6493. JSTOR 2399497.
  7. Renner, Susanne S.; Ricklefs, Robert E. (1995). "Dioecy and its correlates in the flowering plants". American Journal of Botany. 82 (5): 596–606. doi:10.1002/j.1537-2197.1995.tb11504.x. ISSN 1537-2197.
  8. Ming, Ray; Bendahmane, Abdelhafid; Renner, Susanne S. (2011-06-02). "Sex Chromosomes in Land Plants". Annual Review of Plant Biology. 62 (1): 485–514. doi:10.1146/annurev-arplant-042110-103914. ISSN 1543-5008. PMID 21526970.
  9. "Plant sex chromosomes defy evolutionary models - The Source - Washington University in St. Louis". The Source. 2021-04-23. Retrieved 2021-10-05.
  10. Renner, Susanne S. (2005). "Relaxed molecular clocks for dating historical plant dispersal events". Trends in Plant Science. 10 (11): 550–558. doi:10.1016/j.tplants.2005.09.010. ISSN 1360-1385. PMID 16226053.
  11. Renner, Susanne (2004-07-01). "Plant Dispersal across the Tropical Atlantic by Wind and Sea Currents". International Journal of Plant Sciences. 165 (S4): S23–S33. doi:10.1086/383334. ISSN 1058-5893. S2CID 17700050.
  12. "Earth history and evolution: Cypress tree distribution reflects the breakup of Pangaea". ScienceDaily. Retrieved 2021-10-05.
  13. Mao, Kangshan; Milne, Richard I.; Zhang, Libing; Peng, Yanling; Liu, Jianquan; Thomas, Philip; Mill, Robert R.; Renner, Susanne S. (2012-05-15). "Distribution of living Cupressaceae reflects the breakup of Pangea". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 109 (20): 7793–7798. Bibcode:2012PNAS..109.7793M. doi:10.1073/pnas.1114319109. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 3356613. PMID 22550176.
  14. Sebastian, Patrizia; Schaefer, Hanno; Telford, Ian R. H.; Renner, Susanne S. (2010-08-10). "Cucumber (Cucumis sativus) and melon (C. melo) have numerous wild relatives in Asia and Australia, and the sister species of melon is from Australia". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 107 (32): 14269–14273. Bibcode:2010PNAS..10714269S. doi:10.1073/pnas.1005338107. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 2922565. PMID 20656934.
  15. Schaefer, Hanno; Renner, Susanne S. (2011). "Phylogenetic relationships in the order Cucurbitales and a new classification of the gourd family (Cucurbitaceae)". Taxon. 60 (1): 122–138. doi:10.1002/tax.601011. ISSN 1996-8175.
  16. Renner, Susanne S.; Wu, Shan; Pérez-Escobar, Oscar A.; Silber, Martina V.; Fei, Zhangjun; Chomicki, Guillaume (8 June 2021). "A chromosome-level genome of a Kordofan melon illuminates the origin of domesticated watermelons". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 118 (23): e2101486118. Bibcode:2021PNAS..11801486R. doi:10.1073/pnas.2101486118. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 8201767. PMID 34031154.
  17. Fox, Alex (June 2, 2021). "Researchers Uncover the Watermelon's Origins". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2021-10-05.
  18. Chomicki, Guillaume; Renner, Susanne S. (2016). "Obligate plant farming by a specialized ant". Nature Plants. 2 (12): 16181. doi:10.1038/nplants.2016.181. ISSN 2055-0278. PMID 27869787. S2CID 23748032.
  19. Newitz, Annalee (2016-11-23). "In Fiji, ants have learned to grow plants to house their massive colonies". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2021-10-05.
  20. Munich, Ludwig Maximilian University of. "Escape from an evolutionary cul-de-sac". phys.org. Retrieved 2021-10-05.
  21. Abrahamczyk, S.; Souto-Vilarós, D.; Renner, S. S. (2014-11-22). "Escape from extreme specialization: passionflowers, bats and the sword-billed hummingbird". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 281 (1795): 20140888. doi:10.1098/rspb.2014.0888. PMC 4213610. PMID 25274372.
  22. Renner, Susanne (1983). "The Widespread Occurrence of Anther Destruction by Trigona Bees in Melastomataceae". Biotropica. 15 (4): 251–256. doi:10.2307/2387649. ISSN 0006-3606. JSTOR 2387649.
  23. "How quickly do flower strips in cities help the local bees?". ScienceDaily. March 2, 2020. Retrieved 2021-10-05.
  24. Hofmann, Michaela M.; Renner, Susanne S. (2020-02-27). "One-year-old flower strips already support a quarter of a city's bee species". Journal of Hymenoptera Research. 75: 87–95. doi:10.3897/jhr.75.47507. ISSN 1314-2607. S2CID 212698750.
  25. Renner, Susanne S.; Zohner, Constantin M. (2018-11-02). "Climate Change and Phenological Mismatch in Trophic Interactions Among Plants, Insects, and Vertebrates". Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics. 49 (1): 165–182. doi:10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-110617-062535. ISSN 1543-592X. S2CID 91925822.
  26. Scherf, Martina (April 7, 2019). "Wissenschaft: Im Reich der Bienchen und Blümchen". Süddeutsche.de (in German). Retrieved 2021-10-05.
  27. "Royal Academy". www.royalacademy.dk. Retrieved 2021-10-05.
  28. "Leopoldina news" (PDF). March 2018. Retrieved October 4, 2021.
  29. "Susanne S. Renner". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 2021-10-05.
  30. International Plant Names Index.  S.S.Renner.
  31. Jennifer Viegas (2012), "Profile of Robert E. Ricklefs", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (in German), vol. 109, no. 38, pp. 15075–7, Bibcode:2012PNAS..10915075V, doi:10.1073/pnas.1213178109, PMC 3458327, PMID 22908302
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