A Charles Sturt University academic’s public lecture will inform the community about the changes, both good and bad, plants and pests are having on our ecosystems.

Professor of Plant Biology and Natural Products Chemistry with Charles Sturt’s Gulbali Institute for Agriculture, Water and Environment in Wagga Wagga Leslie Weston will give the lecture ‘Adapting to change – invasive plants and pests take up the challenge’.

The lecture is part of the Provocations Public Lecture series that celebrates Charles Sturt research. Four lectures will be held in Orange, Wagga Wagga and Dubbo between June and November this year.

Professor Weston’s lecture will focus on her research about how invasive plants and pests can adapt to new environments.

The lecture will highlight key examples from the Riverina region and other locales and highlight the need for improved knowledge of invasive biology and ecology.

Professor Weston said that recent trends toward rapid urbanisation, altered land management practices and climate change have caused organisms to adapt to new environmental conditions, and understanding these adaptations is key to predicting how individual plants and plant communities will change their spatial distribution to become more invasive.

She is particularly interested in how plants successfully adapt to change and the mechanisms they employ to become increasingly invasive.

Plant invasion can impact human health, food security and management of important ecosystems and Professor Weston said she sees shifts not only in community assembly but also in plant trait distributions over time as some species dominate and others become rare or endangered.

“The Provocations series is of interest as it addresses a variety of current topics that may challenge our ways of thinking about important regional or global issues,” Professor Weston said.

“Attendees will gain a better understanding of the importance of biotic and abiotic factors upon the selection pressures which dictate evolution of invasive plants and the traits that drive invasion.”

Professor Weston’s lecture, as part of the Provocations Public Lecture series, will be held on Wednesday 28 August from 6pm at the Charles Sturt Riverina Playhouse in Wagga Wagga.

Tickets for this free lecture are now available through Humanitix. This event will also be livestreamed. When registering, participants can choose the livestream ticket to access this option.