Professor Ladislav (Laco) Mucina, 68 years young, was born in then Czechoslovakia (today Slovakia). He is currently citizen of Austria and Australia, and holder of permanent residency in South Africa. Almost his entire professional life he served the International Association for Vegetation Science in various management and executive capacities. His scientific interests span vegetation science (especially vegetation surveys, classification, and mapping), ecology of world biomes, plant taxonomy, molecular phylogeny, population ecology, evolutionary biology, biogeography, biodiversity science, environmental management, plant community restoration, and conservation biology.Dr Michael C. Rutherford was born in South Africa 76 years ago, and currently resides in the United Kingdom. During his research career he was employed by the South African National Biodiversity Institute and its forerunners, based in Windhoek (Namibia), Pretoria and Cape Town, and he served on several national research committees. He was first author of the seminal work on Biomes of Southern Africa in 1986 and was co-editor of the standard work on the Vegetation of South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland in 2006. He led the study on the plant diversity component of the South African country report on climate change in 2000. His research has also spanned primary production ecology, ecophysiology, ecological impacts of invasive alien plants, pollution and allelochemical effects, land transformation and biodiversity conservation including, more recently, the impacts of herbivore-driven land degradation on plant diversity.
