Jiří Hulcr is an Associate Professor at the School of Forest Resources and Conservation, University of Florida, USA with PhD degrees from Michigan State University, and the University of South Bohemia. He studies complex symbiotic interactions among beetles, fungi, bacteria. In doing so, he address fundamental questions about the evolutionary origin of fungus-farming symbiosis, the chemistry that makes it function, and how these tree-killing symbioses affect trees, forests, and people. Much of his work also focuses on the role of globalization on intercontinental movement of ambrosia beetle invasions.
Petr Pyšek is a senior research scientist at the Institute of Botany, Czech Academy of Sciences, and Professor of Ecology at Charles University in Prague. His research focuses on biological invasions, including the role of macroecological drivers and their context dependence, global biogeography of alien floras, mechanisms of species invasiveness at various organizational and spatial scales, habitat invasibility, and impact of invasive species. He published over 400 journal papers and is the recipient of the Robert H. Whittaker Distinguished Ecologist Award from the Ecological Society of America (2017) and the Alfred Russel Wallace Award from the International Biogeography Society (2021).