From Plant Press, Vol. 1, No. 6, November 1998.
By Robert DeFilipps
Her laboratory is laden with the tools of her trade, including sets of the heavy buckled belts and iron tree-climbing spikes usually associated with mountaineers and lumberjacks.
Originally from Owensboro, Kentucky, Vicki Funk, Curator of Botany, has been directing the National Museum of Natural History’s (NMNH) Biological Diversity of the Guianas Program for eleven years. Funk, a specialist in evolutionary biology, cladistics, biogeography, and the study of unusual Asteraceae adapted for surviving in temperate climates at tropical latitudes, arrived in the department in 1981.
In the course of fieldwork in numerous Latin American and other countries, Funk’s botanical rewards have sometimes been gained in the face of adversity, including an erupting volcano in Costa Rica, and clouds of tiny, combat-style “T90” mosquitoes on the white sand savannas of Guyana. Now, slowly but surely, an understanding of the complex biological mysteries of the Guianas’ undisturbed interior forests is emerging under her tutelage.
The three Guianas demonstrate approximately 30 different vegetation types in an area high in the sweltering equatorial shoulder of northeastern South America. The three nations are, from west to east, Guyana (the erstwhile British Guiana); Suriname (formerly Dutch Guiana); and French Guiana, an integral part of France. While its scope embraces all three countries, a substantial amount of the research conducted under the umbrella of the Guianas Program is performed mainly in Guyana. To the general public, the most familiar symbols of Guyana are perhaps the indigenous cannonball tree (Couroupita guianensis); the royal water lily (Victoria amazonica); majestic Kaieteur Falls which is three times the height of Niagara Falls; and the asphyxiating curare poisons made by Indians such as the Wai Wai. The term “Guiana” recalls as well the legendary exploits of Sir Walter Raleigh in search (1595, 1617) of El Dorado in Spanish Guiana (now Venezuela), and in fact, geographers now believe that the elusive city of gold he sought near “Lake Parima” is actually Lake Amuku, a “wet weather lake” in the savannas north of the Kanuku Mountains in Guyana.
Today, the natural treasures of the Guianas under investigation by biologists are not often intangible, but they are sometimes as elusive as the ones which haunted the dreams of Raleigh centuries ago. In today’s terms, the biotic treasures are felt to comprise the vast ecological and evolutionary interrelationships and vital phytochemical diversity inherent to the region.
Everything in the rainforest has consequence and signficance, e.g., when pollinators such as bats and other mammals are interfered with for any reason, such as hunting them for food, the many unserviced flowers and would-be fruits are lost to the immediate reproductive output of the host trees. Over the past several years, plant collecting expeditions under the Guianas Program have yielded species new to science, including a diminuitive epiphytic species of Hecistopteris fern (Vittariaceae) from the Kaieteur Falls which is being published by Carol Kelloff and Greg McKee, and a new member of the Lauraceae from montane southern Guyana assigned to the genus Rhodostemonodaphne.
In addition to Funk, the Guianas biodiversity program is staffed by Carol Kelloff (assistant director) and Tom Hollowell (data manager for collections and georeferences). The program has produced major breakthroughs in our knowledge of the Guianas, often in tandem with the Centre for the Study of Biological Diversity, created in 1992 with a building located at, but independent of, the University of Guyana in Georgetown, and originally funded mainly by the Royal Bank of Canada. For the Centre’s development, Funk was, and still is, a central dynamic of leadership values, inspired self-sufficiency, and advice.
With the cooperation of more than 90 institutions, the overall NMNH program has yielded products such as 30 publications under the auspices of the Centre in Guyana; many thousands of Guianan plant specimens obtained by 12 years of resident collectors appointed by NMNH; a Vegetation Map of Guyana (1995) utilizing satellite imagery; two editions of a highly useful Checklist of the Plants of the Guianas, now on-line; and a Preliminary Checklist of the Plants of Kaieteur National Park (1998) which is available electronically at http://osfl.gmu.edu/ckelloff/. Studies of frogs, birds, mammals, termites, butterflies, fish and aquatic insects have also been promulgated in conjunction with local and overseas zoologists, and numerous botanists from the department and overseas institutions have been sent out to study the area under the aegis of the program.
Technical studies and inventories of species richness and areas of endemism in the Guianas, often plugged into standard GIS (Geographic Information System) methodology for modelling of non-biotic data such as latitude/longitude, rainfall and elevation, are yielding hard data for analysis. The results will aid in predicting, with a high level of confidence, the distribution of species and concomitantly the sites of areas rich in biodiversity which may thus qualify for status as newly proclaimed national parks. As a result, the eastern Kanuku Mountains of Guyana, for example, seem ripe for designation as a national park in the future. Through GIS, park boundaries can thus be situated in affirmation of a burgeoning ecological awareness in the Guianas which, often unfortunately, is accompanied by irregular but increasingly frequent spurts of resource harvest that occur in the interest of economic progress.
In a wistful mood that suddenly came over her as we talked, Funk lamented the heavy environmental toll that is being exacted daily by various perturbations in Guyana, such as those resulting from Asian timber and logging concessions; misguided intentions to clearcut forests for oilpalm plantations; wildlife traders; the development of diamond and bauxite mines; and gold mines which are subject to damaging cyanide spills. Perhaps the ghost of Sir Walter Raleigh is still “going for the gold” in the Guianas today.
At this point, Funk hopes that the Centre for the Study of Biological Diversity, which is currently operating under a grant from US-AID, will become self-sufficient in the next few years.
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