From Plant Press, Vol. 3, No. 3, July 2000.
Gary A. Krupnick
An international workshop was held in the Department on 13-14 July to discuss methods of determining global plant richness and endemism for conservation purposes. Eric Dinerstein, John Morrison and David Olson (World Wildlife Fund), Gerold Kier and Jens Mutke (University of Bonn-Germany), George Schatz (Missouri Botanical Garden), and Bil Alverson (Field Museum) joined John Kress, Research Training Student June Rubis, and myself for this two-day event. The task at hand was to determine how to estimate the global distribution of the approximately 300,000 extant plant species. Using WWF's Ecoregions Project as a model, we discussed ways to incorporate Bonn's extensive database on global plant richness—the Biomaps Project. The aim of the Biomaps Project is to assess the spatial patterns of plant diversity at a global scale. Their database is based on approximately 1,400 records taken from the literature on a standard area of 10,000 km2. At the meeting, we devised ways to overlay the results of the Biomaps Project with WWF's 870 delineated global ecoregions. Over the next few months we will be working with the group at Bonn to determine the number of plant species per ecoregion.
We also discussed ways in which we can utilize geo-referenced herbarium specimens to help determine hotspots of richness and endemism. With several thousand specimens in our database, and countless others at other worldwide herbaria, we plan to utilize our resources in determining global centers of plant richness and endemism. We have begun our efforts to test general hypotheses on richness by using floristic data for specific families in the Indo-China region. To date, we have mapped out over 500 species from several families, including Leguminosae, Bignoniaceae, Rosaceae, and Dipterocarpaceae. June Rubis has been assisting by expanding our database with floristic data from Malaysia and Indonesia. We hope to have some results within the year.
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