From Plant Press, Vol. 11, No. 2 from April 2008.
The National Museum of Natural History is going “blue” this year. At the end of September, the museum will open Ocean Hall, a one-of-a-kind interpretive exhibit, extraordinary in scale, presenting the global ocean from a cross-disciplinary perspective, highlighting the biological, geological, and anthropological expertise and unparalleled scientific collections of the museum, as well as ongoing research in marine science.
The Department of Botany has a very rich history in aquatic botany. The first historical cryptogamic collections of the U.S. National Herbarium date back to the U.S. Exploring Expeditions and were initially maintained by curator Mason Hale. In 1965, Elmer Yale Dawson (1918-1966) came to the Smithsonian Institution to accept the newly established position of curator of Cryptogamic Botany. He brought with him thousands of specimens. Dawson’s research specialties included benthic marine algae, especially Rhodophyta of the tropical and subtropical Pacific. Unfortunately, his position was short-lived due to a fatal diving accident in the Red Sea a year and a half into his career at the Smithsonian.
When the Smithsonian Oceanographic Sorting Center (SOSC) was terminated in 1992, Ernani G. Meñez, the director of SOSC (1988-1992), was transferred to the Botany Department. An expert on Philippine seaweeds, he recently served several years as Emeritus Research Botanist. In 1970, after a transfer from the SOSC, Arthur Dahl joined the Department as a Curator of Algae for five years. Dahl had special interests in coral reef ecology, marine algae, and island environments. Currently, Botany has four curators conducting research on aquatic botany: Walter Adey (coralline algae), Maria Faust (dinoflagellates), Mark Littler (coral reef plants), and James Norris (marine macroalgae; Curator of the U.S. Algal Collection).
Algae are photosynthetic organisms that occur in most habitats. They vary from small, single-celled forms to complex multicellular forms, such as the giant kelps that grow to 100 meters in length. The U.S. Algal Collection is represented by almost 400,000 accessioned and inventoried herbarium specimens (and over 4,900 type specimens) preserved on herbarium sheets, microscope slides and liquid preparations. The collection is comprised of marine, estuarine, freshwater, terrestrial (including cave) and airborne algae and is worldwide in origin, with a strong representation of tropical and subtropical marine algae. Major holdings include the following regions: Gulf of California, Pacific Mexico, southern and central California and the Channel Islands, the Galapagos Islands, Aldabra Atoll, and the Caribbean (especially Florida, Belize, Bahamas and Panama). Also contained in this collection but maintained at the physically separate Museum Support Center (MSC) are the complete Francis Drouet Cyanophyta collection and a separate diatom collection of freshwater and marine materials, both recent and fossil.
This issue of the Plant Press highlights some of the Department’s recent research, explorations, and publications in aquatic botany. Our cover story features the research of Maria Faust on microscopic dinoflagellates. Her recent research with DNA barcoding technology will help shed light on the impressive numbers of dinoflagellate species globally. On page 5, you can read about Mark Littler’s fascinating discovery of a new algal community off the coast of Panama. Also featured is a new publication by Mark and Diane Littler on an Indian River Lagoon field guide of aquatic plants (page 7). Finally, for his contribution to marine science, Ernani Meñez was recently honored with an award from SillimanUniversity in the Philippines (page 4).
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