The Plant Press

Art by Alice Tangerini: Moquinia racemosa (Spreng.) DC

From Plant Press, Vol. 12, No. 4 from October 2009.

Moquinia racemosa is the sole species in the genus Moquinia, and together with Pseudostifftia kingii H. Rob., form the tribe Moquinieae. This tribe, along with 42 other tribes, are described in detail in the new publication Systematics, Evolution, and Biogeography of Compositae, co-edited by Vicki A. Funk, Alfonso Susanna, Tod F. Stuessy and Randall J. Bayer (see page 6 in this issue of the Plant Press). A meta-tree included in the book shows that DNA sequences confirm a position of the tribe Moquinieae close the tribe Vernonieae.

Awards and Grants

From Plant Press, Vol. 12, No. 4 from October 2009.

Recipient of the Smithsonian Institution Secretary’s Research Prizes for 2009: Laurence J. Dorr and Dan H. Nicolson, National Museum of Natural History, for Taxonomic Literature: A Selective Guide to Botanical Publications and Collections with Dates, Commentaries and Types (2nd ed.), Supp. 7, F-Frer (A.R.G. Gantner Verlag K.G., Ruggell, Liechtenstein, 2008)

New Faces

From Plant Press, Vol. 12, No. 4 from October 2009.

 

 

 

Christine Bacon collecting Pritchardia martii in the Koolau Mountains of Hawaii

Christine Bacon from Colorado State University is a pre-doctoral fellow working with Warren Wagner and David Lorence (National Tropical Botanical Garden)  on the identification of floral characters in Pritchardia (Arecaceae: Palmae) and interpreting her results on the Pritchardia species-level molecular phylogeny. 

The Trachycarpeae are the least understood group of palms in terms of molecular systematics.  They represent an economically and ecologically important group encompassing fantastic radiations such as Copernicia in the Caribbean, Licuala in Southeast Asia, and Pritchardia in the Pacific Basin.  Pritchardia has been recently revised and includes 28 currently recognized species endemic to the South Pacific where most of them are single-island endemics on the Hawaiian Islands.

For Bacon’s dissertation research, she is interested in the systematics, historical biogeography, and divergence time estimation at tribal, generic, and species levels.  Ultimately, her results will create a framework with which to monograph Pritchardia in collaboration with Lorence and Donald Hodel (University of California Davis – U.S. Department of Agriculture Extension Service).

During her time at the Smithsonian, she will be screening microsatellite markers for population genetics and generating sequence data from the flanking regions of microsatellites at the Laboratory for Analytical Biology to improve understanding of Pritchardia species boundaries.  Bacon will also be finishing a manuscript for tribal-level analyses, planning for upcoming field work in Tonga, and submitting a National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant.

Systematics, Evolution,and Biogeography of the Compositae

From Plant Press Vol. 12, no. 4 from 2009.

The Compositae (Asteraceae) are the largest and most successful flowering plant family in the world with ca. 1,700 genera and 25,000 species. They grow everywhere but Antarctica, but prefer open areas and are common garden plants (i.e., sunflowers, daisies, artichokes, thistles, lettuce). In Systematics, Evolution, and Biogeography of Compositae, co-edited by Vicki A. Funk, Alfonso Susanna, Tod F. Stuessy and Randall J. Bayer, recent morphological and molecular data are used to provide a complete treatment of the family. Overview chapters cover topics such as chromosome numbers and chemistry, and chapters on every clade in the family are included as well. Nearly every chapter has a color-coded biogeography tree and color photos of plants and there is a summary chapter with a ca. 900 taxon tree (metatree) for the whole family. Appendices include an illustrated glossary and a combined literature cited (each chapter has a literature cited as well).

Published by the International Association for Plant Taxonomy, this is the first family wide phylogenetic treatment for the Compositae. The book contains 44 chapters and 1,000 pages (ca. 200 in color) contributed by over 80 authors. A pdf file of the metatree can be found at www.compositae.org. A video about the book is available on Youtube.

A Botanical Presence at Scientific Meetings

From Plant Press, Vol. 12, No. 4 from October 2009.

By Karen Redden, Jay Horn and Gary Krupnick

Summertime is the season when Department of Botany staff attend conferences and present their research to the scientific community. This summer proved to be a productive one. The National Museum of Natural History was well-represented at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America, the annual meeting of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation, the V^th International Congress of EthnoBotany 2009, and specialized symposia such as the 5^th International Symposium on the Family Zingiberaceae.

The annual Botany meetings held jointly by Botanical Society of America and Mycological Society of America were held this year in Snowbird, Utah. With well over a thousand attendees and nearly the same number presentations, posters and symposia, the alpine meadows near Salt Lake City were alive with spectacular wildflowers and cutting-edge science. Once again, the Department of Botany was well represented at this meeting. Smithsonian scientists, both current and former, presented their research, which included a broad range of topics spanning systematics, ecology, biogeography, and historical botany.

Highlights of the meetings included Warren Wagner’s inaugural address as incoming president of the American Society of Plant Taxonomists at the society’s annual banquet. His talk was entertaining and widely enjoyed as the after-dinner speech. Vicki Funk’s leadership in the field of systematics and evolution of the Compositae was well represented at this meeting. She chaired the Asterales session, co-authored numerous talks and presented her “double-wide” poster with Mauricio Bonifacino that synthesized more than a decade worth of work on the phylogeny, systematics and biogeography of this megadiverse family of flowering plants. The release of the new book Systematics, Evolution and Biogeography of Compositae, co-edited by Funk (see page 6), with contributions by over 70 authors, provided impetus for the strong showing of talks on this family.

For Richer or Poa

From Plant Press, Vol. 12, No. 4 from October 2009.

Soreng captures the wild and elusive Poa horridula Pilg. in Peru in 2007. (Photo by K. Romaschenko)

Robert John Soreng was born in Evanston, Illinois, on December 9, 1952. His family moved to Eugene, Oregon, in 1961, where he learned early on to enjoy outdoor pursuits of camping, hiking, fishing, and study of nature. His college degrees include a B.S. degree at Oregon State University in 1978 (where he was introduced to grass taxonomy by Kenton Chambers and became fascinated by grasses), and M.S. (in Range and Animal Sciences with Stephan Hatch and Kelly Allred) and Ph.D. (in Biology with Richard Spellenberg) degrees at New Mexico State University in 1980 and 1986. Although NMSU ecology and systematics students typically focused on desert shrub and grasslands, Soreng gravitated to the mountains and the genus Poa, a fortuitous choice for the coincidence of beautiful mountains and species of Poa around the world. He conducted postdoctoral research at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and Cornell University (where he began a long collaboration with Jerrold Davis) focusing on the systematics of grasses.

He began working with Paul Peterson (Smithsonian Curator of Grasses) and Gerrit Davidse (John S. Lehmann Curator of Grasses, Missouri Botanical Garden) on the Catalogue of New World Grasses in 1993; Dan Nicolson (US) and Gerrit Davidse helped develop Soreng’s expertise in nomenclature for this project. He moved to Somerset Maryland in 1996 and has been working at the U.S. National Herbarium ever since.

Soreng at 4,380 m in Peruvian altiplano with his flock in 2007

Soreng’s research interests focus on the taxonomy, biogeography, character evolution, and breeding systems of Poaceae (alt nom. Gramineae; grasses; about 13,000 species), especially of the cool season grasses (subfamily Pooideae; about 4,700 species). An ongoing revision of genus Poa (bluegrasses; over 500 species) is a life-long project. Asked to explain what he does he said: “I employ traditional and molecular characters at all taxonomic levels within the grasses and deal extensively with nomenclature and classification in the family.”

One of his major contributions to the field is the databasing of grass nomenclature and taxonomy in TROPICOS (Missouri Botanical Garden’s on-line taxonomic database). He estimates that the database now has more than 80,000 scientific names published for grass taxa, including original publications, types, and secondary literature citations, and links to specimens, maps, and images, synonymy, and other databases <http://www.tropicos.org/Home.aspx>.

Namibian Specimens come to USNH

From Plant Press, Vol 12, No. 4 from October 2009.

A collection of nearly 800 flowering plants was recently acquired from the National Botanical Research Institute in Windhoek, Namibia, Africa. The collection includes nearly 160 specimens from the Compositae, or sunflower family. “These specimens are especially welcome because we don’t have many collections from Namibia,” Vicki Funk says. Compositae is the largest family of flowering plants in the world with nearly 25,000 recorded species and is the subject of a new book sponsored in part by the Smithsonian.

How did the Smithsonian come to acquire this magnificent collection? Herbaria periodically skim their collections and when duplicates are found they are offered up to other institutions as gifts for exchange. Typically, based on the needs of their research collections, institutions trade specimens for other specimens. In this case, Esmerialda Klaassen, researcher at the National Botanical Research Institute, was interested in what books the Smithsonian might have to trade.

“We don’t have any plants they want because a lot of herbaria focus mainly on their own regional flora,” Funk explains. At the National Museum of Natural History “we try to maintain a global collection because we ask questions on a global scale.”

For the exchange, the Namibian herbarium chose two volumes of the plant encyclopedia, Families and Genera of Vascular Plants, by Klaus Kubitzki and Clemens Bayer. In return, the Smithsonian received four shipments of Namibian Compositae totaling 800 mounted specimens. This new acquisition adds to the Botany Department’s herbarium collection of some 5 million processed specimens that have been collected from around the world.

Funk says that “Each piece of puzzle helps us figure out what’s going on globally, and such contributions make the Smithsonian collection that much richer.” More plants from Namibia are expected in exchange for additional books. Funk concluded that “This is a wonderful way to help our colleagues in other countries and at the same time acquire very interesting material for our herbarium.”

"Since Darwin: The Evolution of Evolution" Opens at NMNH

From Plant Press, Vol. 12, No. 4 from October 2009.  

Heliconia samperiana, discovered in Colombia by W. John Kress and Julio Betancur, was named for Cristian Samper, botanist, ecologist, and director of NMNH, to honor his work in identifying and conserving tropical plants.

The National Museum of Natural History has opened a new exhibition, “Since Darwin: The Evolution of Evolution,” in celebration of the 200^th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150^th anniversary of the publication of his groundbreaking On the Origin of Species. The exhibition will be on view through July 18, 2010. A team of museum scientists, including W. John Kress and others from the departments of Entomology, Mineral Sciences, Paleobiology and Vertebrate Zoology, collaborated on the exhibition.

“Since Darwin: The Evolution of Evolution” highlights the significant role that Darwin’s theories have played in explaining and unifying all the biological sciences. Specimens from the museum’s diverse collections, along with documentation of ongoing research at the museum, illustrate the importance of evolution as a scientific foundation, and how knowledge of evolution has evolved over the past 150 years.

The exhibition includes about 90 objects with seven books and 80 specimens from the museum’s collections, including fossils, insects, plants, dog skulls, goat horns, mice and birds. The most intriguing specimen may also be considered one of the least attractive—a bird named the Hudsonian Godwit that Darwin collected in 1837. The presentation of new discoveries made by Museum of Natural History scientists shows the vast influence of the evolutionary theory and how the research and inquiry processes that Darwin promoted continue today. One recent discovery on view is a new species of Heliconia that was named in honor of Cristián Samper, museum director and botanist.

More information about the exhibition, including a “Meet the Scientist” profile of Kress, is available at <http://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/darwin/>.

The Diffusion of Botanical Knowledge

From Plant Press Vol. 12, no. 4 from 2009.

Editor's Note
By Gary Krupnick, Editor

“I then bequeath the whole of my property...to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge...”
- James Smithson (1765-1829)

With those words and the passing of James Smithson, the Smithsonian Institution was born. On August 10, 1846, an Act of Congress signed by President James K. Polk established the Smithsonian Institution as a trust to be administered by a Board of Regents and a Secretary of the Smithsonian. The “increase and diffusion of knowledge” is the mission of the Institution, and in this issue of The Plant Press, we celebrate the diffusion of Botany, in words spoken at scientific meetings, words printed in new publications, and words presented in museum exhibits.

The cover article “A Botanical Presence at Scientific Meetings” highlights the participation of our staff at conferences and symposia held around the world. It is at these meetings that cutting edge research and informative ideas are presented to fellow colleagues, researchers and the public.

We also present in this issue a “Special Focus on Staff Publications” (page 6). A wide variety of new books written by our staff have recently been released. The books vary from a complete treatment of the most species-rich plant family Compositae, to a personal narrative of an expedition to one of the great biodiversity hotspots, to the unusual marriage of art and science.

Beyond presentations and books, our staff continues to contribute to temporary and permanent exhibits here at the National Museum of Natural History. On page 8, you can find out about one new exhibit, “Since Darwin: The Evolution of Evolution,” and one upcoming exhibit, “Losing Paradise? Endangered Plants Here and Around the World,” both highlighting research from the Department of Botany.

Discovery of a Giant Anadyomene

From Plant Press Vol. 12, no. 4

Barrett Brooks demonstrating thickness of the overgrowing mat. (Photo by Mark Littler)

During their August–September expedition, Department of Botany researchers Mark and Diane Littler, accompanied by divers Barrett Brooks, Cameron Brooks, Antonio Baeza, and Carla Piantoni, discovered 5 m-long net-like formations of the green alga Anadyomene sp. nov. draped over the deep Belizean outer reef where none had been present up to 12 months earlier. This giant form is most similar to A. pavonina, a rare and diminutive alga endemic to Florida. Members of the genus Anadyomene previously were known solely as solitary clumps. Interestingly, this undescribed species showed high grazer resistance during fish herbivory assays, with just 4 percent Anadyomene sp. consumed versus 77 percent consumed for the palatable Acanthophora spicifera.

The undescribed Anadyomene is most abundant between depths of 25 to 50 m, where it covers from 10 to 80 percent of the reef over a horizontal range of ~0.5 km. It entangles and overgrows all other large and small biota (hard corals, gorgonians, sponges, and seaweeds) as a 5-35 cm thick mat. The extensive mesh-work Belizean bloom is reminiscent of the persistent herbivore-resistant Microdictyon marinum populations predominant throughout the Bahamas. It remains to be seen whether or not this outbreak will persist, spread, or prove harmful to the underlying organisms.