The Plant Press

The Field Book Project

From Plant Press, Vol. 13, No. 4 from October 2010.

The Smithsonian has taken part in hundreds of national and international field surveys and expeditions including the historically significant United States Exploring Expedition (1838-1842), United States and Mexican Boundary Survey (1848-1855), Biological Survey of the Panama Canal Zone (1910), Botanical Explorations of Haiti (1919), and the Botanical Explorations in Amazonian Peru and Brazil (1929). Field books documenting these explorations number in the thousands, yet descriptive access points for these items are typically minimal at best, making discovery challenging and relevancy assessments nearly impossible for offsite research.

Although earlier attempts within the Department of Botany to improve access to field books, such as the searchable Collector’s Field Books and Miscellaneous Notes Index greatly improved access to field books and related materials within the museum, more detailed information about these collections is still needed. Now, the Department, in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA), will go several steps further in making field books accessible throughout the Institution. Exposing Biodiversity Fieldbooks and Original Expedition Journals at the Smithsonian Institution—or the Field Book Project—is an effort to locate and make accessible field research materials. A searchable database will be developed to describe, cross-reference, and locate each field note collection and every set of documents within.

This database will also serve as the framework for a larger registry system that will allow other organizations to enter detailed records for their field book holdings in an aggregated digital repository. The goal of the registry is to alleviate the struggle of scholars who must search for related materials that are physically dispersed throughout multiple facilities or in disparate locations even within the same institution.

Because field books provide the context in which a specimen was collected, they are useful, for example when reconstructing a collector’s itinerary in order to locate specimens. As Vicki Funck noted in conversation, this is especially important if a specimen was collected only once. A detailed catalog of field books would allow users to identify the specific resources needed to reconstruct an itinerary without the need to travel.

The Field Book Project is collaborating with the broader biodiversity community to ensure that we build on existing standards and consider various research needs. Through our partners at the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), we hope to garner the interest and participation of other custodians of biodiversity field books worldwide.

We look forward to working with our SI colleagues and invite comments and feedback while we develop the catalog system. Anyone interested in testing the registry in the future when a prototype is available may contact Sonoe Nakasone at 202-633-1061 or nakasones@si.edu. 

Plants Used in Medicine 2,200 Years Ago are Identified

From Plant Press Vol. 13, no. 4

In collaboration with geneticist Robert Fleischer of the Center for Conservation and Evolutionary Genetics, Alain Touwaide and Emanuela Appetiti have unlocked the mystery of a 2,200-year-old medicine.

The story started in 1974, when Italian archaeologists under the direction of Francesco Nicosia and Antonella Romualdi of the Italian Department of Antiquities located a shipwreck in the Gulf of Baratti in Tuscany, Italy. The techniques and materials of construction, together with the cargo, indicate that the ship was built ca.140-120 B.C. Its load included merchandises of different origins: probably Syro-Palestine, Cyprus, the Aegean island of Rhodes, Asia Minor, and also Pergamon and Athens. All this suggests that the ship was sailing from the eastern Mediterranean area probably to Pisa or Marseille, which were the final destinations of the commercial road from the East. It sank, instead, close to the harbor of Populonia in Tuscany, which was an important stop in the maritime road between the eastern and western Mediterranean.

Botany Partakes in Coral Reef Exhibit

From Plant Press, Vol. 13, No. 4 from October 2010.

In 2005 twin sisters in Sydney, Australia, Margaret and Christine Wertheim, a mathematician and an artist, were contacted by some environmentalists to help them create a display to represent how global warming and pollution is affecting the world’s coral reefs. Since then, the project has spread over three continents and has involved thousands of people. The interdisciplinary project, which combines marine biology, mathematics, feminine handicraft, and environmental activism, continues to raise awareness and public interest in coral reefs here in the United States. Successful displays have been hosted in numerous U.S. cities, including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Scottsdale. DC’s first community coral reef exhibit made of crocheted, knitted and other media, even recycled materials, will be displayed in the Natural History Museum’s Sant Ocean Hall, 16 October 2010 to 24 April 2011. A small group from our Botany Department, including Elaine Haug, Maria Faust, Jenny Datiles, Shruti Dube, Nistha Dube, and Marielle Saums, contributed to the project. Margaret Wertheim, the mathematical twin sister, relates the coral reefs through some of crocheted pieces to the newly discovered “hyperbolic geometry,” which gives the upcoming exhibit its name, the Hyperbolic Crocheted Coral Reef Exhibit.

This crocheted red brittle star (Ophiothrix pupurea) appears in the new exhibition "The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef."

The dynamics of a coral reef involve plants as part of a coral-microalgal partnership. The corals on a coral reef live in a partnership with microscopic plants, but many are unseen – these microscopic species are hidden in the plankton or within the tissues (zooxanthellae) of corals. The simplest plants on the reef are the microalgae; some are a little more than a fuzz of brown or green on the bare reef surfaces, while others have broad leafy blades of turtle grass, Thalassia testudinum, fine blades of sea grasses, and kelp. Like all algae, microalgae use special pigments to capture the energy from sunlight. In the process known photosynthesis, they use this energy to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugars, which they need in order to grow.

The coral polyps provide a safe and secure home for the zooxanthellae, a microalgal form which lie hidden within the tissue of corals, and in turn the microalgae provide the corals with sugars and other food that help the corals to grow and build the coral reef. Thanks to this partnership, corals can thrive even in places where there is little food to be filtered from the water. Many reef corals get 80-90 percent of their food from these tiny algal partners and catch very little for themselves. It is the photosynthetic pigments of the algae which give the corals their beautiful colors. And it is this dependence on sunlight which means that reef corals only thrive in clear shallow waters.

The Botany staff made their artistic pieces as realistic as possible and provided photographs to identify each piece to a living species. Stephen Carins, a deep sea coral specialist in the Department of Invertebrate Zoology, and Christopher Mah, an Echinoderms specialist, loaned the group books containing images of specimens from coral reefs. Mah created a blog site for the Botany crochet and recycled material pieces and added some information about the exhibit at http://echinoblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/echinoderm-sneak-peak-of-hyperbolic.html?spref=fb. The reef will be divided into three parts, a living reef (colorful pieces), a dead reef (all white, beige, and mauve pieces), and toxic reef (pieces composed of recycled material).

Jennifer Lindsay has been coordinating the museum crochet project. She has a website and a Flickr site devoted to the art work: http://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/hreef/communityreef.html . Hundreds of people have contributed items, and each contributor will be acknowledged for their efforts. The Botany group created 47 pieces.

The Grand Challenges of the New Smithsonian Consortia

From Plant Press Vol. 13, no. 4 from 2010.

By W. John Kress
Director, Consortium for Understanding and Sustaining a Biodiverse Planet
Curator and Research Scientist

One of the enduring strengths of the Smithsonian is its great diversity of museums, research units, and intellectual endeavors, which have evolved over the lifetime of the institution. However, when the Secretary of the Smithsonian Wayne Clough launched the new strategic plan for the Institution last year, one of his main priorities was to consolidate these diverse scholarly activities into four "Grand Challenges:" Unlocking the Mysteries of the Universe, Understanding and Sustaining a Biodiverse Planet, Valuing World Cultures, and Understanding the American Experience. It was clear to the Secretary and the Strategic Planning Committee that the immense diversity of activities was a challenge to condense into an easily understood core mission of the Smithsonian. This problem was especially acute as the biggest capital campaign in the history of the Institution was about to be launched. Thus these four Grand Challenges were designed to distill the complexity of the Smithsonian into a more focused message to bring forth to our public constituents.

As pointed out by the Secretary in a recent address, the Smithsonian established the scope and depth of its scientific and cultural collections in the 19^th century, built and expanded its great museums in the 20^th century, and is now strengthening its core scholarly and scientific disciplines by fostering a greater level of interdisciplinary research and education through the Grand Challenges. As a means to accomplish this transformation, four Consortia, each of which corresponds to one of the Grand Challenges, were established and a director was selected from within the ranks of the Smithsonian community to lead each one.

Food, Glorious Food

From Plant Press, Vol. 13, No. 4 from October 2010.

By Gary Krupnick

The ninth annual Smithsonian Botanical Symposium was held on 24-25 September at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, bringing together botanists, anthropologists, archaeobiologists, and other scientists to examine “Food for Thought: 21^st Century Perspectives on Ethnobotany.” The event, hosted by the Departments of Botany and Anthropology, was held in collaboration with the United States Botanic Garden.

Opening reception of the ninth annual Smithsonian Botanical Symposium at the United States Botanic Garden. (Photo by Ken Wurdack)

The symposium began with opening remarks by Warren L. Wagner, Chair of the Botany Department, and Cristián Samper, Director on the National Museum of Natural History. As Wagner introduced Samper, a slide of the Encyclopedia of Life webpage for “Sampera V. Funk & H. Rob, 2009” was displayed. The webpage <http://www.eol.org/pages/17860196> recently went live in honor of Samper’s birthday. Vicki Funk and Harold Robinson named the genus Sampera (Asteraceae) in honor of Samper’s research and service.

Before the seven invited speakers gave their talks, Laurence Dorr presented the ninth José Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany to Beryl B. Simpson, C.L. Lundell Professor of Systematic Botany, University of Texas at Austin. Simpson is an expert in the phylogeny and biogeography of various angiosperm groups, with particular emphasis on plants from the American Southwest, Mexico, and Central and South America. While accepting her award, Simpson spoke of her long relationship with the Smithsonian Institution, a place “dear to [her] heart.” She was honored to have been in the same department with Cuatrecasas for several years, and even noted that she had named a species (Polylepis pepei) in his honor, using for the species epithet a form of his nickname “Don Pepe.”

Bruce D. Smith, Curator of North American Archaeology, Smithsonian Institution, who chaired the morning session, introduced the first set of speakers. Kenneth Olsen of Washington University in St. Louis first spoke of “Genetic Signatures and Consequences of Dual Crop Domestication Events in the Old World Tropics.” Olsen discussed evidence as to whether or not certain species under domestication were brought into cultivation once or multiple times. He presented two cases studies, coconut (Cocos nucifera)and rice (Oryza sativa), which both show evidence of more than one domestication event. Using microsatellite markers and a worldwide germplasm collection, Olsen showed differentiation between coconut populations in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. These patterns reveal that cultivated coconuts are derived from two distinct ancestral gene pools, with independent cultivation origins in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. There is also evidence of Pacific coconut admixture in the southwestern Indian Ocean, specifically along ancient Austronesian trade routes.

Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies

From Plant Press, Vol. 13, No. 4 from October 2010.

 

As a contribution to the International Year of Biodiversity, Pedro Acevedo and Mark T. Strong will be posting in early December the final version of the “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies.” This catalogue, which is part of the “Flora of the West Indies” webpage <http://botany.si.edu/antilles/WestIndies/catalog.htm>, contains a searchable updated list of scientific and common names of the seed plant taxa that are known to occur in the Bahamas, Greater Antilles, and Lesser Antilles. The Catalogue is expected to be an essential tool for conservation and biogeography studies in the West Indies, the third most important biodiversity hotspot in the world, with high priority for conservation due to the loss of habitat. Nearly 30,000 scientific names and 30,000 common names are treated in the catalogue, comprising 231 families, 1,945 genera, and a total of 10,525 indigenous taxa with 71% (7,479 taxa) endemism. Additionally, the website provides distributions of the species within and outside of the West Indies, and numerous color images. A printed version of the catalogue is expected early in 2011.

Art by Alice Tangerini: Persea americana P. Mill.

From Plant Press, Vol. 13, No. 4 from October 2010.

Persea americana (Lauraceae), the avocado, was an illustration for Medicinal Plants of the West Indies (Reference Publications, 1982) by Edward S. Ayensu. Tangerini made the drawing using herbarium specimens and photographs from books in the Botany library. The avocado, although primarily noted as a food product, was listed as having medicinal qualities: “Leaf and bark teas for diarrhea, colds. Poultice of leaves for headache, rheumatism, sprains. Leaves boiled for tea for the blood. Drink for colds and lotion for pains. Leaves for fever and pain; high blood pressure.” The book was the second in a series on medicinal plants edited by Robert DeFilipps and illustrated by Tangerini, Cathy Pasquale and Mary Monsma. The ethnobotany and evolution of other cultivated plants were discussed at the ninth annual Smithsonian Botanical Symposium on September 25, 2010.

Awards & Grants

From Plant Press, Vol. 13, No. 4 from October 2010.

Martin R. Kalfatovic (Smithsonian Institution Libraries) and Laurence Dorr received support from the Atherton Seidell Grant Program to prepare an on-line version of Taxonomic Literature, ed. 2, and its supplements that will be incorporated into the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), the digitization component of the Encyclopedia of Life.

Vicki Funk, as lead editor of the book Systematics, Evolution, and Biogeography of Compositae, received the Stebbins Medal for 2007-2009 from the International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT). The medal is given for “an outstanding article or book on plant systematics and/or plant evolution.” Funk received the award at the American Society of Plant Taxonomists (ASPT) banquet at the Botany 2010 meeting in Providence, Rhode Island.

Vicki Funk (center) receives the IAPT Stebbins Medal from Warren Wagner and Pamela S. Soltis (Chair of the Stebbins Medal Committee). (Photo by Mauricio Bonifacino)

Vicki Funk received a Distinguished Alumnus Award from Murray State University, Murray Kentucky. Funk received her B.S. (1969) and M.S. (1975) from Murray State University; after her Masters she went on to Ohio State University for her Ph.D. and the New York Botanical Garden for a postdoctoral fellowship. On October 8, 2010, as part of the award activities, Funk presented a departmental seminar on some of her research and in the evening she gave a short after dinner talk about her experiences.

Mark Littler received the 2010 Distinguished Alumni Award from Ohio University’s College of Arts and Sciences. The award ceremony took place 24 September 2010. Preceding the ceremony, Littler mentored and advised students in the Department of Environmental and Plant Sciences.

The American Society of Plant Taxonomists awarded Harold E. Robinson, a prolific expert on the sunflower family, their Asa Gray Award for outstanding career achievements at the society’s annual meeting in August. Robinson is hailed by his peers as a leader in research productivity, with his publication of 900 papers and over 600 new species names in his 54-year career.

Alain Touwaide has been elected Overseas Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine of the UK in July 2010, and Emanuela Appetiti has been appointed on the Advisory Board of the World History of Science On-line (WHSO).

Saba Bank Designated as a Protected Area

From Plant Press Vol. 13, no. 4

As a direct result of the research of Departmen of Botany scientists Mark and Diane Littler and Barrett Brooks (PLoS ONE 5(5): e10677), as part of a team funded by Conservation International, the Netherlands Antilles passed and published a National Decree (as of 2 October 2010, no. 94) designating the Saba Bank as a protected area. The decree prohibits anchoring (by tankers and other large ships) on the entire Bank, both in territorial waters and in the European Economic Zone (EEZ), with a few exceptions such as hydrographic survey vessels, salvage vessels, search and rescue vessels, and fishing boats from Saba, St. Eustatius, and St. Maarten with a permit to fish on the Bank. The Coastguard of the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba will be enforcing this prohibition.

With an ocean area of approximately 2,500 km², this makes the Saba Bank the fifth largest marine protected area in the Wider Caribbean. Average depth of the Bank is about 80 feet, and there are extensive coral reefs on the eastern and south-eastern edges. New species of seaweeds, fish, and gorgonians have been discovered on the Bank which has been found to be among the richest areas of the Caribbean in seaweed diversity. Much of the area and its biodiversity still remain to be explored.

An application for Particularly Sensitive Sea Area (PSSA) status has been sent to the International Maritime Organization (IMO) by the Netherlands to be discussed at the next meeting of the environmental committee of the IMO in the spring of next year. PSSA status will allow further regulation of international shipping to protect the Bank.

Cyanolichen Index

From Plant Press, Vol. 13, No. 4 from October 2010.

On 2 August, the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) published 853 new taxon pages for cyanolichens, lichens whose phycobiont is a cyanobacterium. This is the latest milestone in a project begun two years ago with support from the Drouet Fund, a bequest of the late Francis Drouet which supports care and maintenance of cyanobacterium collections.

The lichen collections of the United States National Herbarium constitute one of the finest and most complete research resources of its kind. Specialists worldwide take advantage of these specimens and their related data to support studies in systematics, ecology, biogeography, and other species-based research. Over the last 50 years there have only been two lichen curators caring for these collections, Mason Hale and Paula Depriest, the latter departing almost ten years ago. Even during their respective curatorial tenures, the backlog of unprocessed specimens was considerable and, despite a steady flow of foreign students under Depriest, a great deal of curation and specimen identification was needed. And, except for the single family Parmeliaceae (a Hale specialty), no non-type specimens had been databased or imaged.

The Cyanolichen Index was a project conceived by Rusty Russell to improve the state of the lichen collections by processing and conserving backlog collections, improving specimen level identifications, and databasing specimens. Because the Drouet bequest specifies support of cyanobacteria, those lichen taxa containing blue-green phycobionts (mainly Nostoc) were project priorities. Finally, in concert with lichen specialists around the world, the plan included the creation of an EOL page for each species.

The first task was to continue an existing contract with Patty Groome who had been processing backlog lichens under an earlier Collections Conservation Grant. The majority of the backlog lichens have been housed at the Museum Support Center and, under the guidance of Greg McKee, collections coordinator for ferns, lichens and bryophytes, specimens were prioritized, selected and returned to the Mall for processing. Including the work conducted under the earlier grant, a total of 12,300 specimens have been processed, conserved and added to the collection. This is the critical step, making these important specimens available to scientific study.

Next we addressed the need to electronically deliver specimen data, a process that we pioneered in 1970 with the Type Register. In the early 1990s, the lichen family Parmeliaceae was completely databased resulting in over 40,000 specimen records. Contractor Jackie Carroll began the task of entering cyanolichen data into EMu, the electronic museum specimen catalog. She was followed by Zuvayda Abdurahimova, a lichenlogist and former Fulbright Scholar from Turkmenistan, who has also improved the curatorial state of the collection by resolving nomenclatural problems and identifying new collections. Since the project’s inception, almost 7,000 specimen records have been created.

Finally, Kerry Carfagno, a student at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, was hired to begin the tedious task of assembling species information from published sources and organizing it for eventual posting to the Encyclopedia of Life. An online workspace http://cyanolichens.lifedesks.org was set up to manage the mountain of data being acquired. Information (when available) is provided on life habit, morphology, habitat, distribution, toxicity, and conservation status. In addition, protolog citations, synonyms, and a reference list of data sources are also included. Eight lichen scholars have signed up to review and approve content.

Compared to the majority of EOL pages, this project represents a unique methodology for acquiring and delivering data. This is the only EOL effort encompassing this many taxa that draws its information solely from the published literature. With each bit of data properly referenced against a bibliographic resource that numbers almost 400 titles, the species information is both well-cited and easily revisited, and it results from the published efforts of the entire community rather than a single researcher or research team. Hundreds of high quality images were graciously provided through a Creative Commons license by Stephen Sharnoff who produced all of the photographs for the landmark publication Lichens of North America, Yale University Press, 2001. And, at the urging of Carfagno, hundreds more were provided by a site devoted to tropical lichens http://www.tropicallichens.net which is now a content partner in EOL.

The task of improving collections in an enterprise as large as the U.S. National Herbarium is daunting and never-ending. But a multi-year push to make positive changes in this particular part of our collection has been very successful due to the graciousness of our partners and the competence of our staff, students and contractors.