The Plant Press

Worldwide Family Tree of Grasses is Published

From Plant Press, Vol. 18, No. 2, April 2015.

By Robert Soreng, Paul Peterson, and Konstantin Romaschenko

A phylogenetic classification of the Poaceae is presented in a new paper in the Journal of Systematics and Evolution. The classification includes 12 subfamilies, 51 tribes, and 80 subtribes evolving clockwise. Triangles are proportional in height to the size of the taxon where the Loliinae is the largest with 698 species.

The classification of the grass family Poaceae, including the placement of all currently accepted genera, representing approximately 12,074 species, is presented in a new paper in the Journal of Systematics and Evolution. The last full account of the classification of grass genera was completed by Clayton & Renvoize (Kew Bull., Add. Ser. 13: 1-389; 1986), Tzvelev (Bot. Rev. 55: 141-204; 1989), and Watson & Dallwitz (Grass Genera of the World; C.A.B. International, Cambridge; 1992), all before molecular DNA studies had much impact on our understanding of phylogenetic relationships. With phylogenetic sampling becoming reasonably complete for subfamilies and tribes, the Grass Phylogeny Working Group (Ann. Missouri Bot. Gard. 88: 373-457; 2001) published trees and descriptive accounts of the subfamilies, listing the tribes. The advent of faster DNA sequencing techniques lead to the accumulation of data for many more genera and species, allowing the GPWG II (New Phytologist 193: 304-312; 2011) to focus on the frequency and timing of C₄ photosynthesis evolution.

A maximum likelihood tree is provided in the paper representing the new phylotaxonomy of grasses, includes 12 subfamilies (Anomochlooideae, Pharoideae, and Puelioideae forming the basal lineages; Oryzoideae, Bambusoideae, and Pooideae forming the BOP clade; and Aristidoideae, Panicoideae, Arundinoideae, Micraioideae, Danthonioideae, and Chloridoideae forming the PACMAD clade), 51 tribes, and 80 subtribes evolving clockwise (accounting for all 771 genera). Triangles are proportional in height to the size of the taxon. About 41% of the 12,074 species are C₄. All 771 genera are listed and these are colored for a quick assessment of their species indigenous distribution worldwide.

High School Intern Learns Collection Management Skills

From Plant Press, Vol. 18, No. 2, April 2015.

Winter intern Yuejiao Shan presents a poster on the "History of the Department of Botany" at an intern reception of the Maryland Multicultural Youth Center

Aleks Radosavljevic and Melinda Peters recently had the opportunity to host a winter intern, Yuejiao Shan. A high school senior from Maryland, Shan assisted with several special projects and learned basic museum collection management skills during her time here. Shan came to the herbarium through the Maryland Multicultural Youth Center (MMYC) program, an affiliate of the Silver Spring based Latin American Youth Center. The program’s mission is to place interns with mentors based on their academic and professional interests to help prepare them for life after graduation. Radosavljevic and Peters worked with intern coordinator Jessica Cordero to place Shan with them for six hours each week for eight weeks. Their mission was to provide Shan with an overview of the “how, why and what” of museum collections. She learned the basics of “how” to prepare and organize specimens, “why” the herbarium has a collection of dried plants, and “what” the herbarium staff does with them once they are in the collection.

Shan assisted in updating plant names based on annotations matched through TROPICOS, helped with specimen repair, and recorded specimen information that was needed in electronic form so that labels can be generated.

A requirement of the MMYC program is to design a poster and present it at an intern reception among her peers and staff. Shan’s poster was entitled, “The History of the Department of Botany.” Although Radosavljevic and Peters were not able to attend that evening, they know they did one thing right—according to Cordero, Shan said that they opened up her mind to the fact that she too can be a scientist if she wants to someday.

Not Gone Yet, Some of Our Favorite Endangered Species

Check out this post on National Museum of Natural History Unearthed. Some of our botanists share stories about some of their favorite endangered species.

To raise awareness of Endangered Species Day, we spoke with our scientists to find out about species that are particularly meaningful to them. Which endangered species do you care about? Share your stories in the comments below!

Continue reading at nmnh.typepad.com

 

New Faces

From Plant Press, Vol. 18, No. 2, April 2015.

Monica Carlsen joined the Botany Department as a Peter Buck Postdoctoral Fellow in February 2015 working with John Kress and Jun Wen. Carlsen completed both her Master’s and Doctoral studies at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, in collaboration with the Missouri Botanical Garden. Her doctoral dissertation research focused on phylogenetic systematics of the genus Anthurium (Araceae), a large (ca. 900 species), strictly Neotropical, aroid genus that has diversified very rapidly and recently. At the Smithsonian she will be working on understanding species richness disparities between the Neotropics and the Asian tropics, using Araceae and Zingiberales as target study groups. Phylogenetic and Next Generation sequencing methods, together with spatial analyses of species distribution models will be used to understand the evolutionary mechanisms (i.e., clade age, and speciation, extinction and diversification rates) and ecological mechanisms (i.e., area availability, habitat heterogeneity, and niche differentiation) thought to affect these worldwide patterns of tropical species diversity.

Carolina Moriani Siniscalchi from São Paulo, Brazil arrived in January to spend three weeks working on her dissertation research. She was the recipient of a Cuatrecasas Fellowship Award offered annually by the Department of Botany. Her thesis is on the “Systematics and Evolution of Chresta (Asteraceae).” Chresta has 11 species and is nearly endemic to Brazil, but many of the historical specimens are housed in herbaria around the world because several early botanical collectors travelled around Brazil during the 1700 and 1800s. Siniscalchi’s time was spent studying the specimens, taking measurements and identifying some of them. All of these data will be part of the revision of the genus that will be one of the chapters of her thesis.

 

Awards & Grants

From Plant Press, Vol. 18, No. 2, April 2015.

The 2014 awardees in the first cycle of the Smithsonian Institute for Biodiversity Genomics-Global Genome Initiative (SIBG-GGI) Grants Program were recently announced. The SIBG-GGI awards seek to promote scholarly activities that advance the vision of Smithsonian Biodiversity Genomics: An open community dedicated to collaborative multidisciplinary discovery, exploration, and application of genomic information to increase and diffuse knowledge, understanding, and sustainability of global biodiversity. Among those receiving awards were Ashley Egan with a proposal entitled “Phylogenomics of Millettioid/Phaseoloid Legumes: A Global and Genomic Perspective,” Vicki Funk with a proposal entitled “Reconstructing Character Evolution in Compositae (Asteraceae) Using Next-Generation Target Enrichment Data (Flowering Plants),” and Kenneth Wurdack with a proposal entitled “Understanding the Causes of Evolutionary Novelty: Genomics of Floral and Biochemical Specialization.”

Ashley Egan received a Competitive Grants Program for Science (CGPS) Pell grant for a proposal entitled “Phylogenomics of Phaseoloid legumes based on a hybrid enrichment approach: Implications for biodiversity, systematics and genomics” to fund a postdoctoral fellow and molecular work.

Alain Touwaide has been appointed as a member of the American Botanical Council’s Advisory Board.

 

Completing the Marquesas Islands Flora

From Plant Press, Vol. 18, No. 2, April 2015.

By Warren Wagner

The Department of Botany has a long history of foundational biodiversity research. One major way the Department has contributed is through long-term projects to produce floristic analyses for local or regional areas that are intensively explored and documented. These projects have led to an increase in herbarium specimens, DNA samples, images, and community level data, including conservation assessments. For example, the Biological Diversity of the Guiana Shield project has been actively collecting and contributing to research to document, understand, and conserve the biological diversity of the northern part of South America since 1983. On a more local scale the Flora de Guaramacal (Venezuela) project has focused on providing a comprehensive assessment of the plants of Guaramacal National Park. The first volume of the flora, published last year by Laurence Dorr, represents a major publication that will have a broad impact in the northern Andes. Another area of long-held interest is the Caribbean. Pedro Acevedo has taken a major step towards a modern understanding of the regional flora with the publication of Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies (Acevedo-Rodríguez & Strong, 2012). This monumental work treats 12,279 angiosperm taxa and is an impressive effort to document this rich flora with 71% endemism. We also continue to provide an up-to-date taxonomy and database of specimen records for the DC flora, based on the work of Stan Shetler and Sylvia Orli.

Heliotropium perlmanii Lorence & W.L. Wagner

Smithsonian research in the South Pacific dates back to the U.S. Exploring Expedition, which formed the beginnings of the herbarium in 1846. Some of the most important work was completed by Al Smith on the Fiji Islands, and Ray Fosberg and Marie-Hélène Sachet on the Hawaiian Islands, French Polynesia and Micronesia. In 1988 I initiated a collaboration with David Lorence from the National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG). Together we decided a compelling project would be to complete a flora of the Marquesas, building on the previous work of Fosberg and Sachet, and as an extension of the recently completed Manual of the Flowering Plants of Hawai`i. The first collecting expedition in 1988 included staff from NTBG, Bishop Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, and the French research organization ORSTOM. During the past 20 years, the project conducted six expeditions to collect throughout the islands, targeting poorly explored islands as well as poorly explored regions on various islands, making 3500 new collections*. These were added to the complete Marquesas database with about 11,000 collections of native, naturalized, and cultivated vascular species across a relatively small flora with about 333 native species.

During the course of the current project (since 1988), 56 species new to science have been described primarily by David Lorence, Warren Wagner, and Jacques Florence.  Before that, 18 new species were contributed by Fosberg and Sachet, through an expedition by Sachet and Royce Oliver in 1975, the PhD. thesis work of Bryce Decker in mid-1960s, and another 11 by Jacques Florence for the French project to produce Flore de la Polynesie Francaise prior to collaborating with our project. Of these, Oxalis gagneorum Fosberg & Sachet (back page of this printed issue of The Plant Press) was one of the 18 Marquesan species they described and was among the early illustrations Alice Tangerini made for Fosberg & Sachet. Heliotropium perlmanii Lorence & W.L. Wagner (above) is the 85^th new species of the project published last month in Phytokeys. The most recent species published, it is actually one of the first collections made in 1988 by Steve Perlman on the sea cliffs of the most remote and oldest island of the archeipelago, Eiao. These new species, almost all of which are considered endangered because they are local endemics restricted to narrow areas usually on a single island, have increased the known native flora by 25% and are described in over 30 publications by Lorence, Wagner, Fosberg, Sachet, and Florence along with a few with other collaborators. About one half of these were published in two special issues: Allertonia (vol. 7, 1997) and Phytokeys (vol. 4, 2011).

In addition to these regional taxonomic revisions of the genera and addition of new species, the overall project had several goals: to increase scientific interaction among cooperating institutions for further exploration and research within the islands; database specimens and literature; develop a web-based vascular flora; produce the first Vascular Flora of the Marquesas Islands; and provide a framework for preserving the biodiversity of the islands. Now entering its 27^th year, the project is moving towards completion and anticipates the publication of a comprehensive flora in the near future.

*EDITOR’S NOTE: The text that appears here differs from the text that appeared in the mailed printed issue of the newsletter. The number of collections and the number of taxa presented here are a more reasonable reflection of the Marquesas Flora project.