From Plant Press, Vol. 26, No. 2, April 2023.
For more than 30 years, the Biological Diversity of the Guiana Shield (BDG) studied, documented, and preserved the biological diversity of the Guiana Shield in northern South America, which comprises parts of French Guiana, Suriname, Guyana, and Venezuela. The BDG program resulted in numerous publications, and a recently produced publication documents a decade of specimen collections by former and current Smithsonian botanists Karen Redden and Ken Wurdack. The open access publication written by Carol Kelloff, Karen Redden, Ken Wurdack, and Sara Alexander (Smithsonian Contribution to Botany, no. 116) is available for download at https://doi.org/10.5479/si.21912828.
In 2006, Vicki Funk asked Redden and Wurdack, who had met in the U.S. National Herbarium the previous year, if they would conduct a joint collecting expedition for the BDG. The BDG had maintained a full- or part-time resident collector in Guyana from 1986 until 2000, after which point it sponsored regular collecting expeditions to locations across the Guiana Shield. Redden and Wurdack’s first trip in 2006 was followed by 16 more (5 jointly plus additional expeditions by Redden with others), in a collaborative partnership that would last until the BDG’s final expedition in 2014.
These expeditions, some of which also included lichenologist and Acanthaceae specialist Erin Tripp, resulted in thousands of collections (about 50 by George Mason University student Eric Forbes; 600 by Tripp; 1,800 by Wurdack; and 6,300 by Redden), including type specimens, silica gel and liquid preserved specimens, thousands of color photos, and colorful stories of both intrepid exploration and fieldwork foibles.
The new publication includes an introduction by BDG Director Vicki Funk and Carol Kelloff, collections of special interest, narratives and maps of all expeditions, a detailed list of collection localities, and lists of collections (both by collector and number, and by determined taxa).
Some of these expeditions have already been recounted in The Plant Press. The initial joint trip of 2006 (The Plant Press 12(1): 1, 9-10) included an encounter with an odd yellow fungus on inflorescences of Xyris surinamensis growing in savannas in the Pakaraima Mountains of western Guyana. Wurdack’s notice of this fungus blossomed into a pair of publications detailing the discovery of a new species of parasitic fungus engaging in flower mimicry (The Plant Press 24(1): 9).
A joint Redden–Wurdack expedition in May 2009 tried to reach the summit of Mt. Tulameng, an under-collected 5,000-foot (1,525-meter) tepui near the Guyana–Venezuela border. When low water levels made it impossible to reach the foot of the tepui by boat, the expedition continued up the Kako River to explore a waterfall, and Tulameng was left for a future expedition. That expedition, in 2010, reached the summit after braving daily downpours, rampant mildew, nests of frightful bullet ants, and slippery mud. The path to the summit yielded a new species of orchid, Aspidogyne tulamengensis Ormerod & Carnevali (collection Wurdack 5333). The journey also included crystal clear creek waters and a spectacular waterfall (The Plant Press 14(1): 1, 8-11).
In 2012, the final large BDG-sponsored exploratory expedition tackled Kamakusa, the third highest tepui (5,511 feet /1,691 meters elevation) within Guyana, and one of the wettest environments on Earth (The Plant Press 16(1): 8-10). While the nearby Imbaimadai region had been heavily botanized, the peak of Kamakusa itself was unreached by botanical expeditions; only Stephen Tillet had collected among the lower slopes in 1960. This trip, then, was to document diversity, establish a baseline for future conservation efforts, and find endemic and rare species. Despite a medical evacuation, cold winds and excessive rains, the expedition endured. The trip did yield at least five undescribed species, including a new epiphytic species of Melastomataceae and a shrubby Rutaceae that appear to be endemic to the summit, as well as probable new cryptogams.
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