From Plant Press, Vol. 27, No. 1, January 2024.
Igor Azevedo, a post-doctoral researcher from Universidade Federal do Mato Grosso, Cuiabá, Brazil, is studying the taxonomy of Acanthaceae. He has been working on this family since the beginning of his undergraduate career, and now his research focuses on revising the taxonomy, phylogeny, and biogeography of members of Trichantherinae, a Neotropical subtribe with six genera and about 80 species distributed from the Amazon to Mexico. The U.S. National Herbarium houses a great number of collections of this group including more than half of its type specimens. Consulting the collection was essential to finish the first part of his taxonomic revision of the genus Sanchezia. During an October 2023 visit to the herbarium as a 2020 José Cuatrecasas Fellow, he was able to confirm at least 10 new species, which are now being prepared for publication. The correct identification of the collections of Trichantherinae species is also highly important for the next steps of his project, especially the biogeography, in which he will evaluate both the geographic distribution of the species and their evolution associated with the paleohistory of their habitats.
Maria Liris Barbosa de Silva, a Brazilian PhD student in Botany at Programa de Pós-Graduação em Botânica, da Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana (PPGBOT-UEFS) is a 2023 José Cuatrecasas Fellow. Her thesis aims to produce a molecular phylogeny of the genus Bidens (Coreopsideae, Asteraceae) focusing on the pantropical clade and conduct a taxonomic study of Brazilian species within the genus. During her visit to the United States National Herbarium, she was able to analyze the morphology of specimens of Bidens from Africa, Central and South America, as well as the Pacific Islands, including type materials of Bidens species that occur in these areas. She acquired 19 samples of 14 species for DNA extraction, improving her sampling of the pantropical species. Her morphological analysis and the new DNA samples acquired will contribute to the overall understanding of the taxonomic and evolutionary relationships within the genus.
Florencia Dosil, the 2023 Robinson & Funk Fellow, is working on a systematic revision, phylogeny, and biogeography of the Neotropical species of Adenostemma (Eupatorieae, Asteraceae). She is a doctoral student from Museo de La Plata, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina, and she visited the herbarium from October to November.
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