From Plant Press, Vol. 27, No. 3, July 2024.
By Morgan Gostel
When most of us in the Natural History community think of botanical collections, our first thought is of herbaria and the critical role they play in documenting and preserving the rich diversity of plants and lichens on Earth. Indeed, herbaria play an increasingly important role in advancing botanical science and are arguably the single most important scientific resource available to confront and overcome the biodiversity crisis for plants and lichens. However, another resource plays a key role in advancing plant science, conservation, and education – the diverse collections stored in botanic gardens worldwide. The history of botanic gardens and herbaria is inextricably linked. Despite the parallel role of these institutions, their connections faded throughout the 20th century. According to Index Herbariorum, there are currently 3,567 herbaria worldwide, and Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) estimates there are more than 3,000 botanic gardens and arboreta. Although the aim and scope of herbarium is often distinguished from botanic gardens, a significant historical component of these institutions is linked through their role in facilitating research, notably taxonomy and systematics (see Dosmann 2006). One individual who saw enormous potential for herbarium and botanic garden collections to grow together was Vicki Funk. Funk’s impact and legacy in phylogenetic theory, biogeography, and plant systematics and evolution – particularly in the daisy family, Compositae – are enormous and widely recognized. Perhaps less well-known, however, is the great collections-based legacy she left for botanic gardens.
Ten years ago, in 2014, Funk was motivated to explore the role that botanic gardens might play in advancing collections-based research, particularly in the genomic era. To Funk, the crux of this motivation was a fervent belief that botanic gardens are in a unique position to facilitate plant collections-based research, yet surprisingly the living collections that gardens maintain and the dedicated staff who grow them were increasingly disconnected from herbaria and the broader research community. According to Funk, botanic gardens held vast collections of diverse living plants that were underutilized for research. Throughout her career, Funk was an ardent advocate for the importance of scientific vouchers and the critical role of natural history collections as foundational institutions for biological science. Encouraging botanic gardens to rediscover their historical connections to herbaria and more actively collect scientific vouchers could lead to an untapped wellspring of botanical knowledge.
Funk believed that by working more closely together, botanic gardens and herbaria could advance key research priorities for the 21st century, one of which was to address the rapidly growing need for high-quality tissue necessary to facilitate the rapidly growing demands of whole genome sequencing and the genomic revolution. This ambitious and collaborative vision – some might argue “quintessential Vicki” – also coincided with the development of the Smithsonian Institution’s Global Genome Initiative (GGI). Funk decided to make a gamble – she estimated that botanic gardens contain 50% of all plant genera on Earth – a key statistic for the long-term strategic goals of GGI. She made a bet with Jonathan Coddington, then Director of the Global Genome Initiative and Senior Scientist in the Department of Entomology, that GGI could accomplish its sampling goals for the plant Tree of Life by partnering with botanic gardens. Thus began an odyssey that has now entered its 10th year: the Global Genome Initiative for Gardens (GGI-Gardens).
Thanks largely to key support from a number of interns, students, and staff in the NMNH Department of Botany, including Research Botanist and Associate Curator Kenneth Wurdack, Research Assistant Carol Kelloff, Ph.D. student Aleks Radosavljevic, intern Kristen Van Neste, as well as local gardens and arboreta, notably the United States Botanic Garden (USBG), Smithsonian Gardens, and the U.S. National Arboretum, Funk was able to assemble a “coalition of the willing” in January 2015. This team aimed to develop a pilot program for collecting genome-quality tissue samples from botanic gardens. In July 2015, I joined the Department of Botany as a GGI-Buck postdoctoral fellow, working with Funk with the expectation that 40% of my fellowship would be dedicated to expanding GGI-Gardens as program manager with Funk as director. We quickly got to work not only building an internship program, but also involving a number of organizations that were able to help us develop a long-term strategic plan for GGI-Gardens, most importantly the leadership and staff at BGCI and USBG.
As collections continued into 2017, we realized that GGI-Gardens needed to expand into an international partnership, where local teams of botanists, students, and interns could participate in collection at botanic gardens and deposit their voucher collections in both local herbaria and biobanks that are partnered with the Global Genome Biodiversity Network (GGBN). The pilot that was developed during the first two years was published and we asked a number of partners if they would be able to put these guidelines into action. In 2017, the first GGI-Gardens partner award was awarded to Missouri Botanical Garden and from this example, we realized the next phase of the program had begun: GGI-Gardens transitioned from a local team to a global partnership.
In August 2018, GGI-Gardens moved to the Botanical Research Institute of Texas, based at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden. One year later, GGI-Gardens took its partnership with BGCI and USBG to a new stage and hired a program coordinator who could not only help achieve the strategic goals of this partnership, but also undertake a cutting edge gap analysis that would identify priority plant collections from botanic gardens worldwide. Jean Linsky joined in January 2020 and initiated a large-scale gap analysis that would inform the next chapter of the program. Two key resources were utilized in this gap analysis: 1) BGCI’s Plant Search Tool, which contains information about living collections from botanic gardens worldwide; and 2) the Global Genome Initiative Gap Analysis Tool, a resource that allows users to query a list of taxa and identify those that are not currently represented in any GGBN-partnered biobank worldwide. The results of this Gap Analysis were published in a special issue of BGCI’s BGJournal and revealed that among the ca. 9,000 genera of vascular plants not present in any GGBN-partnered biobank, 4,320 were known to be present in a botanic garden. Utilizing this knowledge, BGCI, USBG, and GGI-Gardens set out on the largest expansion in the program’s history, by launching a Partner Award program.
A summary of collection statistics resulting from the GGI-Gardens Partner Award Program between 2020 and 2024. A) a Venn Diagram depicting results of a gap analysis, for plant genera absent from the GGBN database (blue) and present in botanic gardens (pink), according to the GGI Gap Analysis Tool and BGCI’s Plant Search database, respectively. B) A bar plot, highlighting collections progress for priority vascular plant genera in 2020 (violet) and 2024 (yellow).
In 2020, the first GGI-Gardens Partner Award provided funds of up to $4,500 to 16 botanic garden partners worldwide. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, these awards were immensely successful and resulted in the collection of nearly 7,000 herbarium and genomic tissue vouchers. In 2023, the second round of funds were awarded to 10 GGI-Gardens partners. Most importantly, this award program has supported the collection of 25% of the 4,320 priority plant genera revealed in our 2020 gap analysis. The 2023 award program alone supported the collection of ca. 1,500 herbarium and genomic tissue vouchers from 725 vascular plant genera. Below, a table summarizes the impact of each of these awards and a map is provided that highlights the location of all 50 GGI-Gardens partners, as well as the location of each of the partners funded in this award cycle.
When most people think of Vicki Funk, a lot comes to mind – whether memories of a kind, energetic, and creative colleague who knew how to make groundbreaking projects happen, or her outsized impact in the fields of biogeography, phylogenetic theory, and Compositae systematics. Among her many enduring legacies will also be her impact in botanic gardens through the GGI-Gardens program. During her acceptance of the Asa Gray Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018, Funk chose not to tell stories about herself, but rather took the opportunity to share stories about the countless colleagues, students, interns, friends, and loved ones who helped her achieve success and fulfillment in her career. It is therefore only fitting to dedicate this article to Funk and the “coalition of the willing” that she rallied to support her vision of GGI-Gardens throughout the last ten years, along with her enduring botanical legacy.
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