The Plant Press

New Faces

From Plant Press, Vol. 22, No. 2, April 2019.

Joel Nitta

Joel Nitta joined the Department of Botany as a Peter Buck Postdoctoral Fellow in January 2019. Nitta is working with Eric Schuettpelz and Warren Wagner to investigate the biogeography of pteridophytes (ferns and lycophytes) in the Pacific, with a focus on Polynesia. This project expands on Nitta's Ph.D. research at Harvard University where he examined community assembly of ferns on the islands of Tahiti and Moorea, French Polynesia. Nitta recently completed his first postdoctoral fellowship as a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellow with Atsushi Ebihara at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tsukuba, Japan, where he developed next-generation DNA sequencing methods to better understand the evolution of fern species complexes. Nitta is interested in pteridophyte systematics, ecology, and evolution, and is enthusiastic about the practice of reproducible data analysis with open-source code.

New Faces

From Plant Press, Vol. 22, No. 1, January 2019.

Kathryn Picard joined the Department of Botany as a postdoctoral fellow in October 2018. Working under the supervision of Eric Schuettpelz, she is studying the incidence and evolutionary consequences of apomixis in the diverse fern order Polypodiales. Picard earned her Master’s degree at the University of Alabama where she modeled the early evolution of plant-fungal symbioses using a chytrid-alga system. For her doctoral research at Duke University, Picard explored the phylogenetic diversity of marine fungi and developed high-throughput molecular tools for generating reference sequence data from uncultured marine taxa. Her research interests include systematics of the flagellated fungi, the evolution of plant-fungal mutualisms, and developing genetic resources for “dark taxa”.

New Faces

From Plant Press, Vol. 21, No. 4, October 2018.

Alex White

Alex White is a post-doctoral fellow with a joint appointment in the Department of Botany at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) and the Data Science Lab in the Smithsonian Office of Information. White is working with Laurence Dorr and Eric Schuettpelz at NMNH and Rebecca Dikow in the Data Science Lab on developing machine learning models for evaluating global scale patterns of trait diversity in digitized herbarium collections. White recently completed his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago where he studied the ecological and evolutionary drivers of Himalayan bird diversity gradients with a particular focus on biogeography. His research broadly concerns developing computational methods for combining local community data with macroscale data to evaluate contemporary and historical limits on diversity.

New Faces

From Plant Press, Vol. 21, No. 3, July 2018.

Based in Lagos, Nigeria, Temitayo Ogunbiyi is a visual artist who creates work that considers and constructs contemporary channels of communication. She is currently working on a series that fuses hairstyles with botanical forms. This will be honed and developed further during her Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. Working with Gary Krupnick and John Kress, her research in the Department of Botany at the National Museum of Natural History will focus on medicinal plant species that thrive in the tropics. Her findings will inform forthcoming works on paper and playground sculptures. She is also conducting research at the National Museum of African Art, the National Museum of American History, and the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum. Ogunbiyi’s work has been shown at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, the Center for Contemporary Art Lagos (Nigeria), Tiwani Contemporary Gallery (London), Stephen Friedman Gallery (London), the Perm Museum of Contemporary Art (Perm, Russia), and Berlin Art Projects (Berlin). She recently took part in Strange Attractors, an artist book that was produced as part of the 10^th Berlin Biennale. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Princeton University in Art History, Visual Art, and African-American Studies and an M.A. in Curatorial Studies and Critical Art Theory from Columbia University.

Retiring from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service in Beltsville, Maryland after more than 30 years, John H. Wiersema will be continuing his taxonomic and nomenclatural work at the National Museum of Natural History as a Research Associate in the Department of Botany, a position he has held since 2014. Previously he was a taxonomist for the USDA’s national germplasm system’s GRIN database. This position provided the opportunity to develop GRIN Taxonomy into an extensive and exhaustive taxonomic resource on economic plants important to global agriculture. Through this work Wiersema gained global standing as a specialist in plant nomenclature, and now has direct editorial involvement with both the botanical and cultivated plant codes of international nomenclature and the international journal Taxon. Wiersema is also well known as a specialist on the taxonomy of the water-lily family, especially the genus Nymphaea, is responsible for the discovery and description of several new species, and has participated in over 30 scientific publications on the group. He expects to pursue both of these interests here in the Botany Department.

New Faces

From Plant Press, Vol. 21, No. 2, April 2018.

Marcos A. Caraballo-Ortiz joined the Smithsonian Botany Department in January as a Peter Buck Postdoctoral Fellow under the supervision of Jun Wen and Pedro Acevedo. His research is focused on exploring the phylogenetic relationships and organelle structure of loranthaceous mistletoes in the Neotropic. Caraballo-Ortiz obtained his Master’s degree at the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras on pollination ecology, and his doctoral degree at The Pennsylvania State University on the taxonomy, phylotranscriptomics, and ecology of Caribbean mistletoes. His research also includes taxonomy, botanical explorations, natural history, propagation, and ecology of Neotropical plants, especially from the Caribbean Islands.

This past Fall and Winter, Caroline Kittle worked as a data intern with the administrative offices of ForestGEO at the Natural History Museum. She primarily collected life history information for species present in two of the network’s 65 forest research plots, which together represent every forest type worldwide. Her work contributed to the refinement of new ForestGEO website. Kittle is continuing her journey with ForestGEO as a member of the 2018 re-census crew for the plot at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Virginia.

I Know What You Did Last Summer: Reflections from Botany Interns

From Plant Press, Vol. 20, No. 4, October 2017.

The Department of Botany is happy to host high school, undergraduate, and post-graduate student interns throughout the year. Internship activities peak during the summer, and 2017 was no exception. Below are a number of reflections from both interns and their supervisors highlighting the intern summer experience in Botany.

Intern Clara Cebral-Marani (third from the right) joins Botany staff to view the partial eclipse on the National Mall in Washington DC on August 21, 2017.

Clara Cebral-Marani, rising senior at a Virginia high school:
This past summer, I was a summer high school intern in the Botany Department and had the privilege to have Erika Gardner as my mentor. The internship was an incredible experience for me. I assisted Gardner in multiple tasks, such as care and handling of specimens, transaction entry using KE EMu database, and preparation of large lots of specimens to be shipped to herbaria worldwide. I attended several collection tours and two useful lectures. One of the lectures was about how to apply for a Smithsonian job, which will be useful in the future. I was fortunate to work with a fun group, and was able to enjoy the Great American Solar Eclipse with them.

Colleen Murdock

Colleen Murdock, recent graduate of Trinity College:
It was such a pleasure working with CTFS-ForestGEO this summer. I learned so much about their extensive global reach of 65 research sites and hundreds of scientists working to understand the dynamics of the Earth’s forests. I enjoyed contributing to their wide variety of projects, including organizing and adding content to their new website and helping chart and analyze geographic data. Thank you so much for a wonderful learning experience. I’m moving on to an internship with Smithsonian’s Center for Learning and Digital Access this fall, so I hope to stay involved with ForestGEO in the future. 

 

Libby O’Brien, undergraduate student at Villanova University:

Elizabeth O'Brian (intern, second from left) and her advisors (L to R), Vicki Funk, Robert (Bort) Edwards, and Aleks Radosavljevic.

I was fortunate enough to spend this past summer in the Botany Department working with Vicki Funk, Bort Edwards, and Aleksandar Radosavljevic as a part of the Natural History Research Experience (NHRE) program. Over the course of 10 weeks, I joined the team investigating the diversity of the Guiana Shield of northern South America. I analyzed patterns of richness and diversity from both genetic and spatial data. It was a summer of firsts: my first research experience and my first encounter with genetic data. I learned how to navigate the Metro system in Washington, D.C. as well as how to manipulate spatial data in programs like BioDiverse. It was a summer of re-strategizing what to do with so many data points and remembering to write everything down. I am grateful for all of the guidance and mentorship I’ve received from my mentors, as well as their willingness to keep me in the loop for the continuation of this project. I look forward to furthering this research with the wonderful group of people I met in Botany.

Katherine Rudebusch

Alice Tangerini hosted intern Katherine Rudebusch, who was a recent graduate of the University of California at Monterey Bay’s Scientific Illustration Program. Rudebusch scanned dozens of illustrations for uploading to the Botanical Art Collection in EMu’s multimedia site. Many of these required extensive manipulation to remove discoloration from the backgrounds, usually due to long storage in acidic environments. She also rehoused these illustrations in archival protective sleeves and folders. Rudebusch visited several museums on the National Mall during her stay and joined Tangerini at Hirschhorn Museum evening art programs. On her last week, Rudebusch started work on an illustration of a new species of Fabaceae from the Amazon for researcher Aleksandar Radosavljevic.

New Faces

From Plant Press, Vol. 20, No. 4, October 2017.

In May, Pedro Jiménez-Mejías joined the Department of Botany of the National Museum of Natural History as a post-doctoral fellow. He is working under the supervision of Laurence Dorr and Jun Wen in the evolution and systematics of the mainly boreo-temperate genus Carex in the Neotropics. Little attention has been given to the mode and tempo of evolution of herbaceous temperate elements in the Neotropics, even though they constitute an important amount of the biomass in cold-adapted not-tree dominated communities, such as the Patagonian steppes and the Andean punas and páramos. Jiménez-Mejías received his Ph.D. at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide of Seville, Spain, where he studied the systematics and evolution of two Carex groups with especially problematic taxonomy. He has conducted post-doctoral studies in the Real Jardín Botánico (Madrid, Spain), Washington State University (Pullman, Washington), and the New York Botanical Garden (Bronx, New York). His research also includes evolution and systematics of Resedaceae and Boraginaceae, and genetic studies in endangered species.

To help scientists get the most out of their data, the Smithsonian has hired a new IT specialist in August, Mauro Lepore. Working with the Center for Tropical Forest Science and Forest Global Earth Observations (CTFS-ForestGEO), Lepore is writing and maintaining a collection of small computer programs that help forest ecologists analyze data of over six million trees. Lepore joined the Smithsonian in 2016 as a research fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. He researched how coral reefs in Bocas del Toro, Panama, have changed over the past 7,000 years in response to human impacts. The ideas he developed led to the paper, "Look to the past for an optimistic future," which was recently published in Conservation Biology (O'Dea et al. 2017). Lepore earned a Ph.D. in Ecology in 2015 from the University of Queensland, Australia, and graduated in marine biology in 2008 from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Winter Interns Contribute to Botany

From Plant Press, Vol. 20, No. 2, April 2017.

The resources available within the National Museum of Natural History, including staff, herbarium specimens, living greenhouse specimens, and a molecular lab, make the Department of Botany an attractive place for students to further their training as young botanists. Internships in Botany are aimed at actively engaging students, providing hands-on education and training in research, collections management and even administration, benefiting both the intern and the Department. Internships have an element of educational training built into the appointment and this training complements the education and career goals of the intern. Botany was fortunate to host several interns this past winter, and we got the chance to hear from a few of them here.

Sarah Brown, an undergraduate from Tarleton State University, was a Collection Management Intern from December 5, 2016 to January 27, 2017. During her internship, Brown assisted the core Collection Management Unit and learned about the care and maintenance of a large collection. She diligently worked on processing incoming Seeds of Success specimens, as well as incoming exchange/gifts, and loans. Brown also helped package, transport and reintegrate our Cladonia lichen collection from our off-site facility to our main collection. Brown tackled the challenging task of filing specimens, collected by Lt. Charles Wilkes from the 1800s, back into the main collection. Brown was enthusiastically engaged in every activity and eager to learn as much as possible about the daily functions of the collection. The information that Brown gathered during her internship will be applied towards the herbarium at her university. In April, Brown will be presenting a poster about the Tarleton Herbarium at the 64^th annual meeting of the Southwestern Association of Naturalists (SWAN) in association with the Texas Oklahoma Regional Consortium of Herbaria (TORCH) 10^th annual meeting.

Yash Kalburgi, an undergraduate at Northern Virginia Community College, has been working with Jun Wen and Liz Zimmer since the fall of 2016. He has been conducting bioinformatics research (genome skimming) on Next Generation Sequencing data for the grape genus, Vitis. In addition to extracting whole plastome sequences from the data, he will be assisting in producing phylogenies from the aligned sequences. Kalburgi will be transferring to a four year college in August 2017.

Elena Meyer, a student from Northern Virginia Community College, returned as an intern from January 9 to February 3, 2017. Meyer first interned in the Department of Botany during the summer of 2013. After her initial internship, she undertook a research project with former staff member Elaine Haug to conduct a floral survey of Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge in Woodbridge, Virginia, with the dual goals of generating a species list and documenting the changes that had occurred under U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service management of the property in the 20-year period since an earlier survey was conducted. The objectives for her current internship was to integrate both her collections from 2014-15 and Haug’s collections from 1991-98 into the EMu database system and to prepare these specimens properly for submission for mounting, as well as selecting sets for possible donation. The specimens Meyer processed and submitted for mounting or donation came from 420 distinct collections of plants, the majority of which were collected with duplicates, for a total of 851 plant specimens. These yielded a set for donation to the U.S. National Herbarium of around 400 pressed plant specimens, a set of duplicates numbering around 200 specimens, and a third set of 200 extra specimens. These plants represent 82 families and 269 species. At least five species are potential county records for Prince William County.

As an undergraduate at the University of Vermont, Jacob Suissa studied plant biology, conducting various research projects ranging from plant physiology to fungal taxonomy. He found a passion for plant systematics and phylogenetics during a tropical plant systematics field course in Costa Rica. He continued his studies in plant systematics during a semester at the University of Hawai’i Manoa. His current research includes elucidating the evolutionary histories in various plant lineages using a phylogenetic framework. Presently, Suissa is working on two projects: using high-throughput (NextGen) sequencing to resolve the phylogeny in a clade of North American heterosporous aquatic lycophytes (Isoëtes); and utilizing new microfluidic technology to analyze a large number of taxa using 276 loci in the Sunflower family (Asteraceae). Starting in late January, Suissa began conducting research on these projects during an internship in the Smithsonian’s Department of Botany under the mentorship of Liz Zimmer. After he concludes his internship at the end of July, he will begin his doctoral studies at Harvard University under William (Ned) Friedman.

Alison Taylor, a student from American University, held a Collections Management internship from October 11 to December 14, 2016. Mentored by Melinda Peters, she worked with staff to acquire, catalog, repair, and loan out specimens. Memorable activities included determining how to carve out foam to secure a specimen of the largest seed in the world, Coco de Mer, Lodoicea maldivica. Taylor also learned that mounting and repairing specimens requires, as she says, “an eye for placement, delicate hands for strapping between tiny leaves, and patience for the whole process.”

New Faces

From Plant Press, Vol. 19, No. 4, October 2016.

Lauren Krizel joined the Center for Tropical Forest Science - Forest Global Earth Observatory (CTFS-ForestGEO) in the July of 2016 as Program Assistant. She earned her B.A. in Environmental Studies from American University and her M.S. in Environmental and Energy Management from George Washington University. Krizel started her career path working with endangered piping plovers on the beaches of New York, and most recently at the Society for Conservation Biology for five years. She is based at the CTFS-ForestGEO headquarters at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

In early July, Marcelo R. Pace joined the Smithsonian’s Botany Department as a Peter Buck Postdoctoral Fellow. He will be working under the supervision of Pedro Acevedo to explore the ontogeny and diversification of wood anatomy in Malpighiaceae and how specific, unusual types of stem secondary growth peculiar to lianas may be correlated with shifts in diversification rates in the family. Pace obtained his Master’s and Doctoral degrees at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, where he explored the anatomical modifications different plant families of tracheophytes have undergone in the shifts from a shrub/tree to vines. His research also included the evolution and development of wood anatomy in Bignoniaceae.

New Faces

From Plant Press, Vol. 19, No. 3, July 2016.

Manuela Dal Forno joined the Botany Department as a postdoctoral fellow in June 2016, working with Eric Schuettpelz. Dal Forno received her Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Public Policy from George Mason University. Her dissertation research focused on the systematics of tropical basidiolichens in the Dictyonema sensu lato clade (Agaricales: Hygrophoraceae). Dal Forno was awarded an NSF fellowship for research using biological collections and will be obtaining microbiome data from fresh and historical lichen collections deposited at the U.S. National Herbarium. She will be comparing these data in both space (from different localities) and time (at various ages). Her main objective is to test the hypothesis that microbiome data from specimens deposited in herbaria represent the original bacterial assemblage associated with the living lichen thallus. This opens up a remarkable opportunity to add another data layer to millions of existing collections deposited in museums worldwide.

Bort (Robert) Edwards arrived in January as a Powell Center Postdoctoral Fellow under the guidance of Vicki Funk. The Powell Center is a USGS initiative for collaborative analysis and synthesis and Edwards’ project brings together data and investigators from SI, USGS, USDA, CSIRO, NSF, and a number of other organizations and universities. They aim to leverage big data in the form of geochemistry and geology, climate, plant distributions, and sequence data to investigate whether the evolution of extreme environmental tolerances has allowed the differentiation and diversification of plant groups in some of the more challenging environments of North America. Edwards has a Ph.D. in phylogenetics and biogeography from The University of Queensland in Australia studying differentiation, niche evolution, and species identity in a recent and complex radiation of monsoon tropical trees, broadleaved paperbarks (Melaleuca, Myrtaceae). He is also recovering from two years as a Drosophila speciation genetics postdoc at the University of Rochester (identifying the genetic mechanisms of hybrid incompatibility and the large X effect between D. simulans and D. mauritiana), and is enjoying supra-freezing temperatures, blue skies and dabbling with chlorophyll again. His research can be followed at http://bortedwards.weebly.com/ and on Twitter and Instagram @BortEdwards.

Laura Tancredi is the newest staff member of the Department of Botany. As part of the Information Management team, her main roles will be to enhance the Botany specimen catalog through digitizing, inventorying and imaging specimens, performing quality control for the rapid digitization project, and supervising volunteers and interns who will assist with the improvement of the online records. Before coming to the Smithsonian as a Collections Program Technician (CPT) in 2012, Tancredi worked as an archaeologist at George Washington’s Mount Vernon. She therefore comes to Botany with plenty of experience “collecting” in the dirt. Tancredi’s first project as a CPT, and first exposure to the world of pressed specimens, was with the National Anthropological Archives, mounting ethnobotanical specimens as part of the Recovering Voices Initiative. She subsequently spent over a year in the Division of Fishes cataloging ~15,000 specimen lots in their fluid collection, and moving and rehousing the osteological collection. She participated in the Department of Entomology’s species level inventory, catalogued the Department of Paleobiology’s Amber Collection, and spent about eight months last spring and summer with the Department of Botany preparing specimens for the conveyor belt digitization project.