FOREST ECOLOGY ON THE FRINGES OF SOCIETY
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Juan 3:16 ∴ Carpe Vitae

A place to store information related to tropical plant taxonomy, functional traits and plant physiology

The diversity of tropical systems is a double-edged sword. Biologically-diverse tropical ecosystems are both scientifically interesting and difficult to study due to high levels of diversity.  Luckily, there have been innumerable naturalists, taxonomists, ecologists, and plant physiologists willing to dedicate themselves to the systematic study of tropical plants.
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Here we celebrate some of their work, the plants they have studied, and some of the tools that will take the science of such study forward into the future ♠ 

TRY - Plant Trait Database

Quantifying and scaling global plant trait diversity
https://www.try-db.org/TryWeb/Home.php

SID - Seed Information Database

From the Royal Botanical Garden KEW
http://data.kew.org/sid/

FRED - Fine Root Ecological Database

run by Oak Ridge National Lab
http://roots.ornl.gov/

ORNL Leaf Web

for fitting CO2 response curves
​run by ORNL
https://www.leafweb.org/

The Plant List

for checking taxonomic validity of species names
http://www.theplantlist.org

For Plants of El Verde, PR

Fabiolia Areces' Virtual Flora (UPRRP) 
​floraelverde.catec.upr.edu/

Plants of the Eastern Caribbean Database

based on Richard Howard's six volume Flora of the Lesser Antilles
​http://ecflora.cavehill.uwi.edu/

DRYFLOR

Latin American Seasonally Dry Tropical Forest Floristic Network
http://www.dryflor.info/

Flora of China

http://foc.eflora.cn/

Phylomatic​

by Cam Webb - for rapid generation of phylogenies of plants
http://phylodiversity.net/phylomatic/

PhyloPars

estimation of missing parameter values using phylogeny 
http://www.ibi.vu.nl/programs/phylopars/

Links to collaborators: 

Smithsonian CTFS Forest-GEO

Puerto Rico

China

Luquillo LTER
USDA Forest Service IITF
Maria Uriarte's Lab 
Bob Muscarella's Lab
Nate Swenson's Lab
Chinese Academy of Forestry
Xishungbanna Tropical Botanical Garden
Cao Min's Lab
​

Florida

 International Center for Tropical Botany
FIU Insititue of the Environment
Florida Coastal Everglades LTER
South Florida Terrestiral Ecosystem Lab
Matthew Smith's Lab


​
UF Dept. of Biology
Jeremy Lichstein's Lab (current employment)
​USFS Norhern Reserach Station - Grant Domke

Oak Ridge,Tennessee

Division of Environmental Science
Biosicences division - Plant System Biology
Jeff Warren
​David Weston
Jessy Labbe
UT Arboretum

Botany &  Type Specimens: the peculiar case of THOPOR

8/18/2017

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Botany is a science grounded in historical events.  Sometimes, this history is a mystery and can tell us something about the intrigue of a given species. 
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​Below the description of Thouinia striata var. portoricensis (THOPOR) from Wadsworth and Woodbury: Trees of Puerto Rico and and the Virgin Islands Vol.1 (published in 1964):  
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From the description, one can understand (among other things) that THOPOR is an endemic tree found in the Southwest of Puerto Rico, belongs to the Sapindaceae family, and that there are various identifying characteristics of the species (e.g., leathery, elliptical leaves, sometimes in threes with a toothed margin; etc.)

In my opinion, what is astounding and continually fascinates me is how we to got this place (botanically).  The Wadsworth and Woodbury is one of many books that documents the world's flora.  In this case, arguably thousands of botanists (perhaps millions) must have looked at this species, contemplated its synapomorphy (i.e., the shared unique characteristics that separate this species and its relatives from other plants), and conjectured about its evolution. 

Furthermore, and perhaps more remarkable, is how well these botanists did at describing evolutionary relationships of rare species like THOPOR, purely based on morphological characteristics (i.e., pure cladistics).  Modern DNA analyses continually reveal small subtleties in the angiosperm phylogeny, but the botanists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries got improbably close, simply using morphologies.

That is where type specimens come in.  The naturalist (botanist, mycologist, etc.) who first discovers and collects a species that is new to science is entrusted with the description of that species.  Each description must refer to a collection (i.e., an herbarium specimen), and usually the first registered collection of any new plant species is deemed the type (or holotype) specimen, and is forever the gold standard for comparison and determination of all other collections of that species.  

But what happens if there are two collected specimens?  Well, then they each become syntypes.  In this particular case, on the 3rd of May 1886 in the Bosque Seco of Guanica, Paul Ernst Emil Sintenis collected two specimens of THOPOR, which turned out to be a new species at the time. He probably did this because of the variable leaf morphology of the species, which sometimes is trifoliate but not always.  Therefore, two syntypes exist. 

Below are both syntype specimens for Thouinia striata var. portoricensis ​ (both of which can be found in the collections of the Missouri Botanical Garden):  
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I leave you with several botanical images of the species.  Photos by Ricardo Rivera.♠  
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    Picture
    P.R. 3023: Radiation Effects in a Dacryodes excelsa (Burseraceae) leaf. March 1966. Jaime Ruiz

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    Protium "tree 3 cm DBH, sterile" collected in La Selva by, Alwin Gentry on January 5th, 1993.
    ​To this day, the specimen has not been determined to species. Al would die later that year in a tragic plane accident.

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    Protium pecumiosum Daly (Burseraceae)
    ​Nelson Zamora 6398

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    Protium pitteri D. Porter (Burseraceae) 
    J.F. [Chico] Morales 4074

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    ​Goetzea elegans collected by Bob Muscarella.  click to see the "well-resolved phylogeny of Puerto Rican Trees" 

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    an orchid collected by the Costa Rican botanist Mario Blanco

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    Ticodendron specimen that is one year older than I. Herbaio de la Universidad de Costa Rica. 
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