PLANT 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.
​  
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

The Everglades of South Florida: not just glades, trees common. 

3/17/2017

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Everglades is a compound word, consisting of two words; ever and glades.  Here I define both in an attempt to decode the enigmatic beauty of the habitats of the Everglades, by visually and linguistics constructing the everglades from first terms:  
1. Ever (adverb): at any or all times, always.  forever or eternally.  increasingly constant or perpetual.  often used for emphasis (e.g., ever present).  
2.  Glade (noun):  an open areas within an woodland.  a grassy meadow or clearing.  more loosely; a treeless wetland. 

​Taking these definitions to heart, we can visually construct an ecosystem named, "the Everglades", or perpetual and expansive treeless wetland.  Using our imaginations, we may envision something that looks like the picture below:    
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A massive wetland meadow in the Everglades. Picture taken looking north from the overlook of Shark River slough, inside Everglades National Park.

There is only only one problem with this definition:  There are likely millions of trees in Everglades National Park.  Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum (L.) L.C. Rich) trees are common in flooded areas, creating dome-like forest patch tree-islands in perpetually-flooded areas.  A few lone Bald Cypress trees are visible above; the start of a Cypress dome. In more upland, non-wetland, areas of the Everlglades, with elevations of one to a few feet above sea level, exist "Pine Rockland" ecosystems, dominate by the Southern Florida Slash Pine (Pinus elliotii (Engelm.) var. densa (Little & Dorman)) and broad-leaf hardwood forest, commonly referred to as hammocks.  Additionally along coastal areas, mangrove trees (all three species: Red (Rhizophora mangle L.), Black (Avicennia germinans (L.) L.), and White (Laguncularia racemosa (L.) C.F. Gaertn.) can be found.  

I had the opportunity to do a little field work in the Pine Rockland recently, where I helped a fellow graduate student establish some transects spanning the Pine Rockland-Hardwood hammock ecotone.  Below are some photos of the native flora:  ♠ ​
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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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