Barbara M. Thiers

Director, William and Lynda Steere Herbarium, The New York Botanical Garden

Ph.D., University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA (1982)
"Branching in the Lejeuneaceae (Hepaticae)"
Expertise: Tropical Hepaticae, Herbarium Management, Biodiversity Information Management

Profile

As Director of the Herbarium, I am responsible for overseeing the Garden's nearly seven million herbarium collections of algae, bryophytes, fungi, lichens and vascular plants. The New York Botanical Garden herbarium is the largest in the Western Hemisphere, and among the five largest in the world. It is one of the world's most actively used herbaria in terms of the number of specimens sent on loan each year, and the number of visitors to the herbarium. I have been particularly interested in the application of information technology to herbarium management, and to increasing access to specimen-based data for the scientific community. In the early years, I developed database applications for keeping track of transactions, but today I supervise a team of Bioinformatics Managers who work in conjunction with the Garden's Computer Services Department to manage the Garden's Virtual Herbarium. The Virtual Herbarium is the umbrella under which all the Garden's electronic collection management activites, current and future, are gathered. The subject of my research is the Hepaticae. In particular, I am interested in the systematics and morphology of the largest family of Hepaticae, the Lejeuneaceae. This family is primarily tropical in distribution, and its members can be found growing, often profusely, on the bark and sometimes on living leaves of trees in tropical rainforests. My studies of these small but beautiful plants have taken me to Australia, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, French Guiana, Papua New Guinea, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. I am currently completing a treatment of the approximately 125 species of Lejeuneaceae that occur in Australia for the Flora of Australia project.

Selected Publications

1982. Branching in the Lejeuneaceae I: A comparison of branch development in Aphanolejeunea and Cololejeunea. Bryologist 85: 104-109.

1982. Type studies in the Lejeuneaceae. I. Archilejeunea pabstii, Hygrolejeunea pacifica, and Hygrolejeunea spongia. Brittonia 34: 294-298.

1983. Type studies in the Lejeuneaceae. II. Pteryganthus, a new subgenus of Lopholejeunea. Brittonia 35: 81-86.

1983. Index to the genera and species of Hepaticae described by William Mitten. Brittonia 35: 271-300.

1983. The fungus herbarium of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CM), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Brittonia 35: 367-373. (with Dennis Desjardin and Andrew S. Methven).

1984. Branch characters significant to subfamilial classification of Lejeuneaceae (Hepaticae). Syst. Bot. 9: 33-41.

1984. Branching in the Lejeuneaceae II. Nipponolejeuneoideae, Tuyamaelloideae, and Myriocoleoideae. Lindbergia 10: 4-18.

1984. Type studies in Lejeuneaceae III. Lopholejeunea erugata, a new name for Ptychocoleus inermis. Brittonia 36: 174-177.

1984. Introduction to a reprinted edition of Richard Spruce's Hepaticae Amazonicae et Andinae. Contr. New York Bot. Gard. 15: IX-XII.


1984. Index to species described in Hepaticae Amazonicae et Andinae by Richard Spruce, with nomenclatural updating. Contr. New York Bot. Gard. 15: (1)-(14).

1985. Branching in the Lejeuneaceae III. Ptychanthoideae. In: Gradstein, S. R., (ed.) Studies in the Lejeuneaceae subfamily Ptychanthoideae. Beih. Nova Hedwigia 80: 31-61.

1985. Austrolejeunea bidentata, a new species of Lejeuneaceae subfamily Tuyamaelloideae from Australia. Bryologist 88: 350-352.

1986. Branching in the Lejeuneaceae. IV. Lejeuneoideae. Nova Hedwigia 42: 237-275.

1987. A preliminary account of Colura (Hepaticae, Lejeuneaceae) in Australia. Brittonia 39: 175-179.

1987. Lepidolejeunea queenslandica, a new species of Lejeuneaceae subfamily Lejeuneoideae from Australia. In: Buck, W. R. (ed.) Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 45: 556-560.

1988. Morphological adaptations of the Jungermanniales (Hepaticae) to the tropical rainforest habitat. J. Hattori Bot. Lab. 64: 5-14.

1988. The Australian species of Cololejeunea. in Engel, J. (ed.) Beih. Nova Hedwigia 90: 113-146.

1989. (with Roy E. Halling). Type specimens of agarics, boletes and gasteromycetes in the San Francisco State University herbarium (SFSU). Mycotaxon 34:267-268.

1989. (with S. R. Gradstein). Lejeuneaceae (Hepaticae) of Australia. I. Subfamily Ptychanthoideae of Australia. Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 52: 1-79.

1989. (with W. R. Buck) Bryological studies in the tropics. Pp. 484-493. In Campbell, D. & D. Hammond, (eds.), World Strategy for the Floristic Inventory of Tropical Forests, New York Botanical Garden, Bronx.

1990. An overview of the Lejeuneaceae in Australia. Tropical Bryology 2: 273-283. 1990.

1992. (with S. Emory). The history of bryology in California. Bryologist 95: 68-78.

1993. New Species of Cheilolejeunea and Otolejeunea (Hepaticae; Lejeuneaceae) from Australia. Brittonia 44: 160-165.

1993. A Re-evaluation of Cheilolejeunea subgenus Cheilolejeunea and Xenolejeunea. Tropical Bryology 5: 11-21.

1993. An index to the species of mosses and lichens described by William Mitten. Memoirs of the New York Botanical Garden 67:1-113. (project coordinator).

1993. A monograph of Pleurozia (Hepaticae, Pleuroziaceae). The Bryologist 96: 517-554.

1993. (with P. K. Holmgren & J. A. Kallunki). A short description of the collections of the New York Botanical Garden Herbarium (NY). Brittonia 48: 285-296.

1997. Cheilolejeunea in Australia: Description of new taxa and key. J. Hattori Bot. Lab. 82: 321-328.

1997. Lejeunea bischlerae, a new species of Lejeunea subgenus Microlejeunea from Australia. Cryptogamie. Bryologie et LichÈnologie. Cryptogamie, Bryol. LichÈnol. 18: 223-226.