Benjamin M. Torke, Ph.D., is an Assistant Curator at the Garden’s Institute of Systematic Botany. He is one of the leaders of a project to document the plant diversity of the Tapajos River basin in northern Brazil, an area roughly the size of France.
Threatened by deforestation, climate change, and high levels of poverty in local communities, the Amazon rain forest and its immense diversity of plant life have a very uncertain future. During a recent expedition in Brazil’s Amazonia National Park, I awoke to a cloud of fog hanging low over the San Luis rapids on the Tapajos River, one of the largest tributaries of the Amazon River.
The scene struck me as an apt metaphor, not only for the Tapajos region—the area in the photo is slated for a massive hydroelectric development that will flood portions of the national park—but also for the entire Amazon basin. My Brazilian collaborators and I hope that our race to inventory threatened plant diversity in the Tapajos region will yield information useful to local communities and governments as they struggle to strike a balance between much-needed economic development and conservation of irreplaceable plant species.
The Brazil nut team in Espiríto Santo. Left to right: Nate Smith, Anderson Aves Araújo, Michel Ribeiro, and Scott Mori.
During two weeks in November, three colleagues and I explored the remnant woodlands of the once-abundant Atlantic coastal forest of Espírito Santo, a Brazilian state on the Atlantic coast just north of Rio de Janeiro. We were searching for poorly known species of the Brazil nut family, whose scientific name is Lecythidaceae, and we were especially interested in collecting in Espírito Santo because it is an area of intensive human development. Only a fraction of the natural habitat remains.
The trip followed my visit to the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden, where I taught a short course on the Brazil nut family. Joining me were Michel Ribeiro, who is preparing a treatment of the Brazil nut family as part of his master’s degree requirements; Anderson Alves-Araújo, a botany professor at the Federal University of Espiríto Santo who is one of Michel’s advisors; and Nate Smith, a specialist in the Brazil family and an Honorary Research Associate at The New York Botanical Garden.
In nearly 50 years as a tropical botanist, I have spent a great deal of time in Brazil, where most of the species I study—belonging to the Brazil nut family of woody plants—are found. Usually I go in search of new species or new information about known species in this large and economically important family, but recently I went for a different reason—to pass on some of my botanical knowledge to the next generation of Brazilian botanists.
I was invited by the Escola Nacional de Botânica Tropical (a division of the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden) to teach a short course on the classification, evolution, and ecology of the Brazil nut family, scientifically known as Lecythidaceae. This opportunity was appealing for a couple of reasons: first, I have a National Science Foundation Grant to synthesize my career-long research on the Brazil nut family and pass that on to future generations of botanists, and second, one of The New York Botanical Garden’s missions is to help students of all ages learn about botany.
During the early years of my career, there were few Brazilians with doctorate degrees in systematic botany. Today, Brazil has some of the world’s best programs for the study of tropical biology, including the one at Rio’s botanical garden. This garden has state-of-the-art molecular labs, an outstanding herbarium, a program of botanical exploration throughout the country, an advanced database system used to inventory the country’s flora, an outstanding program to monitor endangered species, and an excellent post-graduate program.
Getting there is half the fun, unless you’re trekking into remote wilderness. With scientists such as Wayt Thomas, Ph.D., hoofing it into some of the most remote and unforgiving locales on Earth, it’s not surprising that their expeditions occasionally hit snags. Dr. Thomas is the Elizabeth G. Britton Curator of Botany here at the NYBG, and his focus on the flora of northeastern Brazil often takes him to deep, rugged forests where roads are a luxury, if not a pipe dream. But as seen below, the hassles are worth it, especially when species diversity is at risk. Dr. Thomas is working with plants found nowhere else in the world, an effort that has a two-fold benefit.
In the course of documenting these plants in Brazil’s Atlantic coastal forests, he and his team are also determining which species provide food and shelter for endangered and increasingly rare bird species also found in the area. With time, Dr. Thomas and his colleagues hope to uncover the relationships between plant and animal, which will allow scientists not only to track the location of these avian populations more easily but also to recommend specific reforestation plans to support these vanishing birds.
Of course, Dr. Thomas isn’t the only one roughing it in the field. Stay tuned to Science Talk for more adventures involving our globetrotting scientists.
