{"id":1790,"date":"2014-12-04T15:04:18","date_gmt":"2014-12-04T20:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nybg.org\/science-talk\/?p=1790"},"modified":"2014-12-04T15:05:38","modified_gmt":"2014-12-04T20:05:38","slug":"discovering-new-plant-species-in-the-field-and-in-the-herbarium-part-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/12\/discovering-new-plant-species-in-the-field-and-in-the-herbarium-part-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Discovering New Plant Species in the Field\u2014and in the Herbarium, Part One"},"content":{"rendered":"

Douglas C. Daly, Ph.D.<\/a>, is the Director of the Institute of Systematic Botany and the B. A. Krukoff Curator of Amazonian Botany at The New York Botanical Garden<\/a>. Among his research activities, he is a specialist in the Burseraceae (frankincense and myrrh) family of plants.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\"A<\/a>
A Central American rain forest that is home to a rare plant species recently described by Dr. Daly<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Plant scientists discover and publish about 1,850 new species each year worldwide. That pace has not changed much since 1970, meaning that, although we have already described about 350,000 plant species,\u00a0we still have a steep \u201clearning curve\u201d and a very long way to go before we come close to documenting all the world\u2019s species of plants.<\/p>\n

In this series of posts, I’ll describe some of the challenges that plant taxonomists face in their quest to discover new species. I’ll also explain\u00a0why that work is so important in the effort to conserve plant life on Earth, using two recent examples from my own\u00a0work in the genus Dacryodes<\/em>, a group of about 60 related species of tropical trees.
\n
\nPeople are often surprised to learn\u00a0that most new species are \u201cdiscovered\u201d in a herbarium, the repository of preserved plant specimens collected by scientists on field trips. Yet\u00a0that is not surprising if you think\u00a0of\u00a0a herbarium\u00a0as a distillation of the plant life in the regions where scientists have worked. A large herbarium like the NYBG’s William and Lynda Steere Herbarium<\/a>\u2014which\u00a0has 7.4 million specimens\u2014represents literally millions of hours of field work and millions of miles flown and hiked and paddled. The results\u2014the specimens\u2014are all under one roof.<\/p>\n

There is a shockingly long average lag time of 35 years between the first collection of a new species and its publication, but there are three main reasons for this. Taxonomists almost always need\u00a0several specimens on which to base the conclusion that something is new and to describe it fully, and finding those specimens takes time. Second, there are simply not enough taxonomists, nor enough hours in a taxonomist\u2019s day, to name the world\u2019s flora in a reasonable period of time.<\/p>\n

Finally, the plant scientist\u00a0who specializes in a given family of plants must cross paths with the specimens of the new species in that family as he or she examines thousands of specimens in dozens of herbaria, often in many countries. We are looking for multiple needles in multiple haystacks.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the\u00a0greatest challenge regarding the knowledge we are able to gain during our studies of\u00a0plant groups is\u00a0ensuring that that knowledge contributes to conservation and management of plant resources. Our work in discovering new species is useful\u00a0only if we make\u00a0connections with policy-makers and resource managers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Discovering and cataloging new plant species is no simple task. 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