Article Alerts Archive – 2019
The Extended Specimen Network: A strategy to enhance US biodiversity collections, promote research and education
Science, industry, and society rely on physical specimens housed in US biodiversity collections. Ongoing advances in data generation and analysis have transformed biodiversity collections from physical specimens to dynamic suites of interconnected resources enriched through study over time.
Highlights from 10+ years of lichenological research in Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is one of the most biologically diverse tracts of land in North America and is the most visited national park in the United States. The Smokies are also a global biodiversity hotspot for lichens and allied fungi, and the park is home to many rare, disjunct, and endemic species.
One thousand plant transcriptomes and the phylogenomics of green plants
The green plant tree of life is built upon many evolutionary innovations, and plants have come a long way since they began as single-celled organisms one billion years ago. Plants have transitioned from water to land and managed to become the beautiful, towering, flowering and fruiting beings that are the backbone of life on earth.
Tales of the discovery of new plant species: Dacryodes
Thousands of new species of plants and fungi have been described by NYBG researchers in recent decades, contributing to a total of more than 2,000 new plant species named by scientists each year. The most important contributions to these totals result from thorough systematic study of taxa (monographs and revisions).
Biodiversity of Pantepui: The Pristine "Lost World" of the Neotropical Guiana Highlands
This book provides the most updated and comprehensive knowledge on the biota, origin, and evolution of the Pantepui biogeographical province. It synthesizes historical information and recent discoveries, covering the main biogeographic patterns, evolutionary trends, and conservation efforts.
A taxonomically broad metagenomic survey suggests cystobasidiomycete yeasts are not ubiquitous across all lichens
This American Journal of Botany cover article describes the results of a broad metagenomic survey for lichen‐associated cystobasidiomycete yeasts to determine the extent to which lichens represent dynamic metacommunities, versus the traditional view of lichens as binary symbiont pairs.
Lichen conservation in North America: a review of current practices and research in Canada and the United States
The authors review the current state of lichen conservation in Canada and the United States. Through detailed case studies, they document threats, review the legal frameworks for protection, and provide a summary of actions that must be taken to accelerate lichen conservation.
Phylogenetics, morphology and circumscription of Cambessedesieae: a new Neotropical tribe of Melastomataceae
The most recent article in a long series of installments focused on systematics of the Melastomataceae addresses placement of Cambessedesia and genera of the ‘Merianthera and allies clade’. The genera of this clade are exclusively neotropical with centers of species diversity in the Atlantic Forest and Cerrado of Brazil.
The Plant Ontology facilitates comparisons of plant development stages across species
This article represents the latest installment of the ongoing Plant Ontology (PO) project, an NSF-supported initiative that aims to develop a community resource consisting of standardized terms, definitions, and logical relations describing plant structures and developmental stages for use by botanists in a diversity of fields.
The gradual loss of African indigenous vegetables in tropical America
In this review, the authors trace the trajectories of 12 prominent African indigenous vegetables (AIVs) in tropical America, in order to better understand the diffusion of their culinary and ethnobotanical uses by the African diaspora. The 12 AIVs were selected from African reference works and preliminary reports of their presence in the Americas.
Revisiting the classification of Melastomataceae: Habit and fruit evolution
Bertolonieae (Melastomataceae) have traditionally comprised more than 100 Neotropical species in a dozen genera. However, recent phylogenetic analyses have shown that Bertolonieae are not monophyletic, which implies that suites of morpholocial and ecological features have evolved independently in unrelated groups of Melastomataceae.
Habitat quality and disturbance drive lichen species richness in a temperate biodiversity hotspot
Relatively little is known about how lichens–obligate symbiotic organisms–respond to disturbance. Successful establishment and development of lichens require a minimum of two compatible yet usually unrelated species to be present in an environment, suggesting disturbance might be particularly detrimental.
Genetic mechanisms underlying perianth epidermal elaboration of Aristolochia ringens (Aristolochiaceae)
The authors studied the morpho-anatomical and molecular basis of perianth elaboration of Aristolochia ringens. The study provides the first large scale analysis of perianth genes in Aristolochia and presents an overall view of the transcriptomic profiles in three well-differentiated portions of the perianth.
Biodiversity recovery of Neotropical secondary forests
This large team of authors assessed how tree species richness and composition recover during secondary succession across gradients in environmental conditions and anthropogenic disturbance in an unprecedented multisite analysis for the Neotropics. Secondary forests recover remarkably fast in species richness but slowly in species composition.
First record of Usnea (Parmeliaceae) growing in New York City in nearly 200 years
During a series of lichen surveys in New York City, the authors found a single thallus of Usnea on one very large, old red oak (Quercus rubra) at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. The individual was too poorly developed to identify by its morphology and chemistry, so they used a DNA barcoding approach.
Pleistocene range expansions might explain striking disjunctions between eastern Brazil, Andes and Mesoamerica in Leandra
Most species of Leandra are narrow endemics, but a few present striking disjunct distributions between eastern Brazil and Andes or Mesoamerica. The authors used Climatic Niche Modeling to better understand the distributions of the species in this clade.
From plant ontology to gene ontology and back
In this article, NYBG scientists Dennis Stevenson and Cecilia Zumajo explore terminology related to structures of the seed, addressing the question of which of the two integuments in the angiosperms is the equivalent of the single integument in the gymnosperms.
Patterns of biodiverse, understudied groups do not mirror those of the surrogate groups that set conservation priorities
The authors–two NYBG curators and the first-author graduate student–conducted biodiversity inventories of lichens, woody plants, and sedges at 32 sites on the Mid-Atlantic Coastal Plain of eastern North America between November 2012 and June 2015.
Traditional lifestyles, transition and implications for healthy aging
A team of researchers including New York Botanical Garden scientist Michael Balick has found that citizens of a Pacific island nation who are in transition between traditional, agrarian communities and modernized areas are more likely to have unhealthful lifestyles than those living in either traditional or modernized communities.
The first complete plastid genomes of Melastomataceae are highly structurally conserved
NYBG scientists Fabian Michelangeli and Marcelo Reginato report the first full plastid sequences of Melastomataceae, compare general features of the sampled plastomes to other sequenced Myrtales, and survey the plastomes for highly informative regions for phylogenetics.
Science Magazine: This lily’s cousin is an ear of corn
As different as they seem, corn, daylilies, towering palm trees, and diminutive lady’s slipper orchids have a lot in common. Now, a new genetic study published by 20 authors including NYBG’s Dr. Dennis Stevenson reveals why: Even though all of these plants are landlubbers today, their ancestor lived in water.
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