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| Importance of Herbaria
Vicki Funk National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. Funk's interests include systematics of the Compositae, especially from high elevations in South American; biodiversity, the interface between systematics and conservation biology; and theory and practice of cladistics and biogeography. She has worked extensively in the Guyana Highland and the Andes. She is a co-author of the well-known manual, "The Compleat Cladist: A primer of phylogeny procedures" that has been translated into Japanese and Chinese. Angiosperm Phylogeny Peter F. Stevens Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, and the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Stevens’ research interests are in two main areas, the Malesian flora, especially that of New Guinea, and phylogenetic/monographic work (currently mostly in Clusiaceae and Ericaceae). He also has a strong interest in the history of systematic biology, especially the period of 1750-1900, in systematic theory, especially the issue of data in systematics and delimitation of character states, and in the relationship between cognitive psychology and systematic theory and practice. Using phylogenies to measure known and unknown mushroom biodiversity Rytas Vilgalys Duke University. The research interests of Vilgalys are threefold. He works with phylogenetic biology and systematics, especially to hypothesize relationships of the Agaricales (mushrooms). His research also extends to the genetics of speciation, including patterns of morphological verses genetic divergence, and the analysis of the genetic factors underlying development of intersterility between related species. A third area of interest is the population biology of fungi, with estimation of breeding systems and measurement of gene flow in natural populations. Fungi currently under investigation include the oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus) as well as several species of medically important fungi (Candida albicans and Cryptococcus neoformans). Botanical Exploration and Curation in the 21st Century or What’s all that stuff in those cases? Where did it come from? What good is it? Michael O. Dillon Field Museum and University of Chicago. Dillon's research interests center around the systematics of Neotropical Asteraceae and Nolanaceae and the floras in diverse habitats in the Andean Cordillera, ranging from the hyper-arid deserts of coastal Chile and Peru to mid-elevation mountain forests of northern Peru, and ultimately high-elevation plant communities known as páramos, jalca or puna throughout the Cordillera. His other interests include coastal South American ecology and biogeography, floristic inventories, and databases and information management. Systematics of the genus Cordyceps (Fungi, Ascomycota) and the evolution of host-jumping Joseph W. Spatafora Oregon State University. The research of Spatafora focuses on molecular systematics and population genetics of fungi. Particular emphases include the evolutionary biology of fungal symbioses as they relate to the evolution of host shifts, the phylogenetic integration of ecologically disparate groups of fungi, and population genetics of closely related organisms with different reproductive life histories. He has emphasized the frequent host shifts that occur among the Clavicipitaceae, a group that includes the ergot fungus, endophytes, and several genera of insect pathogens. Spatafora received his PhD at LSU in 1992. The role of university herbaria in biodiversity research and conservation Tom Wendt Plant Resources Center, University of Texas, Austin. Wendt’s research interests center on the systematics of Mexican rain forest tree groups and the floristics and biogeography of the arboreal component of Mexican rain forests, especially those of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec; the Polygalaceae of Mexico; and the flora of Coahuila, Mexico. Formally Wendt was Associate Director of the LSU Herbarium, before joining the Plant Resources Center (TEX-LL) in Austin. The center houses over 1,100,000 specimens with a third of its specimens coming from Texas, the largest holding of Texas plants in the world. About one half of the specimens (ca. 500,000) are from Mexico and/or other parts of tropical America, making the center a major US resource for recent Mexican collections. The number of vascular plant collections in the center is growing at an approximate rate of 16,400 specimens per year. |
| News from the News |
And yet again... On Morning
Edition 's popular "Radio Expeditions" on 18 March, Van Remson.
several searchers, and the only known recording of the ivory-billed woodpecker's
"toy trumpet " call were heard. "The latest Radio Expedition trek
into the Louisiana swamps in pursuit of one of the most have electrified
birders around the country." The report for Morning Edition was
by NPR's Christopher Joyce.
A High Profile Research Position For Charles Ramcharan
Charles
Ramcharan has been offered an Associate Professorship at St.
Francis Xavier University located in the province of Nova
Scotia, Canada. St. Francis Xavier is primarily an undergraduate
teaching college (ranked second, Canada wide), but the position offered
to Ramcharan is a research chair funded by the Canadian Federal Government
in Ottawa. In response to anticipated, large number s of retirements
in Canadian faculties, Ottawa has established the Canada
Research Chairs Program. Rather than simply replacing existing
faculty, the goal of the CRC program is to enhance the research potential
of Canadian universities. Accordingly, CRC positions are provided
with low teaching requirements, extensive laboratory facilities, generous
startup funding, and a salary enhancement intended to attract top research
talent. Moreover, CRC awardees have a preferred status when applying
for grants from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI). The
CFI is another new program from Ottawa that is designed to upgrade the
research infrastructure at Canadian
universities. CFI is providing about $1 billion over five years
to construct research facilities, purchase equipment, and provide startup
support to many Canadian research institutions. CFI awards are matched
in different ratios by additional funding agencies within each Canadian
province. Only a limited number of CRC positions have been made available
by Ottawa so the competition is stiff for these prestigious awards.
CRC host departments seek not just productive investigators but, importantly,
those who can also act as research catalysts. Ramcharan has the strong
advantages of having led a large-scale, multi-investigator project (The
Dorset Project) and also having broad research interests: lakes,
bayous, coastal reefs, rivers, applied and theoretical ecology.
Alumni
News
|
John Pruski , former student of Lowell Urbatsch, has moved from the Smithsonian Institution to the Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, where he is a curator for the Flora Mesoamerica Project. As an assistant curator with a specialty in the Asteraceae (sunflower family), his main responsibility is to coordinate, edit, and write treatments of the Asteraceae for the Flora Mesoamericana, including the web version of the Flora. Previously, Pruski contributed to the Asteraceae for the Flora of the Venezuelan Guayana project, and he was an associate editor of the journal Brittonia from 1983-1993. He is located in the Garden's Monsanto Center, as close to the Asteraceae part of the herbarium as possible. Congratulations to Pruski on the new position. |
| The graduate students also are planning the spring crawfish boil, scheduled for Friday 12 of April, the same day as the "Grooving on the Grounds." More information (who, where, when, etc.) will be announced soon. Stay tuned. |
John Fleeger
has
been collaborating with Danny Reible, from the Department of Chemical Engineering
and the Center's Director, for several years to examine the effect of aquatic
oligochaetes on the fate of hydrophobic contaminants (such as aromatic
hydrocarbons) in sediments. They will determine the ability of this
small worm, that lives in high density in
contaminated
sediments, to bioaccumulate a contaminant that is chemically resistant
to "desorption" from its association with sediment organic carbon in a
way that mimics aging (contaminants often become less toxic as they age
in sediments perhaps due to conformational changes in association with
organic carbon). The digestive fluids of oligochaetes (and other
deposit-feeding worms) facilitate the uptake of hydrophobic contaminants
and the goal of the project is to predict accumulation into the worm's
tissue based on the rate that contaminants desorb from sediments. Experiments
will also determine if worms facilitate contaminant release from sediments
associated with their "re-working" of the sediment. Kurt Gust,
Ph.D. student in Fleeger's lab, will be supported on the project and is
conducting his own research on oligochaetes and contaminated sediment.
Congratulations to Lori Zeringue, Hollie Hale-Donze, Dominique Homberger, John Lynn, and Fred Rainey for obtaining a Tech Fee award for the project: Integration of Digital Imaging Microscopy into Biological Instruction and Undergraduate Research ($53,645 for FY 02-03 and $49,467 for FY 03-04).
Congratulations to Jim Belanger
for his Tech Fee award for the project: Upgrade to the physiology teaching
laboratory ($47,240 for FY 02-03 and $21,130 for FY 03-04).
Write
On Biologist
 |
Cover
Article:
Roy-Engel, A. M. *, M. L. Carroll*, M. El-Sawy, A.-H. Salem, R. K. Garber, S. V. Nguyen, P. L. Deininger+, and M. A. Batzer+. 2002. Non-traditional Alu evolution and primate genomic diversity.? Journal of Molecular Biology 316:? 1033-1040.? [*These authors contributed equally to the paper.] |
-Photograph courtesy of the Hunt Botanical Library, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |
From the LSU
Library Special Collections "Brother
Arsene Brouard was a French monk and botanist who taught biology, physics,
chemistry, Spanish, and French at St. Paul's College in Covington, Louisiana
from 1919 to 1925. Brouard, born Arsene Gustave Joseph Brouard near Orleans,
France, took his first vows in 1898 and studied botany in his native land.
He was assigned to a college in Puebla, Mexico, in 1906 before going to
Morelia three years later. While in Mexico, he systematically collected,
identified, cataloged, and preserved the country's fauna. Brouard discovered
several new species before being forced out of Mexico in 1914 during the
revolution.
"He arrived in the United States and taught at schools in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Ellicott City, Maryland, before arriving in Covington. While at St. Paul's College he collected approximately nine hundred plants, of which sixty species were unknown in Louisiana, and three were unknown in the United States. In 1926 he left for Las Vegas, New Mexico because of his failing health. He continued to teach and collect fauna before his death in 1938." What is the Brother Arsene connection with the LSU Department of Biological Sciences? His collections are housed in the new LSU Herbarium. Watch for news of the herbarium grand opening the next issue. |