Databasing Bryophytes from Southeastern U.S.

The National Science Foundation recently awarded a grant to Duke University to support data basing our bryophyte herbarium collections from the southeastern United States.

DUKE contains approximately 50,000 mosses and 11,000 liverworts from the Southeast, and is one of the most significant repositories for information about southeastern bryophyte diversity.

Each specimen is given a barcode, and locality/habitat information is entered into the database. Over the next several months, information about DUKE collections from the Southeast will be available on the Internet. Anyone will be able to search for collection records by taxon (species, genus, family), collector, and / or locality. In addition, the collections database is being integrated with phylogenetic reconstructions for mosses (1) and liverworts (2, 3) so that investigators can complement biodiversity inventories for particular areas with estimates that incorporate so-called phylogenetic diversity (4, 5).

(1) Cox, C. J., B. Goffinet, A. J. Shaw, & S. B. Boles. 2004. Phylogenetic relationships among the mosses based on heterogeneous Bayesian analysis of multiple genomic compartments. Systematic Botany 29: 234-250.

(2) Forrest, L. L., & B. J. Crandall-Stotler. 2004. A phylogeny of the simple thalloid liverworts (Jungermanniopsida, subclass Metzgeriidae) as inferred from five chloroplast genes. In Goffinet, B., V.C. Hollowell, and R.E. Magill [eds.]. Molecular systematics of bryophytes: progress, problems & perspectives. Monographs in Systematic Botany from the Missouri Botanical Garden 98. St. Louis, Missouri, USA.

(3) Davis, E. C. 2004. A molecular phylogeny of leafy liverworts (Jungermanniidae: Marchantiophyta). In Goffinet, B., V.C. Hollowell, and R.E. Magill [eds.]. Molecular systematics of bryophytes: progress, problems & perspectives. Monographs in Systematic Botany from the Missouri Botanical Garden 98. St. Louis, Missouri, USA.

(4) Faith, D. P. 1994. Phylogenetic diversity: a general framework for the prediction of feature diversity. In P. L. Forey, C. J. Humphries, and R. I. Vane-Wright [eds.], Systematics and Conservation Evaluation, 251-268. Clarendon, Oxford.

(5) Shaw, A. J., C. J. Cox, & S. B. Boles. 2003. Global patterns of peatmoss biodiversity. Molecular Ecology 12: 2553-2670.

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