Joseph F. Rock Herbarium

09/04/2016

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-08/pp-ano083016.php

Some collected 40 years ago, some as far back as a 100, nine new plant species from the custard apple genus Monanthotaxis have been recently discovered on dusty shelves and described in PhytoKeys to showcase the importance of herbaria in botany.

04/01/2016

http://www.nature.com/news/biological-specimen-troves-threatened-by-funding-pause-1.19599

Decision by US National Science Foundation could hamper research on conservation biology, climate change and invasive species.

03/19/2016

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/03/the-peculiar-importance-of-a-dead-plant-library/474438/

How 19th century scientists anticipated the data revolution

03/16/2016

http://www.hawaii.edu/news/2016/03/11/four-new-algae-species-discovered-in-hawaiis-deep-waters/

UH Manoa researchers announced the discovery of four new species of deep-water algae from Hawaiʻi.

03/11/2016

The fellowships, which are well established and prestigious, provide opportunities for individuals who have completed their undergraduate degree and have achieved a certain level of professional development to carry out meaningful work in a first-class plant science and conservation institution.

CCSD takes great pride in its extremely successful training/practice fellowships at the Missouri Botanical Garden, a program that has grown significantly in scope over the years.

03/10/2016

Botany 2016 - Sunday, July 31st. 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Instructor: Pamela Soltis

Free Workshop!: Using Digitized Herbarium Data in Research: A Crash Course

Emerging cyber infrastructure and new data sources provide unparalleled opportunities for mobilizing and integrating massive amounts of information from organismal biology, ecology, genetics, climatology, and other disciplines. Key among these data sources is the rapidly growing volume of digitized specimen records from natural history collections. With over 50 million specimen records available online to date, an ever-increasing number, these data provide excellent information on species distributions, changes in distributions over time, phenology, morphology, and more. Particularly powerful is the integration of phylogenies with specimen data, enabling analyses of phylogenetic diversity in a spatio-temporal context, the evolution of niche space, and more. Beyond testing a priori hypotheses, such data-driven synthetic analyses may generate unexpected patterns, yielding new hypotheses for further study. Ongoing efforts to link and analyze diverse data are yielding new platforms for comparative analyses of biodiversity data. However, the inundation of data and methods can be overwhelming. In this full-day workshop, we will provide hands-on instruction on ways to access and download digitized herbarium data (from GBIF, iDigBio, and other aggregators) and prepare data sets for analysis.We will then offer a series of modules on using georeferencing software (GEOLocate), applying Maxent software to construct ecological niche models and do paleoclimatic modeling, linking specimen data to phylogenetic trees, computing phylogenetic diversity measures, reproducible science, and more. In addition to learning how to use various software packages, we will also discuss the assumptions of the analyses and the interpretations of the results. We will divide into groups based on participants’ experience, so novices and advanced users are all welcome. The workshop is free, and lunch is included; sponsored by iDigBio (www.idigbio.org).

Keywords: digitized herbarium data, biodiversity, informatics, research applications, global change
Web Links: iDigBio Homepage and Data Portal (http://www.idigbio.org)

03/09/2016

UH Manoa has received a Level I accreditation from ArbNet that acknowledges the university for its high standards of professional practices deemed important for arboreta and botanic gardens.

With more than 4,000 trees, UH Mānoa joins the ranks of ArbNet accredited arboretums.

02/28/2016

https://www.facebook.com/groups/pacificherbaria/permalink/1113382312027511/

Remarkable Plants of Vanuatu/Plantes Remarquables du Vanuatu This guide to the remarkable flora of the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu aims to raise awareness of Vanuatu's plant diversity and the conservation issues facing it. The 236 plants included were selected for their outstanding or spe…

02/28/2016

https://www.facebook.com/NPR/posts/10154191915991756

About 40 percent of invertebrate pollinator species such as bees and butterflies are facing extinction, according to the global assessment.

02/28/2016

Some scientists have estimated that there are about 400,000 flowering plant species in the world — that’s a lot of plants. So you’ll be okay if you d

02/07/2016

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The Problem A newly identified disease called Rapid ‘Ōhi‘a Death (ROD) has killed hundreds of thousands of ʻōhiʻa trees on Hawaiʻi Island and affected 34,000 acres. When healthy-looking trees begin to exhibit symptoms, they typically die within a matter of weeks. This fungal disease has no known...