Flora Neotropica and Floristic Efforts in Tropical America

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Flora Neotropica and Floristic Efforts in
Tropical America

• Wm. Wayt Thomas
• The New York Botanical Garden

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Efforts that Can Contribute toNeotropical
Checklists

• Geographic Efforts
• Worldwide
• National or Regional
• Specific Areas
• Taxonomic Efforts
• Monographs
• Family-Level Projects
• Specimen Data
• Reliably Identified Collections

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Neotropical Floras and ChecklistsInformation
for a Brazilian Checklist

• Species Present
• Synonymy
• Distribution (partial) within Brazil
• Full Range of Species

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The Worlds Most Phyto-Diverse Countries
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Neotropical Phytogeographical Zones
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Map of Floras and Checklists (incomplete)
Floras Complete Floras In progress Checklists
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Contributions of Taxonomic Specialists

• Monographs
• Family Level Data Online
• Specialists with Unpublished Knowledge, and the
  Specimens they have identified

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All Flora Neotropica monographsto vol. 73There
are now 98 volumes
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Family Level Projects
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Percentage of Species Described by the Authors of
Recent Monographs
Species New to Science Described by the Author
(3147)
Species Described by Other Botanists (7408)
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Importance of Specimen Data
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What is the Whole Range of a Species?
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Specimens Identified by Specialists
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Echinodorus palaefolius Distribution from
Monograph and Herbarium Data
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Neotropical Botanists per 10,000 km2Data from P.
Holmgren, Index Herbariorum (unpubl. 2002)
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Who will do the work?

• The Organization for Flora Neotropica has 249
  Commission members, of these 48 are Brazilian
• But 370 Brazilian plant taxonomists with PhD or
  MS
• Brazilian plant diversity is estimated as
  35,000-50,000 species
• Species per botanist would be, realistically,
  100-500, plus synonyms

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"The beginning of wisdom is calling things by
theirright names"
(Chinese Proverb)