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Miscellaneous projects as the Collections Manager of the Indiana University Deam Herbarium, a collection of over 170,000 plant specimens
Miscellaneous projects as the Collections Manager of the Indiana University Deam Herbarium, a collection of over 170,000 plant specimens
Isotype of Quercus acherdophylla
Type Specimen Verification
Type Specimen Verification
Every time a new plant species is formally named and described, one specimen or a group of specimens is designated as a permanent reference for that species. They are referred to as "type specimens". These descriptions come from the species protologue, which is its original, first-published description containing the complete set of information about a species. Type specimens are usually considered to be the best representation of the species, and are referenced whenever taxonomic work is done on the species. Many of these specimens sit in herbarium cabinets around the world, unknown. Through a rigorous process of cross-referencing massive databases of plant specimens across dozens of institutions and checking online libraries for protologues, I am verifying and recognizing dozens of type specimens, on track to increase the IU Deam Herbarium type collections by nearly 100 specimens!
Taxonomic Updates and Mapping - Euthamia in Indiana
Taxonomic Updates and Mapping - Euthamia in Indiana
Every year, thousands of new species are described, split, and consolidated. With over 170,000 specimens at the IU Deam Herbarium, it is often the case that a group of species that we house are reworked and redefined. Depending on the merits and qualities of the taxonomic update, it is sometimes necessary to reclassify our specimens according to a new taxonomic treatment with different names and different diagnostic traits. One group that I recently revised is Euthamia, the grass-leaved goldenrods, revised according to Nesom's 2021 treatment. This treatment effectively removed E. graminifolia from our flora, added and somewhat replaced it with E. lanceolata, kept E. gymnospermoides, and reattributed our northwest Indiana E. caroliniana to the resurfaced E. remota. This project involved verifying identifications of over 200 specimens, annotating almost every one with a new name, and creating maps to reflect a new understanding of the genus Euthamia in Indiana and the group's updated geographic distribution in the state.
County record specimen of Carex decomposita collected by Nic Garza
County Record Collections
County Record Collections
Our current understanding of which plants are where is generally informed by herbarium collections; in the United States, typically on a county-by-county basis. People usually refer to the first collection of a plant in a county as "county records". Over the past five years, mostly for fun, I have documented and collected over 120 county records in the southern half of the state, improving geographic distribution information for these species for mapping and consevation purposes.
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