The Global Change & Conservation Lab at the Missouri Botanical Garden

We’re very happy to have with us Kelsey Bartlett, who is an undergraduate at George Washington University! Kelsey is georeferencing herbarium records of Ascelpias (milkweeds) of North America. Most these records are not georeferenced, or if they are, lack an estimate of uncertainty in the coordinates. As a result, about 90% of these records would …
Continue reading Welcome to Kelsey Bartlett!

We are very happy to partner with collaborators at Kansas State University and the University of Kansas to study the interdependence between the occurrence, phenotype, genotype, and rhizosphere (soil microbes) of a dominant tallgrass prairie plant, Big Bluestem (Andropogon gerardii)! This is a project funded by the US Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food …
Continue reading GORP (genetics-occurrence-rhizosphere-phenotype)

Our paper on spatially-varying controls of pika distributions was shortlisted (of 5 papers) by The Wildlife Society! This is a triennial award with a record number of submissions, so we’re honored, regardless of the final outcome. Smith, A.B., Beever, E.A., Kessler, A.E., Johnston, A.N., Ray, C., Epps, C.W., Lanier, H.C., Klinger, R.C., Rodhouse, T.J., Varner, …
Continue reading Shortlisted on The Wildlife Society’s 2020 Wildlife Publication Awards!

Our article on formal integration of different lines of biogeographic evidence (genetic, pollen, occurrence) won runner-up in annual Ecography’s E4 Award! Hoban, S., Dawson, A. Robinson, J., Smith, A.B., Strand, A. 2019. Inference of biogeographic history by formally integrating distinct lines of evidence: genetic, environmental niche, and fossil. Ecography 42:1991-2011. (open access)

After many long years of battling data bottlenecks, I am ecstatic to announce the publication of our paper on intraspecific variation in responses of pikas to climate change. To our great surprise, dividing the range by ecoregions–not genetic lineages–best captures observed differences in how the species responded to 20 mechanistic climatic variables. Many thanks to …
Continue reading Climate coherency

We are happy to host David Henderson as part of his rotation at Washington University in St. Louis during the spring semester of 2019! David is interested in understanding biogeographic patterns using herbarium records. Many records are only “vaguely” georeferenced (i.e., to a county or similar political unit). Vague records can represent 40% or more …
Continue reading Welcome, David Henderson!

Just out: a two-volume set on conservation of North American crop wild relatives!  Adam had the honor of contributing to a chapter on threat assessment. “This chapter introduces the roles of conservation status and threat assessments in informing conservation priorities for crop wild relatives in North America and provides an overview of the current results …
Continue reading Conservation of crop wild relatives

We are very excited to host Stephen, who is interested in combining aspects of biogeography and macroecology with his ongoing work in community ecology. Stephen graduated from Ohio State University, and is now supported by a grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services for developing and testing methods for using vaguely georeferenced and …
Continue reading Welcome to our new postdoc, Stephen Murphy!

Our long-awaited paper on predicting country-scale biodiversity from small plots is out! Of 19 “upscaling” techniques, the most successful method was able to predict total plant richness in the United Kingdom with <10% error, though few techniques were able to recreate the shape of the actual species-area relationship. Kunin, W.E., Harte, J., He, Fangliang, Hui, …
Continue reading Upscaling biodiversity