Abstract Detail

Biodiversity at the brink: leveraging herbaria for conservation!

Sytsma, Kenneth [1], Spalink, Daniel [2], Kriebel, Ricardo [3], Drummond, Chloe [4], Rose, Jeffrey [1], Feist, Mary Ann [5], Givnish, Thomas [6], Cameron, Kenneth [7].

Leveraging WIS herbarium specimens to examine the phylogenetics, conservation, ecological, and biogeographical issues in the Great Lakes region.

Herbarium specimens at Wisconsin State Herbarium (WIS) are being used in a number of ways to address important questions about the present and future flora of the Great Lakes region. DNA extracted from WIS collections provided the first comprehensive state phylogenetic tree in the United States. Geographical data from WIS collections (and the upper midwest) were used to construct present day climatic, elevational, soil species niche models. Combining the phylogenetic, biogeographical, and ecological data, we examine a number of key issues within Wisconsin specifically and the Great Lakes flora generally. (1) What is the phylogenetic diversity within local geographical units seen across the NS and EW axes? (2) Where will our 2500 species of vascular plants have suitable niche space under various greenhouse emission scenarios, what will be the resulting phylogenetic diversity, and what clades of species are most vulnerable for extirpation? (3) We test classic and novel hypotheses regarding trait–origin, trait–trait, and trait–environment relationships to account for flora-wide variation in life history, habit, and especially reproductive traits using the DNA phylogeny of angiosperms in Wisconsin. (4) We examine biogeographical hypotheses of the western North American - Great Lakes region disjunct species pattern and examine different hypotheses to explain the dramatic “Tension Zone” that occurs in Wisconsin and across the Great Lakes.

1 - University Of Wisconsin, Department Of Botany, Birge Hall, 430 Lincoln Drive, Madison, WI, 53706, United States
2 - Texas A&M University, Ecosystem Science And Management, 2138 TAMU, College Station, TX, 77802, United States
3 - California Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Concourse Dr., San Francisco , CA, 94118, USA
4 - Pennsylvania State University, Department of Entomology, College Station, PA, 16801, USA
5 - University Of Wisconsin, Wisconsin State Herbarium, 430 Lincoln Dr., Madison, WI, 53706, United States
6 - University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Department Of Botany, 315 Birge Hall, 430 Lincoln Drive, Madison, WI, 53706, United States
7 - University Of Wisconsin, Department Of Botany, 154 Birge Hall, 450 Lincoln Drive, Madison, WI, 53706, United States

Keywords:
Herbarium
Wisconsin
Great Lakes region
DNA barcode
phylogenetics
Species Distribution Modeling
climate change.

Presentation Type: Special Sessions
Number: SS008
Abstract ID:483
Candidate for Awards:None