Reducing the Darwinian Shortfall in Biodiversity Knowledge through Botanical Gardens and Herbaria Resources

A special issue of Journal of Zoological and Botanical Gardens (ISSN 2673-5636).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 August 2023) | Viewed by 513

Special Issue Editors

Departmento de Botânica, Universidade de Brasília, Brasília 70297-400, DF, Brazil
Interests: plant evolutionary biology; systematics
School of Integrative Plant Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14583, USA
Interests: coevolution; mutualism

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The concept of a Darwinian shortfall describes the lack of fully resolved phylogenies for most groups of organisms and the consequential indetermination of trait evolution. Despite the massive advances in genetics, molecular sequencing technology, and bioinformatics of recent years, phylogenetic relationships among species are still poorly known for most groups of organisms or have often been established for only a few species representing higher taxa. Furthermore, investigations regarding trait evolution and macroevolutionary patterns depend on robust phylogenetic hypothesis, leaving an even larger gap in the literature. Acquiring specimens has historically been an impediment to taxon coverage in generating phylogenetic hypotheses, but recent advances in molecular techniques has brought historic specimens into the genomic age. Similarly, gains in museum databasing have brought the drawers and sheets out of the cabinets and into the computer age. Botanical gardens and museum specimens exist as a repository of Earth’s biodiversity and form a global asset with great potential and high significance for reducing Darwinian shortfalls. This special issue focuses on the use of preserved and living collections for resolving species phylogenies and describing lineage trait evolution by adopting comparative methods and combining morphologic and molecular techniques. In short, it is dedicated to recent advances in botanical gardens and herbaria research tackling Darwinian shortfalls. Scientific advances may be in the form of methodological growth, for example: in the validation of new molecular protocols to improve extraction of genomic data from museum specimens; the application of technological approaches to collect, preserve and access data of specimens deposited in botanical gardens and herbaria; or new guidelines to integrate and manage tissue samples, molecular and phylogenetics data on botanical gardens and herbaria databases. Scientific advances could also be in the form of content knowledge that explicitly uses botanical gardens and herbaria samples in phylogenies and trait evolution research. For example, empirical work that uses botanical gardens and herbaria data to advance our understanding of species evolutionary relationships and trait evolution. Contributions that report on advances that can be readily and simply applied in botanical gardens and herbaria to advance phylogenetic knowledge are especially welcome.

Prof. Dr. Thiago Andre
Dr. Shayla Salzman
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Journal of Zoological and Botanical Gardens is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • databases
  • herbaria
  • living collections
  • molecular protocols
  • museum specimens
  • phylogenomics
  • tree of life
  • trait evolution

Published Papers

There is no accepted submissions to this special issue at this moment.
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