Phylogeny and Conservation

[Hugh Wilson]

On Thu, 29 Jan 1998, MAGarland wrote:

> May I add my two cents to this thread? For the last four years I've
> worked for the largest conservation land-buying program in the U.S.
> (Florida's Conservation and Recreation Lands program).  We don't
> much think about the phylogenetic relationships of organisms we're
> trying to protect.   We use information on the relative rarity and
> endangerment of species, and their habitat requirements, but that's
> all.  And we tend to focus on buying the largest, most intact chunks
> of land in the hope that this will protect the natural world of
> Florida most efficiently.  Phylogenetic considerations are rather a
> luxury when we don't even know, for most species, how many
> populations in which spatial arrangements will be most viable.
>

        I think that the point being made might relate to
research priorities and available information.  Phylogenetic
connections of a rare species are of clear interest, but a bit of a
luxury when info on documented species distributions - at the State
level - is either not available from the systematics community or
provided by the same community in a  garbled manner.

With this in mind, my earlier query regarding documented
distribution mapping for Persea borbonia (Red Bay - Lauraceae) on
the web has produced two collections from Virginia (Willard Sherman
Turrell Herbarium, Miami University and the Field Museum) and an
observational confirmation that it occurs in that State.  The
Arkansas voucher is over 100 years old and the plant has not been
collected since.  No word yet on extant vouchers for New York,
Maryland, or Delaware.



Hugh D. Wilson
Texas A&M University - Biology
h-wilson at tamu.edu (409-845-3354)
http://www.isc.tamu.edu/~hugh/homepage.html