Brazilian interns on the Planalto catalogue
The funding for the Planalto catalogue included support for long-term visits for Brazilian graduate students to participate in creation of the catalogue and to use the New York Botanical Garden’s herbarium, specimen database, and library to further their own research projects. From fifteen excellent applications, five were selected.
The first two interns spent three months (Sep—Dec 2006) at the Herbarium:
José Floriano Barea Pastore received his M.S. in 2006 from the University of Brasilia, for which he produced a taxonomic treatment of the Polygalaceae of the Federal District, under the direction of Dr. Taciana Cavalcanti. He is now enrolled at University in Feira de Santana, pursuing phylogenetic research in the Lamiaceae (the Mint family). While at the NYBG Herbarium, he catalogued specimens of Polygalaceae and Lamiaceae and prepared, with advice from Wayt Thomas, a paper describing a new species of Polygala and submitted it to Brittonia.
João Bernardo de Azevedo Bringel Jr. is currently working on his M.S. at the University of Brasília, for which he is writing a checklist and keys to the species of the Aster family in the Paraná River basin. He, too, is a student of Dr. Cavalcanti. During his stay in the Herbarium, he catalogued many specimens of the Aster family and, in the process, added specimens and species to his thesis checklist.
Two more students arrived in January 2007 for six months.
Vanessa Lopes Rivera received her M.S. in 2006 from the University of Brasília for her phytogeographic study of the 170 Cerrado species of Vernonia (Aster family), under the direction of Dr. Caroline Proença. During her stay at the Herbarium, she completed the cataloguing of specimens in the Asteraceae and made significant progress in the Melastomataceae. She focused her research on the North American species of this complex genus and visited the Missouri Botanical Garden Herbarium. She will pursue opportunities to enroll in a doctoral program at a university in the USA.
João Paulo Santos Condack received his M.S. in 2006 from the National School of Tropical Botany at the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden for his study of the ferns of Itatiaia National Park, under the direction of Dr. Lana S. de Sylvestre. Examining specimens at the NYBG Herbarium, he was able to add additional species to his checklist of the Park’s ferns. He developed, in consultation with Garden curators Robbin Moran and John Mickel and David Barrington at the University of Vermont, a project on the fern genus Polystichum for a doctoral thesis, which he hopes to pursue at UV.
The last student arrived in June 2007 for a 9-month stay:
Pedro Dias de Oliveira is a doctoral student of Dr. José Rubens Pirani at the University of São Paulo, where he is conducting phylogenetic analyses of the Rutaceae (the Citrus family) with emphasis on Pilocarpus. In July, he attended the Botany 2007 meeting in Chicago, where he participated in the colloquium on “Evolution and Diversification in the Sapindales,” by presenting a paper, “Phylogeny of Pilocarpus Vahl (Rutaceae) and stochastic mapping of characters.” He catalogued specimens in the Rutaceae and other families, georeferenced specimen records, and conducted his research in the Herbarium and the Cullman molecular lab.
Copyright © 2007, The New York Botanical Garden
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