The American tropical regions, the Neotropics, have high rates of plant speciation. In some plant families such as the Araceae, the aroid or Philodendron family, this has led to unusually high rates of species richness and local rarity. Thus the presence of Araceae species is a major indicator of the value of proposed conservation parks and natural reserves throughout the tropics. This project will provide detailed taxonomic descriptions of an estimated 2700 species of Anthurium and Philodendron, the two largest genera in the Araceae, this constitutes about 45% of the entire family. The family is preeminent in horticulture where the family rates first in potted plant sales and is renowned for indoor landscaping due to the resilient growth in low light conditions. Since plants are easily brought into cultivation and are highly ornamental, growers all over the world will benefit from the taxonomic revision, which includes morphological and ecological descriptions, of the Araceae. The availability of so many species also insures that the family will remain an important tool in teaching biology, especially owing to the many interesting and unique features the plants exhibit such as the production of heat and a wide array of flower types and pollination systems.
The goal of the project is to synthesize in a comprehensive, systematic-phylogenetic manner the 47 years of research at the Missouri Botanical Garden on Neotropical Anthurium and Philodendron. The work entails includes floristic accounts of most areas in the Neotropics, nine major revisions, 200 publications, over 2400 taxonomic novelties, and many unpublished systematic and floristic treatments. Herbarium collections will be used to identify new and to refine existing species definitions in Araceae. The taxonomic data for all species will be entered into the Lucid program, a user friendly multi-entry computerized plant identification key. The key's database will store morphological and ecological trait information which is used to help people identify plant specimens and the data can be used in analyses. The Lucid keys will be available online to the plant sciences, horticultural community and the general public worldwide on at least two websites and will enable users to make determinations of these horticulturally important groups. This precise information coupled with images of all species will be assembled on the website of the Missouri Botanical Garden as a part of Tropicos, currently one of the most heavily used plant databases in the world. At the same time floristic and revisionary accounts of most of the Neotropical Araceae will be made available online on the Missouri Botanical Garden's website. An important aspect of the project will be the training of 20 botanists from Latin America who are interested in Araceae and who will learn a variety of new approaches to aroid taxonomy including how to construct Lucid keys and other tools that will enable them to continue research with Araceae and to be more efficient in conducting research.
