The OPUS program (Opportunities for Promoting Understanding through Synthesis) supports the efforts of late-career scientists to synthesize a large body of work. The goal of this OPUS project is to make available on the Internet all known information on the biology of species in the Brazil nut family (Lecythidaceae). This involves providing electronic descriptions (called species pages) that include: descriptions of species, distribution maps, lists of museum specimens, images, ecological information, lists of characters that facilitate identification, and conservation status. In addition, the web site will include electronic keys for identifying species and essays on the anatomy, cytology, fossil record, evolutionary relationships, pollination biology, and dispersal biology. The synthesis will also highlight needs and opportunities for future research.
The Brazil nut family comprises an ecologically dominant and economically important group of rain forest trees, as much a symbol of tropical plants as the jaguar is an icon of tropical animals. This synthesis, at The Lecythidaceae Pages (http://sweetgum.nybg.org/lp/index.php), will be an important reference for both scientists and non-scientists, providing information that bears directly on forest conservation and tropical ecology, and that will be valuable for the development of curricula dealing with the complexity of tropical ecosystems.
I have just completed an NSF Opportunities for Promoting Understanding through Synthesis grant. The goal of this program is to allow mid-level and senior scientists the opportunity to synthesize what they have learned about a research topic and pass that information on to current and future generations of scientists. My goal is to make the information that my colleagues and I have accumulated about the Brazil nut family over the past fifty years available over the Internet on a website called the Lecythiaceae Pages. Lecythidaceae is the scientific name of the Brazil nut family. This group of magnificent trees is found from Mexico to Paraguay but is most common in the Amazon basin. The species are known for their spectacular flowers, pollinated either by bees, bats, or possibly beetles; and large woody fruits with seeds that are dispersed by wind, water, and mammals (including bats). This family is best known for the Brazil nut, the largest nut in a can of mixed nuts. Species of the family are ecologically dominant in the Amazon Basin where there are up to 24 species and 150 trees in a single hectare (an area about 2.5 football fields in size). Although they grow in several different habitats they are especially common in old growth lowland rain forest; thus, they are indicators of the health of a forest in most parts of the Amazon. In other words, if there are no or few species of the Brazil nut family in an Amazonian forest that suggests that the forest underwent major disturbance within the last several hundred years. In times past, much of the data accumulated by scientists was lost when they retired. Today, with digital images and electronic media this can be avoided thereby making it possible for others to build upon what has been done instead of having to do everything over again. Thus, my goal for this project was to place the following information on the Lecythidaceae Pages: correct scientific name, synonyms of the name, where the names were published and the associated information accompanying the names; species descriptions (including common names, distribution maps generated onto a Google map, general ecology, phenology, pollination biology, dispersal biology, field characters, taxonomic problems, uses, meaning of the species name, and conservation status); a list of specimens and their data, and images taken in the field and of herbarium sheets. In other words I wanted to create a one-stop shopping place for all information relating to the Brazil nut family in the New World tropics. Several examples of how these pages can be used are: 1. A scientific reporter wanting to write about the Brazil nut (Bertholletia excelsa) can visit the species page and obtain detailed information about all aspects of the species as well links to the 154 papers registered in our database. 2. A student wants to study the Brazil nut family with the goal of producing a flora of the Lecythidaceae for Panama can click on the "Taxonomy" module and do an advanced search to access a list of the 39 species of Lecythidaceae known for that country. 3. A researcher doing an inventory in a French Guianan forest might want to know if the species in hand is Lecythis corrugata subsp. corrugata or L. corrugata subsp. rosea. A comparison of the maps will show that the latter species has never been collected in French Guiana. 4. A collector of Lecythidaceae wanting to know how to photograph collections to capture the diagnostic features of this family can click on "Taking images of Lecythidaceae" to get this information. 5. A professor teaching tropical plant systematics who wants to have his students learn about the pollination and dispersal biology of Lecythidaceae can have them click on "Pollination" or "Dispersal" on the home page. 6. A conservationist wants to know if the endangered species, Couratari pyramidata, is protected in biological reserves can generate a Google map from the species page of this species and compare that distribution with the occurrence of conservation areas. Although there is still much to be done it is now easier to build upon what has already been accomplished. I am grateful to the National Science Foundation for giving my colleagues and me the opportunity to synthesize data that we and others have gathered on the classification, evolution, and ecology of the Brazil nut family.
