New research prepares way for future botanical research
by Mary Beth Kin, University of New Mexico
February 13, 2025
To plan for the future, it’s sometimes necessary to look to the past. To improve natural history collection and analysis in the future, a team of researchers is looking at collections of plants from as far back as 1812.
A team from The University of New Mexico Biology department and Museum of Southwestern Biology led by National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow Elizabeth Lombardi recently published research examining botanical trends and the importance of future study and improvements.
Synthesizing historical plant collections to identify priorities for future collection efforts and research applications was published in the ecology journal Ecosphere. Lombardi led the project as a postdoctoral researcher. Co-authors were Assistant Professor of Biology Hannah Marx, the former curator of the UNM herbarium who is now at Cornell University, and Harpo Faust, senior collections manager at the herbarium at the Museum of Southwest Biology. An herbarium (plural: herbaria) is a collection of preserved plant specimens and associated data used for scientific study.
This data synthesis project describes botanical collections that have been made over the last approximately 185 years in New Mexico, Lombardi said.
“Specifically, our goal was to identify habitats and plant species that deserve additional research attention, particularly given the rapid, dramatic changes to habitats across the state,” Lombardi said. “New Mexico is highly biodiverse, and natural history collections —such as herbaria — are critically important, completely irreplaceable resources with information about biodiversity in recent history, changes occurring today and, if we invest in natural history collections, opportunities to efficiently improve conservation and restoration efforts for the future.”
Keep reading: https://news.unm.edu/news/new-research-prepares-way-for-future-botanical-research
Read the Ecosphere paper: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecs2.70102