W. John Kress

W. John Kress Walter John Emil Kress (born 4 March 1951) is an American botanist and the vice-president for science at the National Museum of Natural History. He was the former executive director of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (which publishes Biotropica) and in 2002 was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Quotes Epiphyte Epiphytic Taxon taxa are reported for all but two major divisions of extant vascular plants ... No epiphytes have been reported in the Ginkophyta or the Coniferophyta. Ten percent of all vascular plant species (23,466 species) are epiphytic. ... The angiosperms account for the great majority of epiphytic taxa at all hierarchical levels. ... The gymnosperms are depauperate in epiphytes: only 0.5% of the species are epiphytes. https://books.google.com/books?id=kzTzCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA256 Chapter 9. The Systematic Distribution of Vascular Epiphytes by W. J. Kress 234–262 Vascular Plants as Epiphytes: Evolution and Ecophysiology Volume 76 of Ecological Studies Springer Science & Business Media 2012 9783642744655 (quote from p. 256; 270 pages; 1st edition 1989; edited by Ulrich Lüttge) Heliconias are native primarily in the American tropics from the Tropic of Cancer in Central Mexico to the Tropic of Capricorn in South America, including the Caribbean. A curious disjunct group of six species of Heliconia separated by thousands of miles from most other species is found in the Old World tropics (Kress, 1985, 1990a). The center of diversity of the genus is found along the northern Andes (Colombia and Ecuador) extending into southern Central America (Panama and Costa Rica; Andersson, 1989). Most species inhabit moist or wet regions, but some are found in seasonally dry areas. Although heliconias attain their most luxuriant vegetative growth in the humid lowland tropics at elevations below 500 meters, the greatest numbers of species (many locally endemic) are found in middle-elevation (800-1,500 meters) rain and cloud forest habitats. Few species occur above 2000 meters. The diversity and distribution of Heliconia (Heliconiaceae) in Brazil Acta Botanica Brasilica 4 1 159–167 1990 https://www.scielo.br/j/abb/a/8H6qLzBvncJhyNKB693jh7f/?lang=en&format=pdf (quote from p. 182) The majority of species, Genus genera, and Family (biology) families of flowering plants are found in the Tropics tropical regions of the Earth. Therefore it is no surprise that the greatest diversity of flower morphologies and plant-pollinator interactions are also present in the tropics. Endress has amassed a splendid display of examples and illustrations of this tremendous diversity. ...... There are many references to the classic works of Christian Konrad Sprengel Sprengel, Paul Knuth Knuth, and Hermann Müller (German botanist Müller, as well as many lesser known but important European workers of the nineteenth century. review of Diversity and Evolutionary Biology of Tropical Flowers by Peter K. Endress The Quarterly Review of Biology 71 1 March 1996 10.1086/419297 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/419297 124–125 A major task for any History of plant systematics plant systematist, Field biology field Ecology ecologist, Evolutionary biology evolutionary biologist, Conservation biology conservationist, or applied forensic specialist is to determine the correct identification of a plant sample in a rapid, repeatable, and reliable fashion. “DNA barcoding DNA barcodes,” i.e., standardized short sequences of DNA between 400 and 800 base pairs long that in theory can be easily isolated and characterized for all species of plant on the planet, were originally conceived to facilitate this task (Hebert et al., 2003). By combining the strengths of molecular genetics, DNA sequencing sequencing technologies, and bioinformatics, DNA barcodes offer a quick and accurate means to recognize previously known, described, and named species and to retrieving information about them. This tool also has the potential to speed the discovery of the thousands of plant species yet to be named, especially in Tropics tropical biomes (Cowan et al., 2006). Plant DNA barcodes: Applications today and in the future Journal of Systematics and Evolution 55 4 2017 291-307 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jse.12254 10.1111/jse.12254 External links Walter John Emil Kress Category:1951 births Category:Living people Category:Botanists from the United States Category:Curators Category:Duke University alumni Category:Harvard University alumni