RainforestPlants : A Web-Based Teaching Tool for Students of Tropical Biology

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1 RainforestPlants : A Web-Based Teaching Tool for Students of Tropical Biology Undergraduate and graduate curricula do an excellent job of informing students of the importance of biodiversity and the drivers of the extinction crisis that is currently threatening the world s biota. However, an essential component of studying this biological diversity is being able to identify, name, and describe species, families, and phyla. Increasingly these important skills are becoming the domain of a small number of specialists and are often all but ignored in undergraduate education. Students visiting the tropics for the first time are rightfully overwhelmed by the sheer diversity of species that they encounter. This is particularly true for the plants, mostly trees, that bear little resemblance to the oaks, maples, hickories, and pines familiar to residents of temperate life zones. College professors face the daunting challenge of helping students organize this plant diversity in a meaningful way. It is not helpful that modern undergraduate biology curricula include little or no botany and little or no taxonomy. Even experienced tropical biologists are often satisfied if they can identify a plant to the level of family or genus. Therefore, perhaps a reasonable goal for students new to the tropics is to be able to identify the most common plants to the family level. Alwin Gentry (1993) claimed that Most neotropical plants are surprisingly easy to identify to family, even in sterile condition. Boistered by this overly optimistic statement by the indisputable expert on the topic, we created RainforestPlants wheatonma.edu/rainforest/index.php/main_page RainforestPlants is an internet teaching tool to help undergraduates learn about neotropical plants, namely those found in the lowland rain forest of the La Selva Biological Station (Organization for Tropical Studies) in Costa Rica. Approximately 2000 species of vascular plants, belonging to 132 different families, may be found in the rain forest at La Selva (Hartshorn and Hammel 1994). This is more information than the average undergraduate, or most mortals for that matter, can assimilate. Therefore, RainforestPlants focuses on 65 of the most common families of flowering plants likely to be encountered at La Selva and similar sites in the Neotropics. Any student visiting La Selva for a week will encounter and be able to recognize all of these families! Students reading about tropical plants for the first time will find RainforestPlants to be a useful way to learn about the important traits associated with particular families of flowering plants. Thanks to widespread availability of Internet access, even at remote field stations, RainforestPlants is available to students for use in the field as well as the classroom. RainforestPlants includes sections on how to examine a plant, a glossary, two different methods for keying out plants, lists of the most common plant families, and pages devoted to each family (Table 1). How to Examine a Plant provides students with a routine for examining a new plant specimen. A limited, but essential, amount of basic botanical vocabulary is introduced. If these basic terms are April

2 mastered and the suggested routine is followed, it should be possible to identify most forest plants to the family level. Students examining a plant for the first time are instructed to study phyllotaxy, leaf type (simple vs. compound), leaf characteristics such as venation and the presence of pellucid dots or hairs, presence or absence of stipules, sap exudations, odor, and bark characteristics. A glossary provides definitions and photographic illustrations of basic botanical terminology. The terminology may be daunting at first, but great effort has been made to keep terminology to a minimum and to write descriptions in plain English (as well as in plain Spanish). After following the routine for examining a plant, students may then consult the Plant Family Matrix, Key to Plant Families, or go straight to the Plant Family List and select the appropriate family page. The Plant Family Matrix is a user-friendly tool designed to work for most woody plants encountered in the neotropics. The Plant Family Matrix was developed by Dr. Humberto Jiménez Saa for teaching Tropical Dendrology to students of all levels from professional foresters to undergraduates (Jimenez It builds upon early work by Dr. Leslie Holdridge aimed at elucidating plant families using only vegetative material. In tropical forests, leaves and bark are almost always available, but flowers and fruits are seasonal and often hidden from those of us who cannot access the canopy the same way as a monkey, bird, or bee. Traditional plant identification and classification is based on flowers that are readily available to most temperate zone botanists, but not easily accessible in most tropical forests. The Plant Family Matrix consists of eight sections based upon phyllotaxy (alternate vs. opposite or whorled), leaf type (simple vs. compound), and the presence or absence of stipules. Once these three basic pieces of information have been determined, it is a matter of identifying the combination of two or three other traits that allow the user to determine the family to which a plant belongs. Strictly speaking, The Matrix is not a taxonomic key. It does not set out to identify any and all plant specimens. It doesn t even claim to work all the time. BUT it works MOST of the time and is relatively easy to use once you learn some basic terminology and agree to follow the routine described in How To Examine A Plant. The current matrix is designed primarily for woody dicots. The Key to Plant Families is a simplified version of the one developed by Alwyn Gentry in his monumental Field Guide to the Families and Genera of Woody Plants of Northwest South America. As a short-cut for students to figuring out which plants they are most likely to encounter in the field, a series of Top Ten Lists are provided to help students develop a feel for which of the families, genera, and tree species are most common in the La Selva forest. This information has been gleaned from many years of scientific study, and will not be common knowledge for most students (Hartshorn and Hammel 1994). The most important component of RainforestPlants is the collection of Plant Family pages. A separate page is devoted to each of the 65 selected families (Table 2). A description (English and Spanish) of the family is accompanied by an overview of economic uses and a line drawing of a representative species. A list is provided of the genera and numbers of species in each genus found at the La Selva Biological 258 Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America

3 Table 1. Organization of RainforestPlants web site. Section Home Introduction to RainforestPlants How to examine a plant Plant family list Plant family pages Key to plant families Top ten lists Plant family matrix Glossary Credits and acknowledgements Tropical biology resources Description Gateway page with links to major sections About the site and how to use it Provides a routine for studying an unknown plant 65 families in alphabetical order and by APG clade Descriptions, numbers of species, field marks, photos Simplified version of Gentry s key Families, Genera, Trees of La Selva Biological Station A user-friendly method for assigning a plant to family Photographic glossary illustrating major terminology About the authors Web links, books, articles April

4 Table 2. Plant families featured in RainforestPlants. Acanthaceae Cucurbitaceae Olacaceae Anacardiaceae Cyclanthaceae Orchidaceae Annonaceae Dilleniaceae Passifloraceae Apocynaceae Euphorbiaceae Piperaceae Araceae Fabaceae Polygalaceae Araliaceae Fabaceae: Caesalpinioideae Rubiaceae Arecaceae Fabaceae: Mimosoideae Rutaceae Aristolochiaceae Fabaceae: Papilionoideae Sapindaceae Asteraceae Flacourtiaceae Sapotaceae Begoniaceae Gesneriaceae Simaroubaceae Bignoniaceae Heliconiaceae Siparunaceae Bombacaceae Lauraceae Smilacaceae Boraginaceae Lecythidaceae Solanaceae Bromeliaceae Malpighiaceae Sterculiaceae Burseraceae Malvaceae Tiliaceae Cactaceae Marantaceae Ulmaceae Capparidaceae Melastomataceae Urticaceae Cecropiaceae Meliaceae Verbenaceae Chrysobalanaceae Moraceae Vitaceae Clusiaceae Myristicaceae Zingiberaceae Combretaceae Convolvulaceae Costaceae Myrsinaceae Myrtaceae Nyctaginaceae 260 Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America

5 Station. This is followed by a set of field marks that are readily observed with the naked eye or use of hand lens. Finally, color photographs illustrate the field marks and representative species. There are other sites on the web devoted to tropical botany, such as the excellent Digital Flora of La Selva; however they are either too comprehensive and overwhelming to undergraduates or incomplete. In either case they are not aimed at an undergraduate audience with a limited botanical vocabulary. Students in the Tropical Field Biology course at Wheaton College represent the original target audience for RainforestPlants. However, RainforestPlants should prove useful for tropical biologists of all kinds including undergraduates, graduate students, college professors, natural history guides, and ecotourists. While the families and examples have been chosen from the flora of La Selva, the same families and most of the examples will be found at field sites throughout the neotropics. RainforestPlants is a wiki and, therefore, open to continual improvements and contributions that are in keeping with its original mission as a teaching tool that is easily accessible to undergraduates beginning their study of tropical forest plants. Comments and suggestions for improvements should be directed to Scott Shumway at sshumway@wheatonma.edu. Literature Cited Gentry, A. H Field guide to the families and genera of woody plants of northwest South America (Columbia, Ecuador, Peru) with Supplementary notes on herbaceous taxa. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, USA. Hartshorn, G. S., and B. E. Hammel Vegetation types and floristic patterns. In L. A. McDade et al, eds. La Selva: Ecology and Natural History of a Neotropical Rain Forest. University of Chicago Press: Chicago. Jimenez Saa, H Un método para facilitar el aprendizaje de la dedrología tropical. Turrialba (Costa Rica) 19: Jimenez Saa, H Course on tropical dendrology. Scott W. Shumway Department of Biology Wheaton College Norton, MA Alex Friberg and Diane DeMelo Wheaton College Norton, MA Susan L. Letcher Organization for Tropical Studies Costa Rica April