Dr. Dennis Stevenson and Dr. Damon Little are working on a major project to illuminate the pattern of relationships among cycads and their close relatives through DNA studies. Dr. Dennis Stevenson, Rupert Barnaby curator and vice president for laboratory research at the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG), is a leading expert on cycads; Dr. Damon Little, research associate at the Institute of Systematic Botany at NYBG, is an expert on the evolution and relationships of conifers. Cycads are an early conifer lineage and the oldest group of seed plants that persist to the present era.
As a leading institution for cycads, Montgomery Botanical Center (MBC) made important contributions to this project through its live scientific collections. Dr. Stevenson and Dr. Little spent a week at MBC gathering material for DNA analysis, making voucher specimens, and taking advantage of MBC’s extensive documentation. MBC’s curatorial work also benefited from Dr. Stevenson’s review of the collections, as he redetermined a number of accessions.
On October 27th, Dr. Stevenson presented a public lecture in MBC’s Nixon Smiley Meeting Room—Cycads: From Field Biology to Neurobiology. This gave the south Florida community an opportunity to learn of the cutting-edge research in this fascinating plant group.
Montgomery Botanical Center’s core mission is to advance research, conservation, and education through scientific plant collections, and this collaboration with the New York Botanical Garden directly addresses those core objectives.