Collaborative Research: Plant, Fungal and Linguistic Diversity of Tafea Province, Vanuatu

瓦努阿图由80个岛屿组成，位于南太平洋，与新喀里多尼亚、斐济和所罗门群岛的距离大致相等，所有这些都是全球重要的生物多样性热点。尽管瓦努阿图作为生物多样性宝库具有重要意义，但其植物和真菌的记录仍然很少，与邻近的岛国相比，我们对区域生物多样性的了解存在很大差距，所有这些国家都进行了或完成了植物区系调查。瓦努阿图现有的为数不多的植物调查主要集中在群岛的北端。在该国南部，可靠的植物学数据很少，新的科学发现潜力巨大。该项目的重点是瓦努阿图最南端的五个岛屿--塔菲亚省。2015年3月，塔菲亚省发生了一场灾难性的5级超级气旋。就在此之前，建立了八个森林样带，以表征植被随时间的生长和变化。这些研究地点受到风暴的严重影响，监测工作将为了解太平洋岛屿森林如何从这类事件中恢复提供一个重要机会。除了丰富的生物多样性，瓦努阿图也是世界上语言最丰富的国家，有112种语言，总人口只有253,000人；其中9种语言只在塔菲亚省才有。随着瓦努阿图的全球化和经济发展，当地语言正在被英语、法语和比斯拉马语(当地的克里奥尔语)所取代，因此迫切需要记录当地语言和其中所包含的植物学知识。本科生将接受语料分析方面的培训，研究生将参与研究的各个方面，并接受热带植物学和真菌学方面的宝贵培训。研究人员将完成塔菲亚省有史以来第一次对被子植物、裸子植物、蕨类、石蒜、苔藓、内生和大型真菌以及地衣进行的全面调查。将使用两种方法进行调查：1)建立永久性监测样带和地块，这将使植被分析和密集的植物和真菌采样成为可能，并为面对全球气候变化进行长期监测提供机会；2)将在更大范围内使用一般收集方法。根据这些数据，将使用新收集的和历史标本的数据库汇编一份带注释的清单(硬拷贝和在线)。清单将测试瓦努阿图及其最近邻国(新喀里多尼亚和斐济)之间的植物地理关系，使研究人员能够解决与地方性程度、物种分布和区域植物区系演变有关的问题。由于瓦努阿图的大部分土地属于传统所有权，而当地人是其环境的管理者，生物文化知识的丧失对他们可持续管理生物多样性资源的能力构成严重威胁。为了支持当地的环境教育工作，该项目将结合该团队语言学家和植物学家的专业知识，与讲八种塔菲语的土著居民合作，记录植物和真菌的名称，在生物多样性、传统文化和保护之间提供切实的联系。项目语言学家将制作本土植物和真菌名称的印刷和数字词典，并将使用基于网络的视频和‘故事地图’，在空间上将生物的名称和传统用途与景观联系起来，帮助观众可视化生物多样性、知识和地点之间的联系，为植物学数据库提供补充。

Vanuatu is a group of 80 islands located in the South Pacific, situated roughly equidistant from New Caledonia, Fiji, and the Solomon Islands, all of which are globally important biodiversity hotspots. Despite its significance as a treasure trove of biodiversity, Vanuatu's plants and fungi remain poorly documented, leaving a significant gap in our knowledge of regional biodiversity compared with neighboring island countries, all of which have active or completed flora surveys. The few existing plant surveys in Vanuatu have focused primarily on the northern end of the archipelago. In the southern part of the country, little reliable botanical data exist, and there is great potential for new scientific discoveries. This project focuses on Tafea Province, the five southernmost islands of Vanuatu. In March, 2015, Tafea Province was the site of a catastrophic category-5 super-cyclone. Just prior to that, eight forest transects were established to characterize vegetation growth and change over time. These study sites were severely impacted by the storm, and monitoring efforts will provide an important opportunity to understand how Pacific-Island forests recover from this type of event. Along with its rich biological diversity, Vanuatu is also the most linguistically rich country in the world, with 112 languages for a total population of only 253,000; nine of these languages are found only in Tafea Province. As globalization and economic development are proceeding in Vanuatu, local languages are being replaced by English, French, and Bislama (a local Creole), and thus there is a critical need to document local languages and the botanical knowledge that is encapsulated therein. Undergraduate students will be trained in the analysis of linguistic data, and graduate students will participate in all aspects of the research and receive valuable training in tropical botany and mycology.The researchers will complete the first comprehensive survey of angiosperms, gymnosperms, ferns, lycophytes, bryophytes, endophytic and macro-fungi, and lichens ever undertaken in Tafea Province. Surveys will be conducted using two approaches: 1) establishment of permanent monitoring transects and plots, which will allow for both vegetation analysis and dense floristic and fungal sampling, and provide an opportunity for long-term monitoring in the face of global climate change, and 2) a general collecting approach will be used across larger areas. From these data, an annotated checklist (both hard copy and online) will be assembled using the database of newly collected and historical specimens. The checklist will allow for tests of phytogeographic relationships among Vanuatu and its closest neighbors (New Caledonia and Fiji), allowing the researchers to address questions relating to levels of endemism, species distributions, and evolution of the regional flora. Because most land in Vanuatu is held under customary ownership, and local people are the stewards of their environments, the loss of biocultural knowledge is a serious threat to their ability to manage biodiversity resources sustainably. To support local environmental education efforts, the project will combine the expertise of the team's linguists and botanists to work with indigenous speakers of eight Tafean languages to document names of plants and fungi, providing a tangible linkage between biodiversity, traditional culture, and conservation. Project linguists will produce printed and digital dictionaries of indigenous plant and fungal names and will use web-based videography and 'story maps', which spatially link names and traditional uses of organisms onto the landscape, helping viewers visualize the connections between biodiversity, knowledge, and place, providing a complement to the botanical databases.