OPUS: MOVING BRAZIL NUT (LECYTHIDACEAE) RESEARCH INTO THE FUTURE-II

OPUS计划（通过综合促进理解的机会）支持晚期职业科学家综合大量工作的努力。该OPUS项目的目标是在互联网上提供所有已知的巴西坚果科物种生物学信息（乳豆科）。这包括提供电子描述（称为物种页面），其中包括：物种描述、分布图、博物馆标本列表、图像、生态信息、便于识别的字符列表和保护状态。此外，该网站还将包括用于识别物种的电子密钥，以及有关解剖学、细胞学、化石记录、进化关系、传粉生物学和传播生物学的文章。该综合报告还将突出未来研究的需要和机会。巴西坚果科包括一个生态优势和经济上重要的热带雨林树木群，就像美洲虎是热带动物的象征一样，它是热带植物的象征。在The Lecythidaceae Pages （http://sweetgum.nybg.org/lp/index.php）上的这一综合资料将是科学家和非科学家的重要参考资料，它提供了与森林保护和热带生态直接相关的信息，并将对编制涉及热带生态系统复杂性的课程很有价值。

The OPUS program (Opportunities for Promoting Understanding through Synthesis) supports the efforts of late-career scientists to synthesize a large body of work. The goal of this OPUS project is to make available on the Internet all known information on the biology of species in the Brazil nut family (Lecythidaceae). This involves providing electronic descriptions (called species pages) that include: descriptions of species, distribution maps, lists of museum specimens, images, ecological information, lists of characters that facilitate identification, and conservation status. In addition, the web site will include electronic keys for identifying species and essays on the anatomy, cytology, fossil record, evolutionary relationships, pollination biology, and dispersal biology. The synthesis will also highlight needs and opportunities for future research.The Brazil nut family comprises an ecologically dominant and economically important group of rain forest trees, as much a symbol of tropical plants as the jaguar is an icon of tropical animals. This synthesis, at The Lecythidaceae Pages (http://sweetgum.nybg.org/lp/index.php), will be an important reference for both scientists and non-scientists, providing information that bears directly on forest conservation and tropical ecology, and that will be valuable for the development of curricula dealing with the complexity of tropical ecosystems.