OPUS: A Career in Cycad Biology: An e-monograph

在植物生命树中，苏铁是一组特别有趣的植物。苏铁被广泛认为是世界上最濒危的植物，根据国际自然保护联盟的濒危物种红色名录，380种现存物种中的大多数都受到灭绝的威胁。这些早期的植物通常被称为活化石，因为它们的古老起源超过3亿年前，它们在恐龙时代的流行，在那个时代，它们比今天更广泛和多样化。幸存的苏铁类植物因其出色的化石记录而对研究植物进化特别有价值。尽管它们在外观上变化不大，但这些植物有许多独特的特征，其中一些是祖先的（原始的），其中一些是衍生的（先进的）。为了使它们免于灭绝，我们需要了解这些变化是何时发生的，并将它们与环境变化和其他生物因素联系起来。此外，现代苏铁的化学成分是独特的，对人类健康有重要意义，特别是在神经生物学方面。在某种程度上，苏铁是植物进化的罗塞塔石碑。该项目将综合所有关于苏铁生物学的现有数据，并通过网站向广大研究人员以及对苏铁保护工作感兴趣并能够作出重大贡献的社区提供这些数据。该项目将产生一个完整的，现代的电子专著和苏铁数据库。在分类学、植物地理学、基因组学和进化生物学等领域将开辟许多研究途径。这本电子专着，由苏铁的世界名单主办，将有助于提供资源，背景，和这些追求的基础知识。它将包括原始物种描述，模式标本，同义词，无效和非法命名，以及所有已发表的各种分类学水平的命名。将有现代的，所有分类群的平行描述伴随着照片和线条艺术，以及识别工具，分布图，栖息地数据与历史和当代照片，生态学，结构数据，化学数据，生命周期信息，以及物候学和授粉生物学。该电子专著还将包括一个插图词汇表和关于民族植物学、方言名称、植物化学、生长和发育以及固氮的章节。这里进行的全面综合将受益于C.J.张伯伦在胚胎学方面以及Adriance Foster，Marion约翰逊和Knut Norstog在发育解剖学和形态学方面制作的5000多个历史和当代显微镜载玻片的数字化。与这些研究人员以及PI史蒂文森发表的黑白白色图像相关的部分将以彩色数字化并纳入发育页面，从而为研究界提供有关苏铁结构的更详细信息。张伯伦、诺斯托格和史蒂文森拍摄的苏铁类植物的历史栖息地照片将被扫描并添加到物种描述和地理生态部分。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

In the plant tree of life, a group of plants of special interest are the cycads. The cycads are widely considered the world’s most endangered plants with most of the 380 living species considered threatened by extinction according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species. These early plants are often termed living fossils because of their ancient origin over 300 million years ago and their prevalence during the age of the dinosaurs, a time in which they were much more widespread and diverse than they are today. The surviving cycads are particularly valuable for studying plant evolution because of their excellent fossil record. Even though they have changed little in outward appearance, these plants have many unique features, some of which are ancestral (primitive) and some of which are derived (advanced). To save them from extinction, we need to understand when those changes occurred through time and correlate them with environmental changes and other biotic factors. Furthermore, the chemistry of modern cycads is unique and has significant implications for human health, particularly in neurobiology. In a way, cycads serve as a Rosetta stone for plant evolution. This project will synthesize all available data on cycad biology and make those data accessible, via a web site, to a broad audience of researchers as well as to the community of people who are interested in and able to contribute significantly to cycad conservation efforts. This project will generate a complete, modern e-monograph and data repository of the Cycads. Many avenues of research will be opened in the areas of taxonomy, biogeography, genomics, and evolutionary biology. This e-monograph, hosted by The World List of Cycads, will serve to provide the resources, background, and basics for those pursuits. It will include original species descriptions, type specimens, synonyms, invalid and illegitimate nomenclature, and all published nomenclature at various taxonomic levels. There will be modern, parallel descriptions of all taxa accompanied by photographs and line art, as well as identification tools, distribution maps, habitat data with historic and contemporary photographs, ecology, structural data, chemical data, life cycle information, and phenology and pollination biology when known. The e-monograph will also include an illustrated glossary and sections on ethnobotany, vernacular names, phytochemistry, growth and development, and nitrogen fixation. The comprehensive synthesis undertaken here will benefit from the digitization of over 5000 historic and contemporary microscope slides made by C.J. Chamberlain on embryology and by Adriance Foster, Marion Johnson, and Knut Norstog on developmental anatomy and morphology. Relevant sections tied to black and white images published by these researchers, as well as those of PI Stevenson, will be digitized in color and incorporated into developmental pages, thereby providing more detailed information on cycad structure to the research community. Historic habitat photographs of cycads by Chamberlain, Norstog, and Stevenson will be scanned and added to the species descriptions and the geography and ecology sections.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.