W. John Kress

Last updated

W. John Kress
BornMarch 4, 1951
Illinois
Alma materHarvard University
Known forSystematics Biology
SpouseLidnesy Clarkson
Scientific career
FieldsTropical Ecology
Academic advisorsP.B. Tomlinson

Walter John Emil Kress (born Illinois, 4 March 1951) is an American botanist and the vice-president for science at the National Museum of Natural History. [1] He currently holds the appointment (2010) as the Director of the Consortium for Understanding and Sustaining a Biodiverse Planet at the Smithsonian [2] and is the former Executive Director of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation. [3]

Contents

Early life and education

Kress received his education at Harvard University (B.A.,1975) and Duke University (Ph.D., 1981), studying tropical biology, plant systematics, pollination ecology, and ethnobotany. [4]

Kress' travels to tropical regions began as a graduate student where he conducted post-doctorate research in Columbia. His dissertation was mainly focused on the plants in genus Heliconia . Kress focused on both the systematics and the plant-animal interactions of this group. His research later took him to Las Cruces Botanic Garden in San Vito where he studied what factors may prevent species hybridization. [5] He is responsible for the collection of many of the Zingiberales from around the country that exist in the botanic garden today.

Research

Kress is now the vice-president of science at the National Museum of Natural History, where he formerly held positions of Curator and Chairman of the Department of Botany. [1] Kress worked formerly as the director of research at the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Florida from 1984 to 1988. [4]

Focusing mostly on the Zingiberales, including Heliconia, Musa, and other gingers, [4] Kress has extensively studied the systematics and plant animal interactions of this order. [5] His current research is focused on biodiversity genomics, conservation, and the Anthropocene. [6] Kress' publications regarding the anthropocene warn that human created complexes, still-to-be-resolved issues, including the impacts of climate change, will endanger humanity's future if they are not addressed immediately. [7]

Tropical plant diversity

Kress is responsible for the variety of Heliconias in Las Cruces Botanic Garden [5] as well but a garden planted in an enclosed aviary in Dominica’s mountains. The main purpose of this garden was so that he and his colleagues could watch the hummingbirds interact with plants in an experimental situation. He claims that seeing that symbiosis between Heliconia and hummingbirds allowed him to gain deeper understanding of the mechanism of evolution. [8]

Systematics and taxonomy

Published findings by Kress include the lineages of and the divergence of Zingiberales. His research found that speciation from the remaining monocots occurred approximately 124 million years ago. In addition to discovering that major family-level lineages become established in the late Cretaceous (80–110 mya), his research also found that crown lineages within families began diversifying in the early to mid-Tertiary (29–64 mya). [9]

He aided in developing an award-winning smart-phone app, Leafsnap, and works as the Principal Investigator of the Leaf Project at the Smithsonian. It is the first mobile tree identification smart-phone app was a collaboration between Columbia University and the University of Maryland. [10]

Conservation

His role in collection management at the Smithsonian Institution has made him an spokesman for the importance of collections, explaining how the worldwide decline of specimens in the natural world increases their inherent value. He claims that as the world ages and the natural world changes, museum collections serve as a record for phenology as well as preserve beyond nature. [7] Many of his publications advocate for the conservation of tropical plants, specifically, Zingiberales. [3]

Kress is an advocate for a biodiverse future, and serves on a panel that asks difficult questions about sustainability. [11] His role as the director of the Consortium for Understanding and Sustaining a Biodiverse Planet at the Smithsonian Institution has made him a proponent of humans living sustainably prior to irreversible damage occurring to the planet. [12] The consortium originated from a strategic 10-year plan put in place by the Smithsonian Institution to create interdisciplinary work by scholars both related and not related to the Institution. Sustained by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the consortium promotes interactions between scholars in complementary fields and have resulted in the facilitation of new avenues of thought in scientific endeavors. Kress, as Director of the Biodiversity and Sustainability Consortium, brings together scientists from numerous fields to address broad research projects which dive deep into questions on biology with relevant societal impacts. Museum collections that Kress manages have aided in advancement of knowledge and understanding of both life on the planet and how it can be sustained. [2]

Selected publications

The standard author abbreviation W.J.Kress is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name . [13]

Awards and distinctions

Kress is currently a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a non-profit with the goal of promotion of science and defending scientific freedom. Members play an active role in advocacy for a future with science. [14] Additionally, since 1997 he has held the seat as Executive Director of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation. [2] He has been appointed as an Adjunct Professor of Biology at George Mason University in Virginia, at George Washington University in Washington, DC, and at Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Yunnan. [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zingiberales</span> Order of flowering plants

The Zingiberales are flowering plants forming one of four orders in the commelinids clade of monocots, together with its sister order, Commelinales. The order includes 68 genera and 2,600 species. Zingiberales are a unique though morphologically diverse order that has been widely recognised as such over a long period of time. They are usually large herbaceous plants with rhizomatous root systems and lacking an aerial stem except when flowering. Flowers are usually large and showy, and the stamens are often modified (staminodes) to also form colourful petal-like structures that attract pollinators.

<i>Heliconia</i> Genus of plants

Heliconia is a genus of flowering plants in the monotypic family Heliconiaceae. Most of the ca 194 known species are native to the tropical Americas, but a few are indigenous to certain islands of the western Pacific and Maluku in Indonesia. Many species of Heliconia are found in the tropical forests of these regions. Most species are listed as either vulnerable or data deficient by the IUCN Red List of threatened species. Several species are widely cultivated as ornamentals, and a few are naturalized in Florida, Gambia, and Thailand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel H. Janzen</span>

Daniel Hunt Janzen is an American evolutionary ecologist, and conservationist. He divides his time between his professorship in biology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is the DiMaura Professor of Conservation Biology, and his research and field work in Costa Rica.

The Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL) was an international initiative dedicated to supporting the development of DNA barcoding as a global standard for species identification. CBOL's Secretariat Office is hosted by the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, DC. Barcoding was proposed in 2003 by Prof. Paul Hebert of the University of Guelph in Ontario as a way of distinguishing and identifying species with a short standardized gene sequence. Hebert proposed the 658 bases of the Folmer region of the mitochondrial gene cytochrome-C oxidase-1 as the standard barcode region. Hebert is the Director of the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario, the Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding, and the International Barcode of Life Project (iBOL), all headquartered at the University of Guelph. The Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD) is also located at the University of Guelph.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chicago Botanic Garden</span> Botanical garden located in Illinois, US

The Chicago Botanic Garden is a 385-acre (156 ha) living plant museum situated on nine islands in the Cook County Forest Preserves. It features 27 display gardens and five natural habitats including Mary Mix McDonald Woods, Barbara Brown Nature Reserve, Dixon Prairie, the Skokie River Corridor, and the Lakes and Shorelines. The garden is open every day of the year. An admission fee has been approved to start in 2022, not to exceed $35.

<i>Heliconia tortuosa</i> Species of flowering plant

Heliconia tortuosa is an herbaceous tropical perennial commonly found in secondary succession in montane forests in Central America and southern Mexico. It is moderately shade tolerant. It has also been widely cultivated as a garden plant for its showy, usually twisted inflorescences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jawaharlal Nehru Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute</span>

"Jawaharlal Nehru Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute", renamed in the fond memory of visionary Prime Minister of India Shri Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru is an autonomous Institute established by the Government of Kerala on 17 November 1979 at Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of Kerala. It functions under the umbrella of the Kerala State Council for Science, Technology and Environment (KSCSTE), Government of Kerala. The Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG), Kew played an exemplary and significant role in shaping and designing the lay out of the JNTBGRI garden in its formative stages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">McBryde Garden</span>

McBryde Garden is a botanical garden located on the south shore of Kauai, Hawaii. It is one of five gardens of the non-profit National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG).

The Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS)/Organización para Estudios Tropicales (OET), founded in 1963, is a non-profit consortium of over 50 universities and research institutions based in the United States, Latin America, and South Africa. OTS manages a network of ecological research stations in Costa Rica and South Africa. The North American Office is located on the Duke University campus in Durham, North Carolina. OTS offers a variety of courses in Spanish and English for high school, university, graduate students and professionals. Most of the coursework and research conducted at OTS stations focuses on tropical ecology, and the three research stations in Costa Rica are located in distinct ecoregions. OTS provides housing and a cafeteria for students researchers, and sometime ecotourists. OTS is involved in the policy related to tropical biology through courses, hosting meetings and conferences and managing conservation related projects

<span class="mw-page-title-main">San Juan Botanical Garden</span> 300-acre urban garden in San Juan, Puerto Rico

The San Juan Botanical Garden, officially known as the Botanical Garden of the University of Puerto Rico, is located in the Caribbean city of San Juan, capital of Puerto Rico. This lush 300-acre (1.2 km2) “urban garden” of native and exotic flora serves as a laboratory for the study, conservation and enrichment of plants, trees, flowers, grasses and many other plants. Seventy-five acres are landscaped and open to the general public as well as researchers.

The Earth Institute Center for Environmental Sustainability, formerly known as the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC), consists of two institutions located at Columbia University. The first is an Earth Institute which started as the first Earth Institute in 1995. The second is the Secretariat of the Consortium for Environmental Research and Conservation, established in cooperation with The Earth Institute, the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Botanical Garden, the Wildlife Conservation Society and EcoHealth Alliance on biodiversity conservation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NTNU University Museum</span> University museum, Natural history museum in Trondheim, Norway

The NTNU University Museum in Trondheim is one of seven Norwegian university museums with natural and cultural history collections and exhibits. The museum has research and administrative responsibility over archaeology and biology in Central Norway. Additionally, the museum operates comprehensive community outreach programs and has exhibits in wooden buildings in Kalvskinnet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden</span> Botanical garden in Yunnan, China

Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG), of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), founded in 1959, is located in Mengla County, Xishuangbanna at 21º55' N, 101º15'E, covering an area of 1125 ha. Over 13,000 species of tropical plants are preserved in its 35 living collections, including over 301 families and 2110 genera.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Banana-families</span>

The "banana-families" or banana group is a basal paraphyletic assemblage in the order Zingiberales (Monocotyledoneae) that comprises Musaceae, Lowiaceae, Strelitziaceae, and Heliconiaceae. These taxa differentiate from the "ginger-families" derived clade by their plesiomorphic state of five or six fertile stamens, and generally have large banana-like leaves that are easily torn between secondary veins.

The ginger-families or ginger group or Core Zingiberales is a terminal clade in the order Zingiberales (Monocotyledoneae) that comprises Zingiberaceae, Costaceae, Marantaceae and Cannaceae. Their shared synapomorphy of a single fertile anther and four or five highly modified staminodia differentiate them from the basal paraphyletic assemblage of the "banana-families".

The Earth BioGenome Project (EBP) is an initiative that aims to sequence and catalog the genomes of all of Earth's currently described eukaryotic species over a period of ten years. The initiative would produce an open DNA database of biological information that provides a platform for scientific research and supports environmental and conservation initiatives. A scientific paper presenting the vision for the project was published in PNAS in April 2018, and the project officially launched November 1, 2018.

The Australasian Virtual Herbarium (AVH) is an online resource that allows access to plant specimen data held by various Australian and New Zealand herbaria. It is part of the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA), and was formed by the amalgamation of Australia's Virtual Herbarium and NZ Virtual Herbarium. As of 12 August 2014, more than five million specimens of the 8 million and upwards specimens available from participating institutions have been databased.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Winifred Hallwachs</span> U.S. entomologist and tropical ecologist

Winifred Hallwachs is an American tropical ecologist who helped to establish and expand northwestern Costa Rica's Área de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG). The work of Hallwachs and her husband Daniel Janzen at ACG is considered an exemplar of inclusive conservation.

Axel Dalberg Poulsen is a Danish naturalist, botanist, and curator. His research interests are the flora of Denmark and its surroundings, taxonomy and biology of the Orchidaceae, and conservation biology.

References

  1. 1 2 "Department of Botany Staff, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution". botany.si.edu. Archived from the original on October 22, 2018. Retrieved October 18, 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "2013 W. John Kress | Parker/Gentry Award". parkergentry.fieldmuseum.org. Archived from the original on February 26, 2022. Retrieved October 20, 2018.
  3. 1 2 "W. John Kress". medicaltraditions.org. Retrieved October 19, 2018.
  4. 1 2 3 Conan, Michel; Kress, W. John (2007). Botanical Progress, Horticultural Innovation and Cultural Changes. Dumbarton Oaks. ISBN   9780884023272.
  5. 1 2 3 Organization for Tropical Studies (September 24, 2012), W. John Kress Interview , retrieved October 19, 2018
  6. 1 2 The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University (2018). "W. John Kress". Archived from the original on April 30, 2022. Retrieved October 17, 2018.
  7. 1 2 Kress, W. John (December 12, 2014). "Valuing collections". Science. 346 (6215): 1310. doi: 10.1126/science.aaa4115 . ISSN   0036-8075. PMID   25504711.
  8. ↑ Gambino, Megan. "A Smithsonian Botanist Suggests an Evotourism Site". Smithsonian. Retrieved October 19, 2018.
  9. ↑ Kress, John; Specht, Chelsea (2006). "The Evolutionary and Biogeographic Origin and Diversification of the Tropical Monocot Order Zingiberales". Aliso. 22 (1): 621–632. doi: 10.5642/aliso.20062201.49 . ISSN   2327-2929.
  10. 1 2 "About Leafsnap | Leafsnap: An Electronic Field Guide". leafsnap.com. Retrieved November 12, 2018.
  11. ↑ "1. John Kress – Perspectives on Limits to Growth: Challenges to Building a Sustainable Planet". Smithsonian Institution (in Spanish). Retrieved October 18, 2018.
  12. ↑ "W. John Kress". www.press.uchicago.edu. Retrieved October 18, 2018.
  13. ↑ International Plant Names Index.  W.J.Kress.
  14. ↑ Kress, W. John; O'Connor, J. Dennis; DePriest, Paula (May 31, 2002). "The Globalization of Nature". Science. 296 (5573): 1612. doi:10.1126/science.296.5573.1612a. ISSN   0036-8075. PMID   12041534. S2CID   7259116.
  15. ↑ "John Kress". tropicalbiology.org. Retrieved November 8, 2018.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.