Of course it is good to have additional people working on the Lauraceae - but it would have been nice if you had informed me beforehand. After all, we have been using the name "Lauraceae Working Group" since 2011 (see Lauraceae.myspecies.info), and I am the coordinator of that group.
Unfortunately, there has been no maintainance for the website for a while, so bugs kept piling up. However, this is supposed to change again; at least this is my latest information from the British Museum.
Dear Joeri,
Thank you very much for your answer. The lack of updates on the Lauraceae Working Group web pages is due to the fact that there hasn't been any maintainance or support for the entire Scratchpads project for a considerable time. According to my latest information from the British Museum, this is supposed to have changed by now. However, the backlog of bug reports is considerable. I understand that it will take some time until they have fixed everything.
As to the fundamental issues that you raised, I fully agree with your analysis. Therefore, we submitted a proposal in September last year, for the DFG Taxon-Omics priority programme, to start with a next-gen approach on the Ocotea complex, which makes up the bulk of the Neotropical Lauraceae. So far, there has been no decision. In addition to the next-gen data, we also need a revival of morphology, in order to be able to characterize the clades suggested by the molecular data in morphological terms. For example, details of leaf venation, stomata morphology (see work of Sachiko Nisida), inflorescence construction or cupule structure might be helpful. And everyone who collects should take photos of flowers and fruits in the field, and make them available; they often show details that are not that clear any more in herbarium material (by the way, there have been no problems with posting photos on Lauraceae.myspecies.info).
Anyway, I think we can really make a difference if all of us team up - and there is more than enough to do for all of us.
Best wishes,
Jens
- Badges
- Science topic