Moss Flora of China ( English version )

Missouri Botanical Garden, Saint Louis MO

Investigators

Abstract

0455568 Crosby and He The Moss Flora of China is a print- and web-based inventory of the moss species of China, conducted as a collaborative international project between U.S. bryologists coordinated by the Missouri Botanical Garden and Chinese specialists coordinated by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, along with contributing treatments from bryologists in Canada, Finland, Japan, and elsewhere. The project will provide a complete floristic treatment of all the mosses of China and Taiwan. The Chinese moss flora contains an estimated 65 families, 415 genera and 2400 species, and thus represents about 20% of all the mosses known in the world. The aim of this renewal project is to conclude the publication of this important work, focusing on the last three volumes of an anticipated 8-volume treatment, with concise species descriptions drawn from herbarium specimens and new field collections, up-to-date information on nomenclature, phylogenetic relationships, and geographical distributions. The essential information presented in this work will be useful in comparisons of global and regional patterns of moss species richness, especially for the northern hemisphere where the Chinese inventory complements ongoing or nearly complete surveys for North America, Europe, and (old) Soviet Union. Authoritative taxonomic information will be used worldwide by researchers in evolutionary and ecological studies, in biodiversity and biogeographical investigations, as well as by those working in conservation and land management. A complete account of Chinese mosses with illustrations, distribution maps, and glossary to bryological terminology will be made available on the web, including a fully searchable interactive database of all species. Scholars from leading Chinese institutions studying mosses and related plants will visit the U.S. and work with colleagues and students at the Missouri Botanical Garden; in turn, they will facilitate targeted field collecting in China for materials related to completion of the flora and for DNA samples for molecular systematists analyzing phylogenetic relationships of mosses. The NSF Office of International Science and Engineering is contributing support to the project, for completion of the moss flora of China.