By linking an expert nutritionist from WashU with a team of ethnobotanists from the Missouri Botanical Garden, this transdisciplinary project delved into the complex interplay between plants and people.
Lora Iannotti, a Biodiversity Fellow and professor at Wahu’s Brown School sat down with WashU’s School of Public Health Dean Sandro Galea to discuss a paper Iannotti co-authored, “Wild Foods Are Positively Associated with Diet Diversity and Child Growth in a Protected Forest Area of Madagascar.” This paper was co-authored with several Biodiversity Fellows from Missouri Botanical Garden: Tabita Randrianarivony, Armand Randrianasolo, Robbie Hart and originated from a Living Earth Collaborative Seed Grant project. Learn more about the project at https://bit.ly/Wildfood
The Revolutionizing Species Identification (RSI) project at the Missouri Botanical Garden uses advanced AI technology to digitize its vast herbarium collection, creating a global reference library for rapid plant species identification. This online platform will enable scientists to upload data from unidentified plants for automated identification, accelerating restoration and conservation efforts worldwide. Additionally, the project provides training in plant taxonomy and herbarium creation, cultivating the next generation of botanical experts.
The Missouri Botanical Garden is leveraging AI to digitize its nearly 8 million plant specimens, creating an online database to support conservation efforts and preserve critical ecological data. By combining AI with historical and genetic information, the Garden is also advancing research on tree migration and ecosystem adaptation to climate change, while ensuring these technologies complement rather than replace human expertise.
Recently observed interactions between lemurs and a losa are describe in a new paper published in Ecology and Evolution. The interaction highlights the importance of an ecological approach to biodiversity conservation.
The Living Earth Collaborative is
supporting a critical project to restore primary forest in the heart of
Betampona Reserve which comprises about 7.7 square miles of trees, surrounded by fields that have been cleared for agriculture.
A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences led by Washington University Biology post-doc James Stroud and co-authored by LEC director, Jonathan Losos, is shedding new light on our understanding of evolution in species that live in close proximity to each other.
The Earth is facing two interconnected crises — loss of biodiversity and climate change. Each separately is an enormous threat to life on this planet. However, together they are fueling each other, creating a worsening downward spiral.
This month, the Republic of Congo agreed to protect a 36-square-mile area called Djéké Triangle by making it part of the adjacent Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park. Biodiversity research led by St. Louis scientists helped inform the decision to include the Djéké Triangle in the existing national park.
The “páramo biodiversity farms” initiative in Colombia’s Sumapaz region represents an innovative approach to biodiversity conservation, emphasizing the creation of ex situ living collections of threatened plants like Espeletia. These collections serve as tools for research, education, and ecological restoration while fostering collaboration with local communities. By prioritizing sustainable, community-driven conservation efforts, the initiative challenges traditional “ark paradigm” approaches and promotes biodiversity management rooted in the ecosystems and populations most affected.
Join LEC at the St. Louis Zoo on July 21 for the launch of a conservation incubator.
Jane Melville, senior curator of terrestrial vertebrates at Museums Victoria and associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University, led the collaborative research effort to emphasize the importance of prioritizing taxonomic research in conservation as part of a Fulbright Fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis.
Andean forests have high potential to store carbon under climate change. The study — which draws upon two decades of data from 119 forest-monitoring plots in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Argentina — was produced by an international team of scientists including researchers supported by the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University in St. Louis. The lead author was Alvaro Duque from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia Sede Medellín.
Black-and-white ruffed lemurs and diademed sifakas are the focus of Living Earth Collaborative effort in Madagascar to find out how to best support these two endangered species.
The Congo Basin is home to the world’s second-largest rainforest and a unique array of biodiversity. But the ecosystem’s remote location cannot protect it from the threat of poaching. Special correspondent Monica Villamizar and videographer Phil Caller traveled to the Central African Republic before the pandemic to report on indigenous tribal hunters working to protect endangered wildlife.
LEC Director Jonathan Losos provides expertise on the Trump Administration’s proposed overhaul of the landmark Endangered Species Act. Losos says these changes will “hasten the extinction of countless species.”
The Whitney R. Harris World Ecology Center at the University of Missouri–St. Louis presented the Garden and the Zoo with the World Ecology Award in particular recognition of their longtime work in Madagascar.
Helina S. Woldekiros, an assistant professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences has a bone to pick with modernization: chickens are losing diversity.
Living Earth Collaborative grant supports efforts to understand if Peter’s Angola colobus monkeys represent one or two subspecies.
Marine scientists predict climate change might severely hinder efforts to protect populations of the endangered and iconic Nassau grouper by the end of this century.
The world’s tropical forests lost roughly 39 million acres of trees last year, an area roughly the size of Bangladesh, according to a report Wednesday by Global Forest Watch that used new satellite data from the University of Maryland. Global Forest Watch is part of the World Resources Institute, an environmental group.
A World Resources Institute project aims to collect DNA samples from tree leaves and use it to help track illegal logging.
What we think we know about how to restore tropical forests is getting a second look. A new paper produced by scientists in Missouri Botanical Garden’s Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development (CCSD), the University of Hawaii’s Lyon Arboretum, and the University of Maryland Baltimore County points out an important bias in recent studies.
Renowned evolutionary biologist Jonathan Losos has returned to Washington University to lead a new academic center — the Living Earth Collaborative — to advance the study of biodiversity. The Living Earth Collaborative will team investigators from Washington University, the Missouri Botanical Garden and the Saint Louis Zoo, as well as other local and regional organizations, to study the great diversity of plants and animals with which we share this world, and to help conserve them before they become extinct.
A situation analysis by the IUCN Oil Palm Task Force. The situation
analysis primarily focuses on oil palm in the context of biodiversity conservation based on literature published before 31 January 2018, and aims to provide a constructive pathway to addressing sustainability challenges in the palm oil industry.