Shelley A James

Western Australian Department of Biodiversity Conservation and Attractions · Western Australian Herbarium

Herbarium collections shape our understanding of Earth’s flora and are crucial for addressing global change issues. Their formation, however, is not free from sociopolitical issues of immediate relevance. Despite increasing efforts addressing issues of representation and colonialism in natural history collections, herbaria have received comparative...

Herbarium collections shape our understanding of the world's flora and are crucial for addressing global change and biodiversity conservation. The formation of such natural history collections, however, are not free from sociopolitical issues of immediate relevance. Despite increasing efforts addressing issues of representation and colonialism in n...

The quality of biodiversity data publicly accessible via aggregators such as GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility), the ALA (Atlas of Living Australia), iDigBio (Integrated Digitized Biocollections), and OBIS (Ocean Biogeographic Information System) is often questioned, especially by the research community. The Data Quality Interest Group...

Georeferencing is the process of aligning a text description of a geographic location with a spatial location based on a geographic coordinate system. Training aids are commonly created around the georeferencing process to disseminate community standards and ideas, guide accurate georeferencing, inform users about new tools, and help users evaluate...

Several herbaria in Australia and New Zealand have recently been required to implement changes to the way in which spirit (alcohol or wet) specimens are managed in their institutions in order to deal with various curatorial and staff health and safety challenges. We will present an overview of some of the key lessons learned from addressing issues...

Managers of Australasian Herbarium Collections (MAHC) is a sub-committee of the Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria (CHAH) and provides advice and recommendations pertaining to the management of herbarium collections. It was formed in 2009 based initially on Australian herbaria, and later incorporated New Zealand herbaria. MAHC currently has...

Building on centuries of research based on herbarium specimens gathered through time and around the globe, a new era of discovery, synthesis, and prediction using digitized collections data has begun. This paper provides an overview of how aggregated, open access botanical and associated biological, environmental, and ecological data sets, from gen...

Rainforests in the South Pacific hold a considerable amount of plant diversity, with rates of species endemism >80% in some countries. This diversity is rapidly disappearing under pressure from logging, clearing for agriculture or mining, introduced pests and diseases and other anthropogenic sources. Ex situ conservation techniques offer a means to...

New Guinea is widely known for rich biodiversity. This study provides a foundation for understanding vascular and non-vascular plant distributions at the genus taxonomic level. Analyses objectively and quantitatively showed collection density and biases at 50 km spatial resolution and predict genus richness at 1 km spatial resolution. To model the...

Rhododendron stanleyi S.James & Argent is described as a new species from Mount Yule, Central Province, Papua New Guinea. Its morphological position in the subgenus is discussed and the differences given from the most closely similar species. A note on the habitat and conservation assessment is also provided.

During its inaugural year, Worldwide Engagement for Digitizing Biocollections, WeDigBio 2015, involved citizen scientists from >50 countries in transcribing biodiversity specimen labels from a variety of taxonomic groups over four days. Participants at onsite events at museums, universities, and science classrooms, along with individuals across the...

Bishop Museum’s Herbarium Pacificum (BISH) is actively engaged in the digitization of botanical collections, which includes the databasing of label information, digitally imaging specimens, georeferencing locality data. An NSF-funded collaboration between Bishop Museum, National Tropical Botanical Garden, and University of Hawaii to digitize collec...

The Consortium of Pacific Herbaria (CPH) was created to study and manage plant collections from the Polynesia-Micronesia hotspot region. The Polynesia-Micronesia Hotspot (PMH) is a center of biodiversity that harbors approximately 5,350 native vascular plant species. The CPH is a 3 year project based at UH Mānoa’s Joseph Rock Herbarium and includes...

These previously unpublished Hawaiian plant records report 2 new naturalized records, 13 new island records, 1 adventive species showing signs of naturalization, and nomen-clatural changes affecting the flora of Hawai'i. All identifications were made by the authors, except where noted in the acknowledgments, and all supporting voucher specimens are...

Tropical forests are becoming increasingly alien-dominated through the establishment of timber plantations and secondary forests. Despite widespread recognition that afforestation results in increased evapotranspiration and lower catchment yields, little is known of the impacts of timber plantations on water balance relative to native forest. Nativ...

Native plants are often claimed to be conservative water users that enhance groundwater recharge compared to faster-growing non-native species that tend to dominate watersheds. This argument would have implications for motivating conservation and restoration of native forest in Hawai'i. However, few studies have examined differences in native and n...

Lava tube cave ecosystems on the volcanic islands of Hawai‘i support communities of rare and highly specialized cave arthropods. In these cave ecosystems, plant roots, both living and dead, provide the main energy source for cave animals. Loss of deep-rooted plants over caves will affect populations of cave-adapted animals living below. Furthermore...

Two hybrids of carangid fishes of the genus Caranx, C. ignobilis x C. melampygus and C. melampygus x C. sexfasciatus, from the Hawaiian Is. Zoological Studies 46(2): 186-193. The popular game fishes, the giant trevally (Caranx ignobilis) and bigeye trevally (C. sexfasciatus) are shown to hybridize with the bluefin trevally (C. melampygus) at O'ahu,...

The endemic Hawaiian species, Gardenia brighamii (Rubiaceae - nanu or na‘u), was federally listed as endangered in 1985. Once an important component of lowland dryland forests on all the main Hawaiian Islands, there are currently less than 20 individuals remaining in the wild on leeward sides of Lanai, Oahu, and Molokai. The species is considered i...

Freshwater eels in the family Anguillidae spend a majority of their adult life in freshwater but migrate to the ocean to spawn and die. Because freshwater eels are believed to have a long larval period in the open ocean, it is unclear how the present global distribution of species arose.

http://hbs.bishopmuseum.org/botany/taro/

High-resolution dietary analysis can increase understanding of the foraging behavior, food requirements, and ecological interactions of animals. Such analysis is difficult because the characters traditionally used for taxonomic determination are modified or eliminated by the process of digestion. We are developing alternative means for identifying...

In large trees, the daily onset of transpiration causes water to be withdrawn from internal storage compartments, resulting in lags between changes in transpiration and sap flow at the base of the tree. We measured time courses of sap flow, hydraulic resistance, plant water potential and stomatal resistance in co-occurring tropical forest canopy tr...

The highly polymorphic taxon Metrosideros polymorpha ('ohi'a) is the most abun-dant endemic tree in Hawai'i, occupying a wide but fragmented range of habitats across Federal, State, and privately managed lands. Morphological char-acter states of 342 herbarium specimens from the island of Hawai'i distributed the five recognised varieties in ordinal...

Twenty one accessions of vetiver (Vetiveria zizanioides (L.) Nash, sterile, oil type) and Khus (V. zizanioides, fertile, non-oil type) were analyzed by the use of random amplified polymorphic DNAs (RAPDs). Nineteen of the accessions clustered strongly around the cultigen, Sunshine. Three accessions, Khus, Northern India, Kassel, Germany, and Guang...

Random amplified polymorphic DNAs (RAPDs) data were analyzed from all the taxa of Cupressus from the western hemisphere. Populations of Cupressus from Arizona and Texas, USA, were found to cluster in the two groups delimited by Wolf (1948): C. arizonica and C. glabra. These data suggest that these taxa might be better recognized at the specific lev...

The present study examines the manner in which several whole-tree water transport properties scale with species-specific variation in sapwood water storage capacity. The hypothesis that constraints on relationships between sapwood capacitance and other water relations characteristics lead to predictable scaling relationships between intrinsic capac...

Samples of Juniperus thurifera L. were collected from the Atlas Mts., Morocco, northern and southern Spain, the Pyrenees, France, Fench Alps and Corse Isaland, France. The leaf oils were analyzed and found to he polymorphic for several major compounds (sabinene, limonene, linalool, piperitone, linalyl acetate and sesquiterpenes). In general, the Mo...

Heat and stable isotope tracers were used to study axial and radial water transport in relation to sapwood anatomical characteristics and internal water storage in four canopy tree species of a seasonally dry tropical forest in Panama. Anatomical characteristics of the wood and radial profiles of sap flow were measured at the base, upper trunk, and...

Robust thermal dissipation sensors of variable length (3 to 30 cm) were developed to overcome limitations to the measurement of radial profiles of sap flow in large-diameter tropical trees with deep sapwood. The effective measuring length of the custom-made sensors was reduced to 1 cm at the tip of a thermally nonconducting shaft, thereby minimizin...

The tolerance of 5 Eucalyptus species (E. gracilis F. Muell., E. halophila D. Carr & S. Carr, E. kondininensis Maiden & Blakely, E. loxophleba Benth. and E. platypus Hook var. heterophylla Blakely) to alkaline conditions, bicarbonate, and low iron availability was assessed in solution culture. All 5 species occur naturally in alkaline or saline soi...

Leaf characteristics of Eucalyptus globulus Labill. ssp. globulus vary in response to plant genotype, ontogenetic position and environmental conditions. Glasshouse-grown seedlings from provenances at St Marys, Tasmania, and Wilsons Promontory, Victoria, produced seedling leaves for 10 nodes before producing leaves of juvenile form. Tasmanian proven...

Light availability strongly affects leaf structure of the distinctive ontogenetic leaf forms of Eucalyptus globulus Labill. ssp. globulus. Late-maturing plants from St. Marys, Tasmania and early maturing plants from Wilsons Promontory, Victoria (hereafter referred to as Wilsons Prom.) were grown for 9 months in 100, 50 or 10% sunlight. Growth, biom...

Juvenile and adult leaves of the heteroblastic species Eucalyptus globulus Labill. ssp. globulus did not show active diurnal orientation toward or away from incident radiation. Juvenile leaves of a late-maturing sapling of a Tasmanian provenance were evenly distributed in all azimuth sectors. In contrast, an early-maturing sapling of the same age f...

Mesophyll structure has been associated with the photosynthetic performance of leaves via the regulation of internal light and CO(2) profiles. Differences in mesophyll structure and chlorophyll distribution within three ontogenetically different leaf types of Eucalyptus globulus ssp. globulus were investigated. Juvenile leaves are blue-grey in colo...

Leaves of six genotypes of Eucalyptus camaldulensis Dehnh. from five Australian locations were compared. The juvenile plants were approximately 6 months old, an age related to field planting times in salinised and waterlogged agricultural catchments. The leaves of juvenile plants of Eucalyptus camaldulensis do not exhibit solar-tracking, but leaf o...

Leaves of six clonal individuals of Eucalyptus camaldulensis Dehnh. from five Australian locations were compared. Two clones were from Wooramel, WA while single clonal lines were from Dongara, WA, Erudina, SA, Murray Bridge, SA and Silverton, NSW. Principal component analysis of climatic factors for the five locations, derived by BIOCLIM, provided...