Thomas Haevermans

• Ph.D., HDR
• Maître de conférences at Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle

Grasses (Poaceae) comprise c . 11 800 species and are central to human livelihoods and terrestrial ecosystems. Knowing their relationships and evolutionary history is key to comparative research and crop breeding. Advances in genome‐scale sequencing allow for increased breadth and depth of phylogenomic analyses, making it possible to infer a new re...

Many species are defined in the Musa section within its natural diversification area in Southeast Asia. However, their actual number remains debated as botanical characterisation, distribution and intraspecific variability are still poorly known, compromising their preservation and their exploitation as crop wild relatives of cultivated forms. To a...

Grasses (Poaceae) comprise around 11,800 species and are central for human livelihoods and terrestrial ecosystems. Knowing their relationships and evolutionary history is key to comparative research and crop breeding. Advances in genome-scale sequencing allow for increased breadth and depth of phylogenomic analyses, making it possible to infer a ne...

Digitaria is a large pantropical genus, which includes a number of economically problematic agricultural weeds. Difficulties in species identification and the circumscription of the genus have previously hindered progress in understanding its evolution and developing a stable classification. We investigate the evolutionary history of Digitaria by c...

The Hickeliinae (Poaceae: Bambusoideae) is an ecologically and economically significant subtribe of tropical bamboos restricted to Madagascar, Comoros, Reunion Island, and a small part of continental Africa (Tanzania). Because these bamboos rarely flower, field identification is challenging, and inferring the evolutionary history of Hickeliinae fro...

Euphorbia section Plagianthae contains only two highly distinctive accepted species of Malagasy endemic Euphorbia, restricted to the arid southern part of the island. In this paper we propose an epitype for Euphorbia plagiantha, and a lectotype for Euphorbia fiha, a name designated as a synonym of Euphorbia plagiantha. We also designate a lectotype...

Conamomum vietnamense, a new species of Zingiberaceae, is described and illustrated from Tay Nguyen (Central Highlands), Vietnam. It is most similar to C. odorum and C. rubidum, but differs in having well-developed stilt roots, elliptic leaf blades, narrowly ovate bracts, abaxially pubescent bracteoles, longer calyx with 2 truncate lobes, broadly o...

Madagascar’s emblematic traveller’s tree is a monospecific genus within Strelitziaceae, the family of the South African bird of paradise. Until now, this endemic genus consisted of a single species: Ravenala madagascariensis Sonn., which is grown everywhere in the tropics as an ornamental plant. The plant is immediately recognizable for its huge fa...

Natural history collections represent extraordinarily rich and diverse sets of objects. These collections also correspond to colossal datasets that allow us to respond to extremely varied scientific and societal issues. This chapter presents facets of data reuse from natural history collections. It presents some suggestions to optimize the uses of...

Curbing biodiversity loss and its impact on ecosystem services, resilience and Nature’s Contributions to People is one of the main challenges of our generation (IPBES, 2019b, 2019a; Secretariat of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, 2020). A global baseline assessment of the threat status of all of biodiversity is crucial to moni...

Functionally and evolutionarily distinct species have traits or an evolutionary history that are shared by few others in a given set, which make them priority species for biodiversity conservation. On islands, life in isolation has led to the evolution of many distinct forms and functions as well as to a high level of endemism. The aim of this stud...

Les collections d’histoire naturelle représentent des ensembles d’objets extraordinai- rement riches et divers. Ces ensembles correspondent également à des jeux de données colossaux qui permettent de répondre à des problématiques scientifiques et sociétales actuelles extrêmement variées. L’informatisation des collections d’histoire naturelle pendan...

The species Euphorbia linguiformis Hetterscheid, Haevermans & Spannring (2021: 16) has been named erroneously in a recent publication (Haevermans & Hetterscheid 2021) on Euphorbia Linnaeus (1753: 450), not realising that this epithet was already in use for another taxon, Euphorbia linguiformis McVaugh (1961: 184), making our new species an illegiti...

Several species of Malagasy Euphorbia are described and compared to related species in their respective sections, along with identification keys for morphologically close relatives and distribution maps: Euphorbia agatheae, Euphorbia atimovatae, Euphorbia fuscoclada, Euphorbia graciliramulosa, Euphorbia kalambatitrensis, Euphorbia linguiformis, Eup...

In this paper we clarify the identity and natural distribution of Euphorbia milii by defining an epitype for it, and elevate to specific rank infraspecific names published under E. milii and provide detailed synonymy for taxa reinstated at the specific rank such as Euphorbia splendens, Euphorbia bevilaniensis, Euphorbia hislopii. We publish novelti...

It is time to synthesize the knowledge that has been generated through more than 260 years of botanical exploration, taxonomic and, more recently, phylogenetic research throughout the world. The adoption of an updated Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) in 2011 provided the essential impetus for the development of the World Flora Online (...

Evaluating formal threat criteria for every organism on earth is a tremendously resource-consuming task which will need many more years to accomplish at the actual rate. We propose here a method allowing for a faster and reproducible threat prediction for the 360,000+ known species of plants. Threat probabilities are estimated for each known plant...

Two new species of Kaempferia L. (Zingiberaceae), Kaempferia nemoralis Insis. sp. nov. and Kaempferia pascuorum Insis. sp. nov., from Cambodia and Lao PDR are described and illustrated. Morphological similarities to their closely related taxa are discussed. Kaempferia nemoralis Insis. sp. nov. is compared with Kaempferia larsenii Sirirugsa in its v...

Lush jungle flagship species, woody bamboos (Poaceae–Bambusoideae) are famed for their synchronous flowering as well as the extensive “bamboo forests” some species can form in tropical or temperate environments. In portions of their natural distribution, Bambusoideae members developed various adaptations to seasonality in environmental parameters,...

Functionally and evolutionary original species are those whose traits or evolutionary history are shared by few others in a given set. These original species promote ecosystem multifunctionality, the ability to cope with an uncertain future, future benefits to society and therefore have a high conservation value. A potential signal of their extinct...

Island systems are among the most vulnerable to climate change, which is predicted to induce shifts in temperature, rainfall and/or sea levels. Our aim was: (i) to map the relative vulnerability of islands to each of these threats from climate change on a worldwide scale; (ii) to estimate how island vulnerability would impact phylogenetic diversity...

Islands have remarkable levels of endemism and contribute greatly to global biodiversity. Establishing the age of island endemics is important to gain insights into the processes that have shaped the biodiversity patterns of island biota. We investigated the relative age of monocots across islands worldwide, using different measures of phylogenetic...

At their early age, a large proportion of island pools were a partial sampling of mainland pools whatever islands are oceanic or fragments of the mainland. Through time, colonization, diversification, extinctions, have deeply transformed insular and continental communities and therefore the degree to which they share species. We studied the relativ...

Neotypes are designated for five names in Kaempferia (Zingiberaceae) from Lao PDR, namely K.attapeuensis Picheans. & Koonterm, K.champasakensis Picheans. & Koonterm, K.gigantiphylla Picheans. & Koonterm, K.sawanensis Picheans. & Koonterm and K.xiengkhouangensis Picheans. & Phokham.

Natural History Collections allow tackling many questions in ecology and evolution, through the data provided by both the specimens themselves and the labels linked to the specimens, with rare advantages: data are real, spanned over time, checkable for accurate identifications, and the preserved physical objects make them not questionable. In parti...

The type material of the Vietnamese wild banana Musa splendida (Musaceae), long thought to have been lost, was recently discovered in the Paris herbarium and here designated as a lectotype. Given its poor quality, an epitype is designated for adequate application of this name. An emended description of M. splendida is provided, with information on...

Musella is a monotypic genus in the family Musaceae comprising a single species, Musella lasiocarpa, wich was originally described based on material from Southwestern China. The genus differs from Musa and Ensete, the two other genera currently recognised in Musaceae , by its short stems and congested rhizomatous growth, compact rosette inflorescen...

Background Heterogeneous rates of molecular evolution are universal across the tree of life, posing challenges for phylogenetic inference. The temperate woody bamboos (tribe Arundinarieae, Poaceae) are noted for their extremely slow molecular evolutionary rates, supposedly caused by their mysterious monocarpic reproduction. However, the correlation...

Flowers embedded in amber are rare. Only about 70 flowers or inflorescences have been described among which only one lamiid is known. Nevertheless, these fossils are important to our understanding of evolutionary process and past diversity due to the exceptional preservation of fragile structures not normally preserved. In this work, a new flower n...

Recent advances in molecular phylogenetics and a series of important palaeobotanical discoveries have revolutionized our understanding of angiosperm diversification. Yet, the origin and early evolution of their most characteristic feature, the flower, remains poorly understood. In particular, the structure of the ancestral flower of all living angi...

The genus Aspidistra Ker Gawler (1822: 628) contains more than 160 species in tropical and subtropical SE-Asia, with the centre of species diversity in southern China and adjacent northern Vietnam (Tillich 2005, 2014, Tillich & Averyanov 2012, Vislobokov et al. 2013). In Vietnam, the genus has more than 50 species with many locally endemic taxa, an...

Paleotropical woody bamboos (PWB) are phylogenetically and taxonomically intractable. Because previous studies included deficient samples or lacked informative characters for tree construction, phylogenetic relationships within the PWB remain incompletely resolved. This study presents the most extensively sampled phylogeny of the PWB with 18 plasti...

Vietnamocasia, a new monotypic aroid genus in the Alocasia-Colocasia clade, is described with the type species, Vietnamo-casia dauae. Vietnamocasia is distinguished by possessing free individual staminate flowers, lacking expanded syncon-nectives, and having nodding inflorescences. Vegetatively Vietnamocasia is reminiscent of species of the distant...

Vietnamocasia, a new monotypic aroid genus in the Alocasia-Colocasia clade, is described with the type species, Vietnamo-casia dauae. Vietnamocasia is distinguished by possessing free individual staminate flowers, lacking expanded syncon-nectives, and having nodding inflorescences. Vegetatively Vietnamocasia is reminiscent of species of the distant...

We provide a quantitative description of the French national herbarium vascular plants collection dataset. Held at the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, Paris, it currently comprises records for 5,400,000 specimens, representing 90% of the estimated total of specimens. Ninety nine percent of the specimen entries are linked to one or more images...

Descriptors of the term radiation (excluding “adaptive”) in the titles of the articles examined. The article codes are the same than the ones used in Online resource 3

Structure of the database gathering the data about the taxon and the area investigated, the hypotheses, the methods, and the conclusions as extracted from the set of articles dealing with radiations published in five journals over the 2003 – 2012 time period. The NA (not applicable) and ND (no data) coding options are not listed in this table. GPR:...

The dataset underlying our scientometric study

Details of voucher specimens along with GenBank accession numbers for individual loci

Number of articles found after the first (automatic request on the Web of Science TM database) and third round (assessment of the focus of the article) of selection, for each of the five journals selected, over the 2003–2012 time period

Primer identities, sequences and source for the three chloroplast loci and nuclear ITS used for PCR and sequencing in this study

With 72 species belonging to ten genera, Sarcolaenaceae are the largest and most diverse of Madagascar's endemic plant families. Comprising shrubs and trees, with members found in nearly all of this island nation's biogeographic regions, they are characterised by the presence of a distinctive extra-floral involucre that is more or less accrescent,...

By their wide morphological diversity, succulent leaves have aroused the interest of many researchers. Nonetheless, comparative anatomical studies of unifacial, bifacial, and subunifacial leaves are scarce. To address this gap, our study examines the growth and differentiation of vascular tissues in succulent leaves of 12 families of angiosperms. A...

Madagascar is renowned for its impressive species richness and high level of endemism, which led to the island being recognized as one of the world’s most important biodiversity hotspots. As in many other regions, Madagascar’s biodiversity is highly threatened by unsustainable anthropogenic disturbance, leading to widespread habitat loss and degrad...

The uncommon southern African and Malagasy genus Sartidia in the Aristidoideae, Poaceae resembles the closely related Aristida but has a C3 photosynthetic system, 3–5-veined lower glumes, and a ventrally grooved caryopsis. We present a revision of Sartidia in Madagascar with two species. Sartidia isaloensis is described as new based on its interrup...