Australian Tropical Herbarium
Matt Barrett
- Research Fellow
- matt.barrett@jcu.edu.au
Darren Crayn
- Director, Australian Tropical Herbarium
- darren.crayn@jcu.edu.au
Mel Harrison
- Research Operations Officer
- melissa.harrison@jcu.edu.au
Stuart Worboys
- Botanist
- stuart.worboys@jcu.edu.au
Frank Zich
- Adjunct Senior Research Fellow
- frank.zich@jcu.edu.au
State of the Wet Tropics Report (Old ID 31177)
Darren Crayn
01 Jun 2023 - 31 May 2024
The Wet Tropics Management Authority produces a thematic annual State of the Wet Tropics report. This year’s report is themed threatened species. ATH staff are assisting in preparing the report.
Australian National Botanic Gardens plant Collecting. (Old ID 27684)
Darren Crayn
23 May 2022 - 30 Jun 2022
Recently, the Australian National Botanic Gardens (ANBG) suffered significant losses of propagated materials when environmental controllers in their propagation houses failed. The ANBG wishes to replace the lost materials with horticulturally and scientifically attractive plants collected from the rainforests of Queensland’s Wet Tropics bioregion.
Assessing the impacts of myrtle rust on forest dynamics and function (Old ID 31154)
Darren Crayn
01 Oct 2023 - 30 Jun 2027
This project investigates the consequences for environmental health of myrtle rust – an exotic fungal pathogen - infection on kanuka box (Tristaniopsis exiliflora). Kanuka box is a tree that grows along fast-flowing, rocky watercourses of northeast Queensland and is important for stabilising banks and preventing erosion within catchments of the Great Barrier Reef. Myrtle rust can kill kanuka box and is therefore a serious ecosystem-level threat that urgently needs to be better understood to assist in conservation management.
Securing the future of Australia’s threatened tropical mountain flora for science and society (Old ID 25045)
Darren Crayn
01 Jan 2019 - 31 Dec 2023
This project will enable us to secure the future of Australia’s climate-threatened tropical mountaintop plants. We will do this by building a multi-strategy ex-situ conservation reserve to ‘backup’ at-risk wild populations and support research, display and education. Our novel research on seed banking strategies, genetic diversity and plant tolerance of extreme climates will ensure that the reserve collections, distributed across multiple Botanic Gardens and Seed Banks along Australia’s east coast, incorporate high redundancy, are genetically and physiologically diverse, and climatically matched to wild habitat.
Saving the unique plants ofAustralia's tropical mountaintops through understanding the threats (Old ID 22210)
Darren Crayn
01 Feb 2016 - 01 Sep 2017
This project will improve our understanding of the extinction risk to Australia's unique tropical moutain flora from climate change, and provide important knowledge which will help in developing measures to mitigate its effects. It will achieve this through three activities: 1. first ever targeted, systematic surveys to document the distribution and abundance of threatened mountaintop plant speciesl; 2. establishment of field plots to allow monitoring of the health of mountaintop plant populations over the long term; and 3. establishment of living collections of the two native Rhododendron species to provide well-provenanced materials for conservation and further research.
Making headway with Ericaceae – a contribution toward a Flora of Australia account of Epacridoideae (Old ID 24706)
Darren Crayn
01 Jul 2018 - 30 Jun 2021
Generic boundaries in the predominantly Australian subfamily Epacridoideae (Ericaceae; c. 580 Australian taxa) have recently been resolved following many years of phylogenetic research, paving the way for the description of undescribed species and a Flora of Australia treatment. This project will complete part of such a treatment by formalizing generic-level nomenclature, describing 25 new species and completing species profiles for all capsular-fruited taxa (c. 150 species). This research will aid conservation efforts, particularly in south-western Australia, where there is a high level of diversity, with many species subject to multiple threats.
Progressing a Flora of Australia treatment of Ericaceae subfamily Epacridoideae (Old ID 27243)
Darren Crayn
01 Jul 2021 - 30 Sep 2024
Generic boundaries in the predominantly Australian Ericaceae subfamily Epacridoideae (c. 580 Australian taxa) have recently been resolved following many years of phylogenetic research, paving the way for the description of undescribed species and a Flora of Australia treatment. We have completed the first part of such a treatment: species profiles and a LucID key of all 152 species of the capsular fruited taxa (tribes Archerieae, Cosmelieae, Epacrideae, Prionoteae, and Richeeae). The proposed project will complete the second part by describing 10 new species and completing species profiles and keys for 180 species of the remaining two tribes: Oligarrheneae and Styphelieae. This research will aid conservation efforts, particularly in south-western Australia, where there is a high level of diversity, with many species subject to multiple threats.
Bush Blitz of vascular plants within Olkola Reserve (Old ID 22219)
Darren Crayn
01 Jul 2015 - 30 Jun 2016
This project will undertake targeted surveys of plants within the Olkola and Alwal National Parks, Cape York Peninsula, as part of the national BushBlitz program. The surveys aim to discover new species, and better characterise the biodiversity of this newly gazetted reserve.
Island Habitat Monitoring - Vegetation (Old ID 27658)
Darren Crayn
01 Jul 2022 - 30 Jun 2025
Islands, particularly the remote or less-accessible ones, have very poor inventories of species and ecosystems, their condition and potential threats. This base level data is required to identify which values should be prioritised for management and monitoring. A process to identify and prioritise information gaps and fill them is needed to address this issue. The Australian Tropical Herbarium proposes to address these knowledge gaps through provision of technical expertise that can include (a) field survey, (b) provision of plant identification services, (c) training and (d) data management.
Next generation systematics for Nepenthes Pitcher Plants (Old ID 22790)
Darren Crayn
01 Jul 2016 - 01 Jan 2020
The carnivorous pitcher plant genus Nepenthes comprises c.160 species distributed throughout the Southeast Asia and Oceania. Species have traditionally been distinguished using morphological characteristics, but many recently described species have been distinguished on the basis of minor differences, whose stability has been questioned. To date, no taxonomically informative molecular phylogeny of Nepenthes has been published. The lack of an objective taxonomic framework has hindered efforts of biologists who seek to study and conserve threatened Nepenthes. This study seeks to eliminate this problem using next generation sequencing methods to construct a robust, informative phylogeny of Nepenthes based on c. 100 species.
Aboriginal medicinal plants of Queensland: ethnopharmacological uses, species diversity, and biodiscovery pathways
- 2022
- BioMed Central
- Researchers:Darren CraynPhurpa Wangchuk
Start Date:
01 Jan 1997
End Date:
01 Jan 1997
Start Date:
01 Jan 2012
End Date:
01 Jan 2014
Start Date:
01 Jan 1994
End Date:
01 Jan 1998
Start Date:
01 Jan 2003
End Date:
01 Jan 2005
Start Date:
01 Jan 2005
End Date:
01 Jan 2008
Start Date:
01 Jan 2008
Title:
President