William Hancock
W.Hancock
February 08, 1847 – August 06, 1914
botanist, botanical collector
botanist (1847-1914)
Science Enabled by Specimen Data
Tan, K., T. Lu, and M.-X. Ren. 2020. Biogeography and evolution of Asian Gesneriaceae based on updated taxonomy. PhytoKeys 157: 7–26. https://doi.org/10.3897/phytokeys.157.34032
Based on an updated taxonomy of Gesneriaceae, the biogeography and evolution of the Asian Gesneriaceae are outlined and discussed. Most of the Asian Gesneriaceae belongs to Didymocarpoideae, except Titanotrichum was recently moved into Gesnerioideae. Most basal taxa of the Asian Gesneriaceae are fou…
Frankiewicz, K. E., J. H. Chau, and A. A. Oskolski. 2020. Wood and bark of Buddleja: uniseriate phellem, and systematic and ecological patterns. IAWA Journal 42: 3–30. https://doi.org/10.1163/22941932-bja10020
Wood anatomy of Buddleja is well-explored but not in many southern African members, which form a grade of species and small clades that form successive sister groups to the rest of the genus, and its bark structure has not been studied at all. We provide new descriptions of wood anatomy for twelve s…
Holzmeyer, L., A.-K. Hartig, K. Franke, W. Brandt, A. N. Muellner-Riehl, L. A. Wessjohann, and J. Schnitzler. 2020. Evaluation of plant sources for antiinfective lead compound discovery by correlating phylogenetic, spatial, and bioactivity data. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117: 12444–12451. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1915277117
Antibiotic resistance and viral diseases are rising around the world and are becoming major threats to global health, food security, and development. One measure that has been suggested to mitigate this crisis is the development of new antibiotics. Here, we provide a comprehensive evaluation of the …
Goodwin, Z. A., P. Muñoz-Rodríguez, D. J. Harris, T. Wells, J. R. I. Wood, D. Filer, and R. W. Scotland. 2020. How long does it take to discover a species? Systematics and Biodiversity 18: 784–793. https://doi.org/10.1080/14772000.2020.1751339
The description of a new species is a key step in cataloguing the World’s flora. However, this is only a preliminary stage in a long process of understanding what that species represents. We investigated how long the species discovery process takes by focusing on three key stages: 1, the collection …
Peyre, G., J. Lenoir, D. N. Karger, M. Gomez, A. Gonzalez, O. Broennimann, and A. Guisan. 2020. The fate of páramo plant assemblages in the sky islands of the northern Andes B. Jiménez‐Alfaro [ed.],. Journal of Vegetation Science 31: 967–980. https://doi.org/10.1111/jvs.12898
Aims: Assessing climate change impacts on biodiversity is a main scientific challenge, especially in the tropics, therefore, we predicted the future of plant species and communities on the unique páramo sky islands. We implemented the Spatially Explicit Species Assemblage Modelling framework, by i) …
Klages, J. P., U. Salzmann, T. Bickert, C.-D. Hillenbrand, K. Gohl, G. Kuhn, et al. 2020. Temperate rainforests near the South Pole during peak Cretaceous warmth. Nature 580: 81–86. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2148-5
The mid-Cretaceous period was one of the warmest intervals of the past 140 million years1,2,3,4,5, driven by atmospheric carbon dioxide levels of around 1,000 parts per million by volume6. In the near absence of proximal geological records from south of the Antarctic Circle, it is disputed whether p…
Li, M., J. He, Z. Zhao, R. Lyu, M. Yao, J. Cheng, and L. Xie. 2020. Predictive modelling of the distribution of Clematis sect. Fruticella s. str. under climate change reveals a range expansion during the Last Glacial Maximum. PeerJ 8: e8729. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8729
Background The knowledge of distributional dynamics of living organisms is a prerequisite for protecting biodiversity and for the sustainable use of biotic resources. Clematis sect. Fruticella s. str. is a small group of shrubby, yellow-flowered species distributed mainly in arid and semi-arid areas…
Ringelberg, J. J., N. E. Zimmermann, A. Weeks, M. Lavin, and C. E. Hughes. 2020. Biomes as evolutionary arenas: Convergence and conservatism in the trans‐continental succulent biome A. Moles [ed.],. Global Ecology and Biogeography 29: 1100–1113. https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.13089
Aim: Historically, biomes have been defined based on their structurally and functionally similar vegetation, but there is debate about whether these similarities are superficial, and about how biomes are defined and mapped. We propose that combined assessment of evolutionary convergence of plant fun…
Nevado, B., E. L. Y. Wong, O. G. Osborne, and D. A. Filatov. 2019. Adaptive Evolution Is Common in Rapid Evolutionary Radiations. Current Biology 29: 3081-3086.e5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2019.07.059
One of the most long-standing and important mysteries in evolutionary biology is why biological diversity is so unevenly distributed across space and taxonomic lineages. Nowhere is this disparity more evident than in the multitude of rapid evolutionary radiations found on oceanic islands and mountai…
Gomes, S. I. F., P. M. van Bodegom, V. S. F. T. Merckx, and N. A. Soudzilovskaia. 2019. Global distribution patterns of mycoheterotrophy G. Jordan [ed.],. Global Ecology and Biogeography 28: 1133–1145. https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.12920
Aim: Mycoheterotrophy is a mode of life where plants cheat the mycorrhizal symbiosis, receiving carbon via their fungal partners. Despite being widespread, mycoheterotrophic plants are locally rare, hampering the understanding of their global environmental drivers. Here, we explore global environmen…