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Department of Plant Sciences

 

Research Overview

I am a plant taxonomist, studying and describing the diversity of plant species in order to provide names and identification tools for environmental research and conservation purposes. I am currently working on a project entitled “Opening Access to the Type Specimens in the Cambridge University Herbarium”, part-funded by the Isaac Newton Trust.

Herbarium collections are a crucial resource for biodiversity and conservation research, as they represent an immense repository of plant material collected over centuries. They not only provide reference specimens for the identification of plants, but also information about past and present distributions of species, morphological variability, evolutionary history of plant groups, shifts in phenology over time, adaptations to different climates and environmental conditions, among countless other subjects. The Cambridge University Herbarium (CGE) is particularly rich in unique historical collections, and is estimated to house 50,000 “type specimens”, which were used by botanists to describe new plant species and serve as reference material for the attached species names. These specimens are essential for taxonomic research, but are not yet catalogued and remain poorly known by the international scientific community. My goal is to identify, database and image the type specimen within the collections, in order to make them freely available to researchers worldwide.

For more information about the project:

https://www.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/news/new-funding-help-university-herbarium-identify-and-digitise-globally-important-specimens

 

Previous positions

2022  Postdoctoral Lecturer and Assistant Herbarium Curator, Botany Department, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

2021  Herbarium Curator and Research Engineer, Institut de Systématique, Évolution, Biodiversité (ISYEB), Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France

 

Qualifications

2021  PhD in Botany, Botany Department, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

2013  MSc in Plant Biology and Ecology, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Strasbourg, France

2011  BSc in Cell Biology and Physiology, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Strasbourg, France

 

Key publications

Flora of Singapore: Checklist and bibliography (2022). Garden’s Bulletin Singapore 74(Suppl. 1): 3 – 860. https://doi.org/10.26492/gbs74(suppl.1).2022-01.

Global Plant Extinction Risk Assessments Inform Novel Biodiversity Hotspots (in Revision, see 2021 preprint on BioRxiv). Preprint: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.10.08.463027.

A synopsis of the genus Embelia in Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore (2015). Kew Bulletin 70(25). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12225-015-9570-0.

 

All publications

ORCID

 

Websites

Taxonomic expertise

ResearchGate

Cambridge University Herbarium

 

Awards

2018  Bentham-Moxon Trust grant. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

2018  Emily Holmes Memorial Scholarship. Amar-Franses and Foster-Jenkins Trust, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

2017  SYNTHESYS III / Call 4. European Community Research Infrastructure Action - FP7 Capacity Program.

2016  Trinity College Dublin Postgraduate Studentship Award.

2014  SYNTHESYS III / Call 1. European Community Research Infrastructure Action - FP7 Capacity Program.

2013  David Webb PhD Studentship. Trinity College Dublin, Botany Department.

 

Postdoctoral Research Associate
Anne Dubearnes

Contact Details

Email address: 
Cambridge University Herbarium
c/o Sainsbury Laboratory
47 Bateman Street
Cambridge
CB2 1LR