XVI International Botanical Congess

Pilotrichella (Musci: Meteoriaceae) is a tropical epiphytic moss currently undergoing taxonomic revision as part of the NSF PEET initiative at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Preliminary studies suggest two taxonomic elements within the genus, Pilotrichella s.s and Orthostichella (both with an Afro-American distribution). Analysis of morphological and preliminary molecular data indicates a geographic association in the divergence of these taxa. Collection localities and data have been downloaded into a GIS and mapped. These data will be used to identify areas of species diversity and abundance from known collections, to identify local ecological data that affect species distribution patterns and to link geographic distributions to a preliminary phylogeny of the subfamily Pilotrichelloideae