Wood Anatomy

Woody Plant Anatomy Workshop Planning Page:

What:

The PO is planning to host a workshop for developing a controlled vocabulary for wood anatomy and development.

From Jill Wegrzyn of the TreeGenes Database at UCDavis (email:jlwegrzyn@ucdavis.edu):

"The forest tree community (and in particular the conifers), are interested in collaborating with the Plant Ontology project to develop terms specific to our communities. I currently coordinate efforts on the TreeGenes database and will be leading efforts to integrate ontologies into our existing database."

From Andrew Groover, after meeting with: David and Jill at UC Davis:"

"The wood anatomy ontology can serve as a prototype group for the more extensive project that Jill is leading for forest tree ontologies. The proposal is to get our group of expert wood anatomist together with Jill and at least one member from your group with experience in the process of developing ontologies. The expectation is that, because there is a long history of nomenclature for wood anatomy, this ontology should be rigorous and should come together relatively easily. Hopefully the experience would allow Jill to tackle more challenging ontologies in the future."

3 Goals:

• wood development and timecourse- formation
• terms for wood structure in the PAO
• Terms to describe wood quality and phenotype, traits

Who:

Should have 2-4 wood anatomy/development specialists plus 2 ontology experts from the PO group

People involved in the discussion so far:

• Aaron Liston [1]

• Andrew Groover: link [2]

• Quenton Cronk, UBC, [3]

• Jill Wegrzyn [4]

• Dave Neale [5]

Suggested Experts to invite:

• Barb Lachenbruch link (Wood science and anatomy, prof at OSU, also note that Barb is part of the IAWA council)

• Frederic Lens: (new faculty at Netherlands Centre for Biodiversity Naturalis)

Would bring his knowledge of the resources associated with the International Association of Wood Anatomist as well as his personal knowledge to the group, currently the president of the International Association of Wood Anatomists (IAWA), a group with a long history of dealing with anatomical nomenclature.

• Elisabeth Wheeler (paleobotanist and wood anatomist at NC State, curator of the Inside Wood database).

Her personal knowledge of anatomy as well as the challenges associated with creating and maintaining a database would be quite useful. These two could also make sure that prior work is utilized fully and not needlessly repeated.

• Mathias Kirst Univ of Florida, Gainsville

(suggested by QC "He has been investigating the phenotypic variation of wood for association studies and is intimately knowledgeable about the wood features of interest to genomics community").

• Rachel Spicer Connecticut College

(suggested by AL: "she has expertise in both wood anatomy and development") (AG: wood anatomist and physiologist)

• Dave Neale and Jill Wegrzyn and of the TreeGenes Database at UCDavis

From the discussion on the 11-8-11 POC Conf call:

• Steven Janssen, University of Ulm link

• Fritz Schweingruber, Institute of Forest, Snow and Landscape Research link

• Annett Boerner, Max Planck Institute Link

• Peter Gasson Kew

• William Stein Bighamtom University evolution of woody plants, anatomy and morphology

He is probably not the most appropriate contributor- could bring him on later.

• Fredric Lens and Elizabeth Wheeler (already on the list)

Note: Are there any restrictions with international participants or flights that we need to consider in terms of funding for the meeting?

When:

By the middle of February

Where:

Proposed: meeting in Corvallis, at OSU or at NYBG; This would enable more participants to take part.

- Also possibilities that have been discussed: Cornell and UC Davis

-Also: Andrew Groover got confirmation from Ned Friedman that the Arnold Arboretum would be willing to host the meeting. Suggested: "This would keep down costs and they have a great new facility, and the group could take advantage of not only the conference room but also have access to microscopy and arboretum/herbarium/slide specimens. I think Ned has housing available as well."