Archive - February 2, 2023

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John Clark (Ecuador) joins Sarasota’s Selby Gardens
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PCVs to Solomon Islands to counter China

John Clark (Ecuador) joins Sarasota’s Selby Gardens

John L. Clark PhD Joins Botany Staff at Selby Gardens TUESDAY JAN 31, 2023 |     Marie Selby Botanical Gardens [in Sarasota, Florida] recently welcomed Dr. John L. Clark to its staff as a full-time research botanist. Affiliated with Selby Gardens as a research associate since 2009, Clark has spent his professional career discovering and documenting plant diversity. His work concentrates on the plant family Gesneriaceae, or gesneriads, an important focus of Selby Gardens’ botanical research and a notable component of its living plant collection. An evolutionary biologist as well as a botanist, Clark studies plant systematics, evolution, and biodiversity, focusing on the identification, classification, phylogeny, and taxonomy of neotropical gesneriads. Gesneriads serve as scientific models for understanding broad patterns in the evolution, pollination, and diversification of plants. About a third of gesneriads are epiphytes (a type of plant that grows on another plant without harming it), and Clark’s . . .

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PCVs to Solomon Islands to counter China

  US opens embassy in Solomon Islands to counter China By NICK PERRY Seattle Times February 01, 2023        WELLINGTON, New Zealand — (AP) — The United States opened an embassy in the Solomon Islands on Thursday in its latest move to counter China’s push into the Pacific. The embassy in the capital, Honiara, is starting small, with a chargé d’affaires, a couple of State Department staff and a handful of local employees. The U.S. previously operated an embassy in the Solomon Islands for five years before closing it in 1993 as part of a global reduction in diplomatic posts after the end of the Cold War. But China’s bold moves in the region have the U.S. seeking to increase its engagement in a number of ways, such as by donating COVID-19 vaccines, bringing back Peace Corps volunteers to several island nations, and investing in forestry and tourism projects. “The opening . . .

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