Publications by authors named "Robert F C Naczi"

Article Synopsis
  • Universal nomenclatural systems in biology are crucial for clear and consistent scientific communication.
  • Recent debates around creating a fairer nomenclature could disrupt these systems, potentially leading to damaging revisions of established names.
  • The four key benefits of objective nomenclature are universality, stability, neutrality, and transculturality, which support unbiased communication and should not be compromised by subjective changes.
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(Cyperaceae) is described, illustrated, and compared with morphologically similar species. is known only from southern Delaware, southeastern Maryland, and southern New Jersey, all within the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S.

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Article Synopsis
  • Extinction rates for plants and animals are on the rise during the Anthropocene, but many current rates remain unknown, prompting a study of vascular plants in the U.S. and Canada since European settlement.
  • Researchers identified 51 extinct species and 14 infraspecific taxa among vascular plants using databases, literature, and expert reviews, with a new index of taxonomic uncertainty (ITU) to assess reliability.
  • The study found that most extinctions occurred in the western U.S., with 64% of extinct plants being single-site endemics, suggesting that the actual extinction rate is likely much higher due to limited prior surveys.
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The carnivorous plant family Sarraceniaceae comprises three genera of wetland-inhabiting pitcher plants: Darlingtonia in the northwestern United States, Sarracenia in eastern North America, and Heliamphora in northern South America. Hypotheses concerning the biogeographic history leading to this unusual disjunct distribution are controversial, in part because genus- and species-level phylogenies have not been clearly resolved. Here, we present a robust, species-rich phylogeny of Sarraceniaceae based on seven mitochondrial, nuclear, and plastid loci, which we use to illuminate this family's phylogenetic and biogeographic history.

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We investigate the species discriminatory power of a subset of the proposed plant barcoding loci (matK, rbcL, rpoC1, rpoB, trnH-psbA) in Carex, a cosmopolitan genus that represents one of the three largest plant genera on earth (c. 2000 species). To assess the ability of barcoding loci to resolve Carex species, we focused our sampling on three of the taxonomically best-known groups in the genus, sections Deweyanae (6/8 species sampled), Griseae (18/21 species sampled), and Phyllostachyae (10/10 species sampled).

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