Background: The Neotropical woody bamboos (NWB) comprise a clade native to the Western Hemisphere. Taxonomically the NWB are classified into three subtribes: Arthrostylidiinae, Chusqueinae, and Guaduinae. These woody bamboos are distributed from northern Mexico and the West Indies to south-central Chile and Argentina and from sea level to over 4,000 m in elevation. The most recent comprehensive treatment of the diversity and classification of NWB was published just over 20 years ago, and knowledge of the NWB has greatly increased in the interim. Questions and / or Hypotheses: How much has our knowledge of Neotropical woody bamboo diversity, distribution and classification changed in the last 20 years? Results: The present work reviews the current state of Neotropical woody bamboo taxonomy and provides 1) new morphological keys (in English and Spanish) to and synoptic descriptions of the NWB genera; 2) an updated comprehensive species list; and 3) a biodiversity analysis by country and habitat type. Neotropical woody bamboo diversity presently totals 446 species in 23 genera. In the 21st century, 103 new species and five genera of NWB have been described. Conclusions: The new species and genera described since 2000 have produced an increase in species richness of 29.5 % and a net increase in generic richness of 26.3 %. This new review will be useful for systematists, ecologists, conservation biologists and others working with woody bamboos in the Neotropics.

Georeferencing is the process of aligning a text description of a geographic location with a spatial location based on a geographic coordinate system. Training aids are commonly created around the georeferencing process to disseminate community standards and ideas, guide accurate georeferencing, inform users about new tools, and help users evaluate existing geospatial data. The Georeferencing for Research Use (GRU) workshop was implemented as a training aid that focused on the creation and research use of geospatial coordinates, and included both data researchers and data providers, to facilitate communication between the groups. The workshop included 23 participants with a wide background of expertise ranging from students (undergraduate and graduate), professors, researchers and educators, scientific data managers, natural history collections personnel, and spatial analyst specialists. The conversations and survey results from this workshop demonstrate that it is important to provide opportunities for biocollections data providers to interact directly with the researchers using the data they produce and vice versa.

Premise: Species identification is vital to many disciplines. Digital technology has improved identification tools, but the direct use of characters with continuous states has yet to be fully realized. To achieve full use of continuous characters for identification, I propose a classifier that calculates a posterior probability (degree of belief) in possible name assignments and an estimate of the relative evidence for the candidate annotations.Methods: A model for a species is defined using continuous morphological characters, and an algorithm for identification with a naive Bayesian classifier, using the model, is presented. A method of estimating the strength of evidence for candidate species is also described.Results: The proposed method is applied in two example identifications: native vs. invasive Myriophyllum in North America and vegetative Rhipidocladum bamboos in Mexico. In each instance, the new method provides a probability and estimate of the strength of the probability to enhance the name assignment in situations where taxa are difficult to differentiate using discrete character states.Discussion: Naive Bayesian classifiers take advantage of the predictive information inherent in continuous morphological characters. Application of this methodology to plant taxonomy advances our ability to leverage digital technology for improved interactive taxonomic identifications.

Abstract— Rhipidocladum is the fourth most speciose genus in the bamboo subtribe Arthrostylidiinae. The species in this genus have a wide geographical distribution from North America (Mexico) to South America (Argentina). In Mexico, there are five Rhipidocladum species, two of which are endemic. During a recent review of herbaria, we found some specimens of Rhipidocladum from Guerrero, Jalisco, and Nayarit that do not fit morphologically with any of the five Rhipidocladum species presently known in Mexico nor any other species in the genus. Here we describe and illustrate Rhipidocladum barbinode, a new species endemic to Mexico. We additionally provide an updated morphological key to the Rhipidocladum species of Mexico.