Dr Peter Moonlight

Dr Peter Moonlight, Research Associate

I specialise in the use of taxonomic data in answering large scale, macro-ecological questions. As a taxonomist, my main specialism is the Andean members of the megadiverse, understory herb genus Begonia (Begoniaceae) and I continues to describe new species and to work on infra-generic classification within this important group.

For the past 100 years, herbarium taxonomy such as this has produced vast quantities of data on species’ distributions. As a part of a NERC Newton funded grant, I am using these data from the Caatinga Seasonally Dry Tropical Forest biome of the northeast of Brazil to produce species distribution models of plant species. These models will be used to determine whether ecoregions exist within the Caatinga, and to examine the climate resilience of this neglected and threatened biome.

Contact: p.moonlight@rbge.org.uk, 

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