National Early Detection Network Presented at the Consortium of Northeast Herbaria

Les Mehrhoff, Director of the Invasive Plant Atlas of New England (IPANE), gave a short presentation on the National Early Detection Network (NEDN) at a meeting of the Consortium of Northeast Herbaria in Durham, NH, in June. He is working with NBII ISIN, NIN, and Botany as well with Randy Westbrooks (USGS) and John Madsen (Invasive Plant Atlas of the MidSouth [IPAMS]) to develop this network. Herbaria are important potential partners because they may be asked to identify plants that may be new to their area and possibly invasive. IPANE is working to provide specimens of potentially invasive plants to the herbaria in the northeast that may not have these specimens because they don’t currently occur in their area. Invasive plant specimen sharing is being done in the hopes that having specimens of potentially invasive plants might facilitate the identification of unrecognized “Early Detection Species” and prompt the herbaria to notify the NEDN of their discovery.

For additional information please contact: Dr. Les Mehrhoff, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut at les.mehrhoff@uconn.edu or (860) 486-5708.