Dayna Mathis
Research Mentor(s): Monica Carvalho
Mentor Department: Museum of Paleontology
Authors: Theodore Matel , Dayna Mathis
Session: Session 4 (1:00pm – 1:50pm)
Presentation Type: Poster 99
Abstract
Myristicaceae has genera distributed across Africa, Asia, Madagascar, and America, encompassing around 470 species, and forms a major fraction of woody biomass diversity in the Neotropics where it is represented by the Virola, Otoba, Iryanthera, and Compsoneura species. The Myristicaceae show variation through their leaves. The secondary and tertiary veins differ between every leaf. However, to date, the degree to which leaf architectural traits discriminate among biological species has not been quantified. Using more than 20 characters outlined in the Manual of Leaf Architecture, I show that the variation shifts primarily along the vein density axis. Some species have highly dense networks, while others have sparser venation. Going forward, the data generated for this study will be used as training data to train a convolutional neural network to score leaves for the character states listed in the Manual of Leaf Architecture.
