1. What do you study related to biodiversity (what are your research questions, what organisms do you work on)?
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 Biodiversity is usually considered as having three categories, or levels, for its definition and description: 1) genetic diversity, 2) species diversity, and 3) ecosystem diversity. Since I am a botanist, I look at plants—specifically flowering plants. The basic questions my colleagues and I are answering are: what species are found in what ecosystems?, how frequent or rare are they?, and, for select groups, how genetically diverse are they?
Secondary questions concern how plants attain and maintain there geographic distributions and the physical and climatic parameters affect these distributions. Studies on patterns of evolution and relationships allow for investigations to reconstruct past climates and global processes, i.e., geological changes, glacial cycles, sea level changes, and climate anomalies such as El Niño events.
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2. How do you study biodiversity (for example, what technological tools and methodologies do you use in your research)?
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 The first steps are exploration and discovery—going where others have not gone before; studying an area for several years to get estimates of what plants are flowering at different times; encountering the more rare and cryptic species. We gather samples and material suitable for making determinations, describe new species, and investigate genetic patterns using DNA analysis of selected organisms.
We use hand lens, microscopes, scanning electron microscopes, databases, and molecular systematics and analyses of genetic distance and evolution. Some projects require cultivation of native species and re-populating environments that have become highly disturbed or changed through the influence of man.
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3. Where do you study biodiversity?
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Generally I investigate plants occurring in Central and South America. More specifically, my field studies are in varied environments in Peru and coastal Chile. I have worked in most countries in Latin America, including Mexico, Panama, the Galápagos Islands (Ecuador), Peru, Chile and Argentina.
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4. How might your research have implications for biological conservation?
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 All conservation efforts require information on what organisms grow where, and whether they are threatened or not. Our studies attempt to inventory plants in specific regions and identify their rarity and level of threats for extinction. Normally, conservation efforts build upon scientific data gathered in baseline studies. In one study, we are re-establishing an environment that has been drastically changed over the past 100 years by protecting areas from pests such as goats and cattle and reintroducing native species that once flourished in these habitats.
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5. How did you become interested in science? What made you want to be a scientist, and how did you get to The Field Museum?
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 I have always been interested in Nature, and as a child, I wanted to be a veterinarian. By the time I finished my undergraduate degree, I realized that plants were fascinating and this led to a career in botanical research. Most people find their way into science with a general curiosity with what is in the world and how they function in the grand scheme called life. I came to The Field Museum in 1978 from a post-doctoral fellowship at the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis where I was working on a project studying the plants of Peru.
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6. Describe important collaborations for your scientific endeavors (describe your work with other researchers, organizations, or scientific groups, local or indigenous peoples, etc.)
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I have a large network of collaborators in all the regions where I conduct research. I make my scientific efforts available to a wide range of people through the Internet in both English and Spanish languages <www.sacha.org>.
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