For Immediate Release Contact: Pat Kremer/Nancy O’Shea (312) 665-7100 (For Media Use Only) JANUARY “Biodiversity in the Neotropics” Featured Scientist Michael Dillon, Ph.D. Botany Department Curator and Head of Vascular Plants Michael Dillon is an expert on the flowering plants of the Neotropics, a region from Mexico down to the tip of South America that holds some of the most diverse plant life in the world. In the past 30 years, Dillon has conducted more than 40 expeditions to look for flowering plants in unexplored places—most recently along the Andes Mountains in Chile and Peru. “I’ve hit every environment along the Andes from the coast to the jungle, and up to the highest heights,” says Dillon. He catalogs the flowering plants he finds, determines which ones are threatened, and helps local citizens and scientists learn more about their natural resources. This is especially important in impoverished countries like Peru, where mining and population growth are taking a toll on botanical diversity. Peru is home to more than 18,000 species of flowering plants, almost as many as Canada and the United States put together. Currently, Dillon is searching for plants in the Andean páramos, which start at about 11,000 feet. He has also studied the family trees of the sunflower and potato families, and the impact of El Niño on the coastal plants of Chile and Peru. Dillon has been instrumental in getting the word out to other scientists who study neotropical plants. In 1995, he launched the Andean Botanical Information System (www.sacha.org), a website with more than 1,000 photographs and 2,000 pages of information on Andean plants in English and Spanish. Continue