In Honor Of Philippine Wildlife Expert, A Rare Plant Species Was Named After Her
RARE PLANT – A rare plant species which can be found in two mountains in Mindano was named after Philippine wildlife expert Theresa Mundita Lim.
According to Inquirer, a species, scientifically named Medinilla theresae, is endemic to areas of a specific soil type and can be found only on Mt. Redondo, Dinagat Island, and on Mt. Hamiguitan in Davao Oriental.
Medinilla theresae is a terrestrial, erect and cauliflorous shrub that can grow up to 1.5 meters high. The shrub was discovered by a team of renowned taxonomists, professors and researchers from the University of the Philippines, which includes Edwino Fernando, Perry Ong, Peter Quakenbush and Edgardo Lillo.
Photo uplifted from: Inquirer
Lim, who is also a former director of the Biodiversity Management Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, was honored and grateful for the recognition. She further thanked the team for their hard work in the species’ discovery.
Lim further believed that taxonomy is a vital step in conservation simply because you cannot conserve what you do not know; noting that the number of species waiting for discovery was far larger than those that had already been studied.
As per the report, Theresa Mundita Lim is currently the executive director of the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity. According to her, millions of plant and animal species had yet to be studied, noting that they could hold tremendous potential as sources of food, medicine and other benefits to humans. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) shows that only about 1.78 million species of animals, plants and microorganisms in 250 years of research out of more than 30 million have been identified by taxonomists.
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