Alwyn Howard Gentry (January 6, 1945 – August 3, 1993) was an American botanist and plant collector, who made major contributions to the understanding of the vegetation of tropical forests.
Education
Gentry was born on January 6, 1945, in
Clay Center, Kansas
Clay Center is a city in and the county seat of Clay County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 4,199.
History
Clay Center was first settled in 1862. It was named from its position near the geographic ...
, and received his schooling at the
Clay Center Community High School, from which he graduated in 1963. He graduated from
Kansas State University in 1967 with a B.A. in physical science and a B.S. in botany and zoology. He earned his master's degree in 1969 at the
University of Wisconsin–Madison
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United Stat ...
as a student of botanist
Hugh Iltis, with a thesis on the genus ''
Tabebuia
''Tabebuia'' is a genus of flowering plants in the family Bignoniaceae.Eberhard Fischer, Inge Theisen, and Lúcia G. Lohmann. 2004. "Bignoniaceae". pages 9-38. In: Klaus Kubitzki (editor) and Joachim W. Kadereit (volume editor). ''The Families ...
'' (
Bignoniaceae
Bignoniaceae is a family of flowering plants in the order Lamiales commonly known as the bignonias or trumpetvines.Vernon H. Heywood, Richard K. Brummitt, Ole Seberg, and Alastair Culham. ''Flowering Plant Families of the World''. Firefly Book ...
) of
Central America
Central America ( es, América Central or ) is a subregion of the Americas. Its boundaries are defined as bordering the United States to the north, Colombia to the south, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. ...
, a subject which he continued to study at
Washington University in St. Louis
Washington University in St. Louis (WashU or WUSTL) is a private research university with its main campus in St. Louis County, and Clayton, Missouri. Founded in 1853, the university is named after George Washington. Washington University is r ...
, Missouri, from which he received his doctorate in 1972, with a Ph.D. thesis entitled ''An Eco-evolutionary Study of the Bignoniaceae of South Central America''.
Career
Gentry spent his entire working career at the
Missouri Botanical Garden
The Missouri Botanical Garden is a botanical garden located at 4344 Shaw Boulevard in St. Louis, Missouri. It is also known informally as Shaw's Garden for founder and philanthropist Henry Shaw. Its herbarium, with more than 6.6 million ...
, starting as an assistant curator in October 1972. In 1974, he made his first visit to Peru, a country that became the major focus of much of his subsequent work; he made his second trip there in 1976 and by the time of his death had visited the country 33 times. He also maintained his interest in the Bignoniaceae: he contributed treatments of the family to nine volumes, including the ''Flora of Panama'', and had a further five in press when he died.
One of Gentry's major innovations was the use of
transect
A transect is a path along which one counts and records occurrences of the objects of study (e.g. plants).
There are several types of transect. Some are more effective than others.
It requires an observer to move along a fixed path and to count ...
samples as a tool for assessing the composition and structure of tropical forests, known as the
Gentry Forest Transect. His method, allied to his encyclopedic knowledge of tropical plants, allowed him to sample a site in a matter of days, and over the course of his career he amassed data from over 200 such transects worldwide.
Because many of the plants which he encountered during his
transect
A transect is a path along which one counts and records occurrences of the objects of study (e.g. plants).
There are several types of transect. Some are more effective than others.
It requires an observer to move along a fixed path and to count ...
sampling were not flowering, Gentry developed the ability to identify species from vegetative specimens, not just from flowers and fruits, an ability that led to the publication of his ''Field Guide to the Families and Genera of Woody Plants of Northwest South America'', completed just months before his death.
In 1990,
Conservation International established a "Rapid Assessment Program" (RAP) to undertake quick assessments of areas deemed to be significant for conservation.
Gentry's transect method was well suited to such work and he became increasingly involved as a member of the RAP team.
Death
On August 3, 1993, Gentry was on a Rapid Assessment Program mission in western Ecuador, when the light aircraft in which he was traveling crashed into a mountain ridge near
Guayaquil
, motto = Por Guayaquil Independiente en, For Independent Guayaquil
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. Four people—the pilot, Gentry, American ornithologist
Theodore A. Parker III, and Ecuadorian ecologist Eduardo Aspiazu—died in the crash; three other researchers including biologist Alfredo Luna Narváez survived.
Legacy
Gentry was prolific both as an author and as a plant collector: he published over 200 works and had many more on hand at the time of his death and he collected over 80,000 plant specimens, hundreds of which have proved to be species new to science.
Gentry and Parker are memorialized in the annual Parker/Gentry Award for Conservation Biology of the
Field Museum of Natural History.
Several plant species have been named after Gentry, including: ''
Acidocroton gentryi,
Citharexylum gentryi,
Crossothamnus gentryi,
Eleutherodactylus gentryi,
Hedyosmum gentryi,
Metalepis gentryi,
Palicourea gentryi,
Phyllanthus gentryi,
Sobralia gentryi'' and ''
Zamia gentryi'', as well as a bird, ''
Herpsilochmus gentryi''. In several instances, Gentry had been involved in the collection of the
type specimen
In biology, a type is a particular specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally attached. In other words, a type is an example that serves to anchor or centralizes th ...
s of these plants.
Honors
*Marine Fellow, 1991: Pew Fellows Program in Conservation and the Environment
*Distinguished Service Award, 1990: Society for Conservation Biology
*Fellow, Linnean Society of London
*Honorary Member, Sociedade Botanico de Brasil
Selected publications
*Gentry, A.H., A. G. Forsyth. 1998. A Field Guide to the Families and Genera of Woody Plants of Northwest South America : (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru) : With Supplementary Notes (paperback). Conservation International, Washington, DC
*Gentry, A.H., A. G. Forsyth, R. Vasquez (Illustrator),. 1996. A Field Guide to the Families and Genera of Woody Plants of Northwest South America : (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru) : With Supplementary Notes on Herbaceo. University of Chicago Press Hardcover
*Gentry, A.H., A. G. Forsyth. 1993. A Field Guide to the Families and Genera of Woody Plants of Northwest South America : (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru). Conservation International, Washington, DC
*Gentry, A.H. 1992. A synopsis of Bignoniaceae ethnobotany and economic botany. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 21(3): 266-270
*Gentry, A.H. 1992. Exarata (Bignoniaceae), a new genus from the Choco region of Ecuador and Columbia. Systematic Botany 17(3): 503
*Gentry, A.H. 1992. Six new species of Bignoniaceae from upper Amazonia. Novon 2(2): 159
*Gentry, A.H. 1992. Tropical forest biodiversity: Distributional pattern and their conservational significance. Oikos 63(1): 19
*Gentry, A.H. and R. Ortiz. 1992. A new species of Aptandra (Olacacea) from Amazonian Peru. Novon 2(2): 153
*Dodson, C.H. and A.H. Gentry. 1991. Biological extinction in western Ecuador. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 78(2): 273
*Faber-Langendoen, D. and A.H. Gentry. 1991. The structure and diversity of rain forests at Bajo Calima, Choco region, western Columbia. Biotropica 23(1): 2
*Gentry, A.H. 1990. Four Neotropical Rainforests. Yale University Press, Branford. (627 pp)
*Gentry, A. (1976). Bignoniaceae of Southern Central America: Distribution and Ecological Specificity. Biotropica, 8(2), 117-131. doi:10.2307/2989632
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gentry, Alwyn Howard
1945 births
1993 deaths
20th-century American botanists
Kansas State University alumni
University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences alumni
Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in Ecuador
Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in 1993
Washington University in St. Louis alumni
Missouri Botanical Garden people
People from Clay Center, Kansas
Conservation biologists