Monstera Revision: South America

Once again Marco Cedeno and I are asking for your help! The last GoFundMe we did was a huge success and the funds we received through this platform helped us complete the vital research required in Panama, Costa Rica and Mexico. With all the help we got we were able to complete the Central American section of the Monstera Revision project! Again this taxonomic revision is a project aimed to rework the genus, Monstera which is at the same time one of the most attractive and commercially popular groups of plants on the planet and also one of the least understood of all neotropical aroid genera. The previous revision project was done in 1977 by Michael Madison and his seminal work listed 22 sp for the whole genus. Through our combined efforts in central america, that number has skyrocketed to over 55 including several new species. 

Now we are asking your help again for this last step needed to complete this project. We need to explore several critical sites in South America in order to continue our research and understand more about these amazing plants. Several species complexes are in desperate need of reclassification and old species need to be resurrected. We also have a huge amount of work to do in terms of understanding pollinators and species densities for some of these little understood and at risk species! 
We’re currently planning several exciting expeditions to the Guyana shield, Brazil, Peru, western Amazonia and the Caribbean islands to get a deeper understanding of these plants and hopefully start to unravel some of the mysteries around cryptic complexes including some very popular species like Monstera obliqua, lechleriana, spruceana and adansonii. We hope we can count on your continued support as we keep on exploring and continue our quest to unravel the secrets of one of the most popular group of plants around! Thank you!