Systematic Botany

Systematic Botany is the Society's quarterly international scientific journal, and publishes papers on topics such as taxonomy, systematics, speciation, morphometrics, molecular phylogeny, conservation, biogeography, and methods.

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INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS

Submit manuscripts for Systematic Botany to http://www.editorialmanager.com/sysbot/.
If this will be your first submission of a manuscript to the Systematic Botany Editorial Manager website, you must first register by clicking "register now" and following the instructions.

Submit manuscripts for Systematic Botany Monographs directly to the Editor-in-Chief of Systematic Botany Monographs.

Call for Papers

Special Issue of Systematic Botany: Spatial Phylogenetics

Spatial phylogenetics is an emerging discipline that combines spatial data with encompassing phylogenies, and employs various hypothesis tests to assess patterns of biodiversity on the landscape, both for academic studies in ecology, evolution, and biogeography as well as for applied purposes such as conservation (for a brief review, see Mishler, 2023, Spatial Phylogenetics, Journal of Biogeography, https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.14618). A special issue of Systematic Botany will be published in 2024 on this topic, handled by guest editors Brent Mishler and Israel Borokini. We encourage submission of papers dealing with methodology, new empirical analyses from anywhere in the world, or both. Papers can be on any group of organisms, plants, animals, fungi, or microbes.

To be considered for this issue, submitted papers should relate phylogenies to spatial data and incorporate appropriate hypothesis tests to match its stated goals. Within these boundaries, we are open to innovative ideas for sourcing/building the phylogenies, sourcing/cleaning spatial data for terminal taxa, and developing statistical tests for hypotheses.

The deadline for submission of papers is May 1, 2024. Please follow the author guidelines (link below) —all papers will be evaluated using the normal Systematic Botany peer review process.

Special Issue of Systematic Botany: The Brazilian Flora in Focus

The Neotropical region is recognized as the most species-rich area in the world and encompasses six of the world's 34 biodiversity hotspots. Brazil is a megadiverse country in South America; an overview of the Brazilian Flora (BF 2020) provided a high-quality taxonomic and spatial update for 92% of all known Brazilian land plants, 6% of known algal species, and 5.5% of known fungi. This huge collaborative project (including 980 taxonomists) found 46.975 native species (excluding naturalized and cultivated species), of which 43% are endemic. The project also highlighted that data derived from preserved specimens and collections in the field are more and more desired and considered crucial to the quality of science based on those records.

Despite these tremendous recent advances, there is still much to be learned and documented and we are inviting researchers to contribute to a special issue of Systematic Botany to provide new information and complements to Brazilian Flora 2020. Papers should be focused on plants, involving the description of new taxa in a broader context of the groups involved, taxonomic reviews, biological collections (big data) and their potential in fostering the conservation of biodiversity or developing solutions for climate change, and/or including  the role of morphology (micro- and macro-) in systematics, morphometric analyses, molecular phylogenetics, biogeography, diversity and conservation of particular taxonomic groups (orders, families or genera) or of a particular domain (Amazonia, Atlantic Forest, Cerrado, Caatinga, Pantanal or Pampa).

This issue will be published in mid-2025, handled by guest editors Nádia Roque, Leonardo M. Versieux, and Ricardo Pacífico, and coordinated by Editor-in-Chief Daniel Potter. We encourage researchers to submit papers with a broad concept of the topic covered and results that will lead to new questions to be uncovered in the future. The deadline for submission of papers ranges from July to November 2024. Please follow the general author  guidelines, as all papers will be evaluated using the normal Systematic Botany peer review process. However, if you would like a manuscript to be considered for publication in this special issue, please include a statement to that effect in the cover letter accompanying the submission.


Changes in Systematic Botany’s Publication Policies

Following recent discussions with the ASPT Council, two significant aspects of the publication of Systematic Botany will be changed beginning in 2024 (volume 49).

First, subscriptions to printed versions of the journal will no longer be available for an extra charge per volume. Instead, members will have the option to purchase hard copies of individual issues from the ASPT business office on a “print-on-demand” basis. The cost, including shipping, will vary depending on the size of the issue, but we estimate that it will be about $20 per issue. We also note that our printer has informed us that, beginning in 2024, all hard copies will be generated using ink jet rather than laser printers, which may result in slightly reduced quality of some figures.

Second, supplemental tables and figures will no longer be submitted to Dryad (as been the case for volumes 41-48) or published on the ASPT website (as was the case for volumes 33-40) but will instead be included at the end of each paper when it is published on-line. Authors should continue to submit datasets such as multiple sequence alignments and morphological character matrices to Dryad, however. If possible, authors should use their institutional subscriptions for Dryad submissions; otherwise, please cite the Systematic Botany manuscript number and ASPT will cover the cost of the submission. Be sure to include all data from each publication in one submission, as the Dryad charges are based on the number of submissions.


Editorial Staff

Daniel Potter, Editor-in-Chief (2021-2024), email: dpotter@ucdavis.edu
Tim Evans, Managing Editor (2021-2024), email: evanstim@gvsu.edu
Benjamin Van Ee, Managing Editor (2015-2024), e-mail: bvanee@uwalumni.com
Quentin Cronk, Book Review Editor, email: quentin.cronk@ubc.ca
Fred R. Barrie, Nomenclature Editor, email: fbarrie@fieldmuseum.org
Kanchi Gandhi, Nomenclature Editor, email: gandhi@oeb.harvard.edu
Sarina Lambert, Copy Editor, email: systematic.botany.ame@gmail.com
Eric Tepe (ex officio), Systematic Botany Monographs Editor-in-Chief

Associate Editors
Charles Bell (2021-2024)
Jim Cohen (2020-2023)
Jocelyn Hall (2019-2026)
Shawn Krosnick (2021-2024)
Jacob Landis (2021-2024)
Ashley Morris (2021-2023)
Annah Moteetee (2020-2023)
Ricardo Pacifico (2021-2024)
Luciano Queiroz (2018-2025)
Nadia Roque (2021-2024)
María José Sanín (2023-2026)
Daniel Spalink (2021-2024)
Adriano Stinca (2018-2025)
Alejandra Vasco (2020-2023)
Leonardo Versieux (2021-2024)
Qiang Wang (2021-2024)
Marty Wojciechowski (2020-2023)