William R. Buck

Profile

William Buck’s main research interests are associated with understanding the relationships of different groups of mosses, especially pleurocarps (with creeping, branched stems and laterally placed spore capsules). To see living mosses in the field, William has traveled throughout much of North and South America, as well as to parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Melanesia. He has done floristic surveys in the West Indies and central French Guiana and is currently working on a bryophyte flora of Prov. Antartica Chilena, in southernmost Chile, with John Engel of the Field Museum (Chicago) who is working on the liverworts. These activities have given William wide experience with morphological variation in mosses. More recently he has undertaken molecular studies, in association with Jon Shaw of Duke University, in an attempt to use DNA sequence data to better understand pleurocarp relationships.
William is also heavily involved in scientific editing, acting as the scientific liason to the NYBG Press and am the Editor of the Memoirs of the New York Botanical Garden. He is an editor for Tropical Bryology and Nova Hedwigia. William took over the editorship of The Bryologist in March 2005.

Although he does not do much formal, classroom teaching, William is active in a number of educational and conservation programs. He is the primary organizer for the Tuckerman Lichen Workshops which are a forum for amateur lichenologists to interact with professionals and advance their study of lichens. These have been meeting for about 12 years. A couple of years ago he agreed to begin a similar series on mosses. The second Howard Crum workshop was held in May 2005 in northern Vermont. William is active at the local level and is a town-appointed member of the Town of Kent (Putnam County, NY) Conservation Advisory Committee. He is also a trustee of the Putnam County Land Trust.