Collections-Based Science in the Twenty-First Century: A Tribute to the Botanical Giant Vicki Funk

Abstract

This special issue honors Dr. Vicki Ann Funk (November 26, 1947–October 22, 2019), who passed away after a battle with an aggressive cancer. She was a botanist at the Smithsonian Institution during her career from 1981 to 2019 after a postdoctoral year at the New York Botanical Garden. Vicki was an inspirational evolutionary biologist and a champion for collections-based systematics and biogeography. She had broad influence on the way we perform our collections-based systematics today, especially with the development of phylogenetic systematics in botany in the early 1980s and throughout her career. Vicki was one of the most active, enthusiastic, and passionate professional botanists of our time. She combined these qualities with a quick mind and glowing wit, always with new ideas or opinions that she was eager to share with anyone who would listen and be willing to enter an engaging dialogue. During her distinguished career, Vicki achieved preeminence in the fields of phylogenetic methods, systematics, biogeography, and biodiversity conservation. She devoted a significant part of her career to mentoring the next generation of botanists and working with groups to tackle larger areas of research, especially Compositae systematics, phylogenetics, and biogeography.