Alan Franck
Collections Manager | University of Florida
Gainesville, FL, UNITED STATES
Alan Franck manages the Herbarium at the Florida Museum, which has around 500,000 specimens of plants, lichens and algae from worldwide.
Biography
Alan Franck studies plant and fungal diversity, particularly in the southeastern United States and Caribbean Islands, with a focus on Florida. His research incorporates history, field work, phylogenetics, taxonomy, nomenclature, ecology and medicine.
Areas of Expertise (7)
Herbarium
Medical Botany
Nomenclature
Plants
Plant Diversity
Plant Identification
Taxonomy
Media Appearances (3)
What’s growing on: Plants and their power
WCJB 20 online
2022-06-30
If you’re like me and are a nerd for nature, with a particular fondness for fungi, you may be curious about what other kinds of species of plants and vegetation is growing in our region. What I’ve come to learn is, that we have plants, bushes, mushrooms, moss, flowers and so much more that grows in and out of the water, in north-central Florida.
Alan Franck joins Florida Museum as UF Herbarium collections manager
Florida Museum online
2021-10-12
The University of Florida Herbarium welcomed Alan Franck as its new collections manager earlier this month. As part of his duties, Franck will help oversee the herbarium’s nearly 500,000 plants, the largest collection of botanical specimens in Florida.
Exotic beauties: Sennas in Florida
Citrus County Chronicle online
2020-11-09
In Florida, examination of herbarium specimens from the University of Florida, University of South Florida and Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden show Senna bicapsularis is a rare, nonnative, exotic South American plant.
Articles (3)
Investigations in the boletes (Boletaceae) of southeastern USA: four novel species and three novel combinations
MycosphereArian Farid, et. al
2021-10-01
The Boletaceae is the largest family of fleshy fungi in the Boletales. Despite the extensive history of work in the Boletaceae in North America, novel species and genera are continually being described. Multigene molecular phylogenetic analyses of five loci were combined with thorough morphological studies to investigate the taxonomy of several boletes from the southeastern USA.
Cactaceae at Caryophyllales.org – a dynamic online species-level taxonomic backbone for the family
WilldenowiaNadja Korotkova, et. al
2021-08-31
This data paper presents a largely phylogeny-based online taxonomic backbone for the Cactaceae compiled from literature and online sources using the tools of the EDIT Platform for Cybertaxonomy. The data will form a contribution of the Caryophyllales Network for the World Flora Online and serve as the base for further integration of research results from the systematic research community. The final aim is to treat all effectively published scientific names in the family.
Many species of the Carnivora consume grass and other fibrous plant tissues
Belgian Journal of ZoologyAlan R. Franck and Arian Farid
2020-07-11
Within the Carnivora order, the consumption of fibrous plant tissues (FPT), such as leaves and stems, is only known to serve the nutritional needs of eight species in the Ailuridae and Ursidae. Apart from the Ailuridae and Ursidae, the extent of FPT ingestion in the Carnivora is poorly understood. A literature search was conducted to compile studies containing evidence of FPT consumption in the Carnivora, primarily based on analyses of scats or gastrointestinal tracts.
