Weston Testo, Ph.D.
Field Museum of Natural History
Weston Testo, Ph.D.
Weston developed a love for nature early in life, spending his childhood fishing and exploring the forests and wetlands near his family’s small farm in rural upstate New York. As an undergraduate student at Colgate University, Weston spent his summers in Costa Rica, working as a research assistant on various projects and becoming fascinated with tropical plants. Those experiences led him to pursue a Ph.D. in plant biology at the University of Vermont. Weston became a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Florida and the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. As Assistant Curator of Pteridophytes at the Field Museum, he pursues various research activities, mostly focusing on plant diversity and conservation in the Caribbean and South America.
Project Summary
Documenting Diversity Amidst a Mass Extinction: Generating a Conservation Framework for the Flora of Hispaniola
Human activities threaten biodiversity around the globe, but tropical islands, which are small and home to many rare species, are especially imperiled. Hispaniola, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, is so threatened by deforestation that many plants and animals living there are likely on the verge of extinction. Despite this, little is known about many of the island’s species, including their distributions and conservation status. This work aims to protect Hispaniola’s rarest plant species by assessing population declines over the last century, establishing a plant conservation network, identifying conservation priority areas, and conservation capacity-building activities both in Hispaniola and the Chicago region.
