Dr. Joe McAuliffe, Director of Research, has been with the Desert Botanical Garden since 1990 as a Research Ecologist.  His current research focuses on plant-soil relationships in desert regions of the American Southwest.  On-going projects include the study of long-lived creosotebush clones in the Mojave Desert of California, landscape and vegetation changes in the Painted Desert region on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, and the ecology and conservation of desert grasslands in southern Arizona.  In 1995, Dr. McAuliffe received the W.S. Cooper Award from the Ecological Society of America for his research contributions in plant ecology. jmcauliffe@dbg.org

Wendy Hodgson is the Director of the Herbarium and Sr. Research Botanist, with research staff and volunteers, is involved in floristic surveys and documentation of plants in the Southwest and northern Mexico. Areas include the 800-mile Arizona Trail, Grand Canyon National Park and Agua Fria National Monument, Arizona, Baja, California and northern Sonora, Mexico. She is continuing systematic and ethnobotanical studies of the genera Agave and Yucca, including pre-Columbian agave cultivation. Her book, Food Plants of the Sonoran Desert (2001, University of Arizona Press) won the 2002 Klingler Book Award, presented by the Society of Economic Botany. whodgson@dbg.org

Kathy Rice is the Curator of the Rare & Endangered Plants and studies pollination and germination requirements of certain rare species of the Southwest, may of which are part of the Center for Plant Conservation program. Studies include viability and germination tests for two of 13 rare west Texas species, Bonamia ovalifolia and Cryptantha crassipes, species whose seeds are being banked for future use. Other germination tests on Echinocereus chisoensis seed have been conducted, as well as the effect of frozen storage on cacti seeds. In addition germination of seeds from plants within the Garden collection continue, the resulting plants used to augment the living collection.Kathy is president of the Central Arizona Chapter of the Arizona Native Plant Society, and serves on the advisory board of the Desert Legume Program, a Tucson-based seedbank. krice@dbg.org

Raul Puente-Martinez is the Curator of Living Collections and is responsible for maintaining the database of the Living Collection at the Desert Botanical Garden. His main research interest has been the taxonomic study of the genus Opuntia (prickly-pears) in Mexico, particularly in the state of San Luis Potosi. He is currently working on a taxonomic revision of the genus Nopalea, a group of tropical prickly-pears which are pollinated by hummingbirds. His studies are based on extensive fieldwork as well as morphological characters, chromosome numbers and pollen morphology. He has been a collaborator for the Vascular Plants of Arizona project and has written various family treatments as well as done illustrations for the same project. rpuente@dbg.org

Dr. Charles A. Butterworth joined the Desert Botanical Garden as a Research Scientist in September 2004 in a collaborative joint appointment with Arizona State University, School of Life Sciences. His research interests focus on the use of DNA to investigate evolutionary relationships among different species of cacti. Dr. Butterworth earned his Ph.D. in Botany from Iowa State University and his B.S. in Botany from Reading University, Reading UK.  He also completed undergraduate studies in environmental science and ecology at the University of Stirling, Stirling Scotland, and earned a diploma in Horticulture from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew UK. cbutterworth@dbg.org

Dr. Andrew Salywon is Assistant Herbarium Curator, and received his Ph.D. from Arizona State University in Plant Biology and conducted postdoctoral research on developing Lesquerella as a new industrial oilseed crop at the United States Department of Agriculture, Arid-Land Agricultural Research Center. His research interests are in conservation, endemic and rare and endangered plants in Arizona and the Sonoran Desert, floristics, new crop development, and systematics using both traditional and molecular data. On-going projects include the Flora of Agua Fria National Monument, evolution and inheritance of hydroxy fatty acids in Lesquerella (Brassicaceae – the mustard family), systematics of native and cultivated Agave (Agaveaceae) in Arizona, Cylindropuntia (Cactaceae – the cactus family) and Mosiera (Myrtaceae - the myrtle family). asalywon@dbg.org