Draft:Michael B Thomas

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Michael B. Thomas
Born	Morris County, New Jersey, U.S.
Education	University of Florida; Virginia Tech
Known for	Flora of the tropical Pacific Islands, Herbarium management; specimen digitization; ethnobotany; conservation
Scientific career
Fields	Ethnobiology, Botany, Ethnobotany, Biodiversity informatics, Conservation
Workplaces	University of Florida; University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Michael B. Thomas is an American botanist, ethnobotanist, biodiversity informatics specialist, and natural-history collections curator. His work has focused on ethnobotany, herbarium development, biodiversity databases, plant conservation, and the documentation of Indigenous and Local Knowledge. He has worked with the digitization of botanical collections across the Pacific Islands, Bhutan, and Rwanda.

Early life and influences

Thomas grew up in the rural Amish and Pennsylvania Dutch country of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania . Being raised there immersed him in the distinctive cultural landscape of the Amish and Mennonite communities, whose values of simplicity, community, stewardship, and close ties to the land provided an early cross-cultural influence on his understanding of the relationships between people, place, and the natural environment. As a youth, Thomas spent much of his time outdoors - hiking, fishing, and hunting. He spent every summer vacation exploring Chincoteague and Assateague Island, part of the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge.

Education

He is a graduate of Conestoga Valley High School, where he had an early interest in biology and agriculture. Thomas later studied at Delaware State University , Virginia Tech and the University of Florida, where he completed a Ph.D. in 2001 . His doctoral research was based on two years of fieldwork in Bahia, Brazil, where he lived among the Indigenous Pataxó community and worked collaboratively with four traditional healers to document their ethnopharmacopoeia and associated traditional knowledge. The research also examined the use of database technologies to organize, manage and publish ethnobotanical information.

Following graduation with his BSc. degree in Forest Management from Virginia Tech, Thomas volunteered to serve as a United States Peace Corps Volunteer in the Kingdom of Tonga. This early international experience contributed to a career that has included both research and agricultural development work in more than 60 countries, a visiting scientist appointment through The World Academy of Sciences at the University of Rwanda and two US Fulbright Program assignments focused on biodiversity-informatics research in Bhutan and Rwanda.

Peace Corps service in Tonga

Thomas served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Kingdom of Tonga from 1989 to 1993. He worked with Tonga's Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry as a horticulturalist. His work as a representative of the Tongan government enabled him to travel extensively throughout the South Pacific, where he experienced the cultures, flora, and natural environments of Fiji, Samoa, Cook Islands, New Zealand, Hawaiʻi and many islands of Tonga.

During his time in Tonga, he had occasions to join several expeditions including the 1990 East-West Center biological survey that provided the foundation for establishing the 'Eua National Park led by botanists Arthur Whistler, Donald R. Drake, and Timothy J. Motley. He sailed with the Brehm Expedition to the Niuas and Tafahi led by Dr. Dieter Rinke, ornithologist of the German-based Brehm Fund for International Bird Conservation as well a 1991 government expedition to the isolated volcanic islands of Kao (island) and Tofua.

A 1992 article in the Tonga Chronicle identified Thomas as an adviser on tropical fruit development and described his work with the Diversified Fruit Tree Project Tonga Chronicle. The project produced 5,000 fruit tree seedlings annually introduced more than 25 new species and varieties of tropical and subtropical fruit for evaluation in Tonga, including avocado, guava, jackfruit, longan, lychee, macadamia, mango, papaya, sapodilla, and white sapote.

The same year, Lancaster's Sunday News published a feature about Thomas's Peace Corps work and his experiences living and working in Tonga. He was interviewed about his Peace Corps service in Tonga for Bring the World Home, a 30-minute television series produced by the Returned Peace Corps Volunteers of Hawaiʻi. The series featured returned volunteers describing their international service experiences.

Career

Thomas's teaching and research have centered on the documentation, study, and conservation of biocultural diversity through field research, collections-based scholarship, and scientific capacity building. The interdisciplinary relationships among plants, biodiversity, people, and conservation are central to his work. Some of his efforts in Rwanda have led to the species recovery of a formerly "Extinct in the Wild" waterlily - Nymphaea thermarum.

As a botanist, his research has encompassed plant diversity, taxonomy, useful plants, traditional knowledge, and the relationships between biological and cultural diversity. A major focus has been the development and support of natural history collections, particularly herbaria and associated biodiversity infrastructure. This research has included work in the Pacific Islands and collaborations with the national herbaria of Bhutan and Rwanda, where collections and scientific resources have historically been comparatively underrepresented. His work has made biological information more accessible to researchers, students, conservation practitioners, and local institutions. He joined the staff of the University of Hawaii (Botany) in 2001 and served as Collection Manager of the University of Hawaii herbarium and facilitated the digitization of the collection and 8 other small herbaria in the Pacific Islands.

Plant conservation has been closely integrated with this taxonomic and collections-based work. Contributing efforts to document and conserve rare and threatened species, including more than a dozen IUCN Red List assessments, seed collecting, propagation, recovery, and reintroduction activities for plants at risk of extinction.

Selected Publications

• Thomas M.B., E. Bizuru, C. Nsengumuremyi, G. Munyaneza. (2026) Diospyros abyssinica (Hiern) F.White (Ebenaceae), a new distributional record for Rwanda. Biodiversity Data Journal 14: e189867. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.14.e189867

• Pankararu, C.J., Teixidor-Toneu, I., Odonne, G. et al. A global biodiversity use data infrastructure acknowledging indigenous and local knowledge. npj biodivers 5, 7 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44185-026-00121-0

• Thomas, M.B., P. Sibomana, and B. Dumbo. 2023.Celebrating an "Extinct in the Wild" Waterlily Rescue in Rwanda. Water Garden Journal. International Waterlily and Water Gadrdening Society. Vol 39, No 1.

• Fadiman, M., M.B. Thomas, O.E. Morei, A.H. Kitalong and S. Hanser. 2018. Globalization and Tradition in Palau: Case Study of the Syncretic Omengat (First Child Birth) and Ngasech Ceremonies. Florida Geographer 50(2018).

• Klobe, T. and M.B. Thomas. 2014. [ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262070180_Biocultural_collections_exhibition_concept_planning_and_design Biocultural collections: exhibition concept, planning and design.] In book: Curating Biocultural Collections: A Handbook. Publisher: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

• M.B. Thomas and Summer Austin (eds). 2010. Common Medicinal Plants of Portland, Jamaica. CIEER, FL. ISBN: 9780972959407

• McClatchey, W. and M.B. Thomas. 2008. Why Launch a New Journal? Ethnobotany Research and Applications, University of Hawaii, Honolulu.

• Stepp, J. R., and M. Thomas. 2005. Managing ethnopharmacological data: Herbaria, relational data bases, literature. In Ethnopharmacology: Encyclopedia of life support systems, ed. N. Etkin and E. Elisabetsky, Oxford, UK: UNESCO, EOLSS.

• Thomas, Michael B. (2001). An Analysis of the Pataxó Pharmacopoeia of Bahia, Brazil, Using an Object Oriented Database Model. University of Florida.

External links

• ORCID profile
• Bionomia profile
• Linkedin

Category:American botanists Category:American ethnobotanists Category:University of Florida alumni Category:American conservationists Category:Living people