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 was raised in the rural Pennsylvania Dutch country of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He was immersed in the distinctive cultural landscape of both the Mennonite and Amish communities. Their values of simplicity, stewardship, community and relationship to the land provided an early cross-cultural experience which influenced his understanding of the relationships between people, place, and our natural world.

Education

He graduated from Conestoga Valley High School, where he expressed interest in the natural sciences. He attended Delaware State University , Virginia Tech, and the University of Florida, where he graduated with a PhD in 2001. He pursued doctoral research in Bahia, Brazil, collaborating with traditional healers of the Indigenous Pataxó community to document their ethnopharmacopeia and associated Indigenous knowledge. This research also explored the use of the internet and database technologies to organize, manage and publish medicinal plant data. His master's research focused on the identification of N, K, MG, MN, ZN and FE deficiency symptoms of carambola, lychee, and papaya grown in sand culture.

Following graduation form Virginia Tech (BSc. Forestry), Thomas volunteered to serve in the US Peace Corps in a remote Pacific Island nation - the Kingdom of Tonga. This early international experience helped to foster his interests in international agricultural development work leading him to serve as an agricultural consultant on USAID funded projects.

Peace Corps service

Thomas served as a US Peace Corps volunteer from 1989-1993. He worked for Tonga's Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry at the Vaini research station as a tropical fruit crop horticulturalist. As an advisor to the government, he traveled widely throughout the Pacific islands of Samoa, Fiji, Cook Islands, New Zealand, Hawai'i and many of the remote islands of Tonga.

An article in the Tongan Chronicle described his work with diversifying the tropical fruit crops available in Tonga through a plant introduction and nursery program. The project was responsible for the production and distribution of thousands of grafted fruit trees annually and introduced more than 25 new varieties of tree crops including new cultivars of avocado, guava, jackfruit, longan, lychee, macadamia, mango, papaya, sapodilla, and white sapote.

That same year, the Lancaster Sunday News featured an article about Thomas's Peace Corps unique experience. In 2009, was also interviewed for the Bring the World Home series, an award winning television series, produced by the Returned Peace Corps volunteers of Hawai`i. Thomas also served as Executive Producer and writer for a 30 minute independent documentary film - Sending Aloha Abroad: Hawaii's Peace Corps Experience documenting the history of more than 7,500 trainees who lived and trained in Hawaii between 1962 and 1972 before serving overseas. The film premiered at the Hawaii International Film Festival in 2013.

While serving in Tonga, he had the opportunity to join several scientific expeditions which cultivated his expanding interests in field biology and conservation. In 1990, he joined the East-West Center biological survey, that provided the foundation for establishing the 'Eua National Park, led by Arthur Whistler, Donald R. Drake, and Timothy J. Motley. Additionally, he served as a crewmember - sailing on the Danish built Breum for the Brehm Fund South Seas Expedition led by Dieter R. Rinke, ornithologist of the German-based Brehm Fund for International Bird Conservation. This project focused on protected the endangered Tongan Megapode (Malau) by successfully translocating its eggs and chicks to the volcanic island of Fonualei to create a backup population.

Career

Thomas's teaching and research interests have centered on the study, documentation and conservation of biocultural diversity through field research, collections-based scholarship, and capacity building. The interdisciplinary relationship between people, plants and conservation are central to his work. Conservation efforts in Rwanda have led to the rediscovery of a lost Rwandan water lily - Nymphaea thermarum, formerly accessed as "Extinct in the wild" by the IUCN .

He joined the staff at the University of Hawaii in 2001 and served as the Collection Manager of the university's herbarium, in which he led a institutional naming project to honor the famed explorer Joseph F. Rock. He collaborated on several public biodiversity-based exhibits including The Curator's Choice: Selections from the UH Museum Consortium as well as being integral to the development of the UH Museum Consortium. Formed in 2008, the UHMC was created to promote the significance of the collections, advocate for their needs, and consolidate resources as well as the development of audio tours in local botanical gardens.

As a botanist, Thomas's research encompasses plant diversity, taxonomy, ethnobotany, indigenous and local knowledge, and the relationships between biological and cultural diversity. A primary area of interest has been the development and management of natural history specimen collections, particularly working with many international herbaria and specimen digitization. His research has included the development of herbaria within the Pacific Islands including Hawai`i, Fiji, Guam, Palau, Samoa, and Niue as well as collaborations with national herbaria of Bhutan and Rwanda. He has also served as a visiting expert appointed by UNESCO's The World Academy of Sciences in collaboration with the University of Rwanda and was appointed to two US Fulbright Specialist assignments consulting on biodiversity informatics and data portal developed in Bhutan and Rwanda.

Plant conservation has been closely integrated into his research. He led several projects alongside Art Whistler to document the rare plants of Samoa, Tonga and Niue through the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF). This work subsequently led to the reassessed more than 10 endangered or threatened trees native Tonga for the IUCN Red list.

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, M.B. 2001. An Analysis of the Pataxó Pharmacopoeia of Bahia, Brazil, Using an Object Oriented Database Model. University of Florida.
• Thomas, M.B. 2000. Index of Journal Articles Presented in the Journal of Ethnobiology from 1981-1999. Volume 20, Number 1 • Spring/Summer.

External links

• ORCID profile
• Bionomia profile
• Linkedin

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