Computer Program Helps Locate Plant Species

This BBCNews article reports that botanists now have a software program, Floramap, to help them locate the "holy grail of peanut evolution." The program seeks to locate rare plants by finding areas with climate profiles similar to known sites. Unfortunately, the area identified by the program in this case is in a region of Bolivia whose indigenous population is resistant to further intrusion due to the ongoing construction of a natural gas pipeline in the area. The software has helped the researchers gain support from the agricultural community, but environmental politics may prevent them from testing the veracity of the software's prediction.