398 
THE CORAL TRIANGLE: HEARST BIODIVERSITY EXPEDITION 
nent of conducting any field work. These data need to be gathered in a eonsistent manner at the 
time of speeimen aequisition. Sinee eolleeting events ean be impaired by weather sueh as rain, the 
person doing inventory voueher sampling needs to have a reliable proeedure that ean be achieved 
even when field eonditions are less than ideal. In the ease of the Philippines, where rain is abun¬ 
dant, a poeket-sized notebook made of paper that does not easily disintegrate when wet is highly 
reeommended. 
How TO COLLECT BRYOPHYTES 
Bryophyte eolleeting is gen¬ 
erally quite simple. The ideal eol- 
leetion method for bryophytes is 
to place a sample direetly into a 
small folded paper packet (Fig. 
2). Exeept for liverworts fused to 
the surfaee of leaves, bryophytes 
should not be plaeed in a plant 
press. The reason is many speeies 
have diagnostie features seen 
when the plants are dry and these 
eharaeteristies could be lost 
when pressed flat. In addition, 
there is no need to treat 
bryophytes with aleohol beeause 
the leaves will remain intaet and 
mildew is unlikely to form if 
speeimens are dried soon after 
eolleetion. Bryophyte speeimens 
should not be plaeed in plastie 
bags. If bryophytes are colleeted 
in plastie bags they will need to 
be transferred into some type of 
paper eontainer as soon as possi¬ 
ble so the plants ean air dry. This 
transfer is time-eonsuming and 
therefore this teehnique of 
bryophyte eolleeting should be 
avoided. There is a long history 
of bryologists eolleeting speei¬ 
mens in small brown paper bags, 
however, we have eoneluded that 
the ideal collection method for 
bryophytes is to plaee the sample 
direetly into a small folded paper 
paeket. The problem with col- 
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Figure l.The field notebook is a critical piece of equipment. It contains all 
of the locality data for each collection site recorded at the time of collection 
and lists the corresponding collection numbers obtained from that location. 
lecting in bags, whether it is plas¬ 
tie or paper, is that speeimens have to be separated later and transferred into a paeket. All of this 
requires more time and eost and inereases the potential for ereating errors of data transfer from the 
