Raquel Maria Batista Souza-Souza,^1,* Benoît Loeuille,^2,** Claudia Barbieri Ferreira Mendonça,^1,*** Roberto Lourenço Esteves,^3,**** Vania Gonçalves-Esteves<sup>1,4,*****,******

1</sup>aUniversidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Museu Nacional, Departamento de Botânica, Laboratório de Pa
²bUniversidade de São Paulo, Instituto de Biociências, Departamento de Botânica, São Paulo, Brazil
³cUniversidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
⁴dCNPq productivity scholarship

^* Raquel Maria Batista Souza De Souza graduated with a BSc in Biological Sciences from Castelo Branco University, Brazil and has a MSc in Botany from Universidade Estadualdo Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). She is studying for a PhD in Botany at the Museu National at UFRJ. Raquel specialises on the palynology and taxonomy of the Asteraceae.
^** Benoit Loeuille has a BSc in Pharmaceutical and Biological Sciences from the Université Lille 2 in France, awarded in 2004. He also holds an MSc in Biodiversity and Evolution from the Université Paris VI (2004), and a PhD from the Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil (2011). Benoit focuses on the systematics and phylogeny of the Vernonieae (Asteraceae).
^*** Claudia Barbieri Ferreira Mendonça is a Professor in the Department of Botany of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Museu National, Brazil. She received BSc, MSc and PhD degrees, all in Botany, from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Museu Nacional, Brazil between 1999 and 2006. Claudia's research is on the palynology of the modern floras of several Brazilian ecosystems.
^**** Roberto Lourenço Esteves is a Professor in the Department of Plant Biology of the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), Brazil. He received BSc in Botany from the Universidade do Estado da Guanabara in 1976. Roberto also holds an MSc in Botany from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Museu National (1993), and a PhD on the systematics of the Eupatorieae, Asteraceae from the Universidade de Campinas, São Paulo (2001). His research is currently focused on the systematics and palynology of Brazilian species of the Asteraceae.
^*****Corresponding author. Email: esteves.vr@gmail.com
^******Vania Gonçalves Lourenço Esteves is a research fellow at the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Botany of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Museu National, Brazil. She received a BSc in Botany from the Universidade do Estado da Guanabara in 1974. Vania also has an MSc from the latter institution (1981), and a PhD from the Universidade de São Paulo (1994). Her research is on the palynology of the modern floras of several Brazilian ecosystems.