Conservation Hedges:

In May 2014, the first planting of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) conservation hedge took place, when the Reverend Anne Brennan planted a tree which had originated as a cutting from the ancient and historic European yew, Taxus baccata, in the churchyard of her church at Fortingall, Perthshire. This is one of almost 2,000 plants that will eventually form a conservation hedge of significant scientific and conservation value. The International Conifer Conservation Programme (ICCP), based at RBGE, has actively sought other opportunities to establish conservation hedges via its network of ‘safe sites’, using a range of different conifer species. This initiative is being driven by the potential for relatively large numbers of genotypes from a single threatened species to be stored in a linear space. It is well established that seed banks have a great capacity to store large amounts of genetic diversity, so we should simply consider conservation hedges in a similar manner. These super-hedges cram relatively large amounts of genetic material into a small space, capturing a great range of wild traits and potentially contributing to the restoration of wild populations. To date, conservation hedges have been planted at five separate locations at RBGE’s Edinburgh Garden as well as at four ICCP external ‘safe sites’. Although this article focuses on the establishment of conservation hedges using conifers, we have also highlighted some conservation hedges that comprise non-coniferous species

Aging varies greatly within a single genus:A demographic study of Rhododendron spp. in botanic gardens

Premise: There is mounting evidence that age matters in plant demography, but also indications that relationships between age and demographic rates may vary significantly among species. Age-based plant demographic data, however, are time-consuming to collect and still lacking for most species, and little is known about general patterns across species or what may drive differences. Methods: We used individual birth and death records for 12 Rhododendron species from botanic gardens and conducted Bayesian survival trajectory analyses to assess how mortality changed with age. We calculated the demographic measures of aging rate, life-span equality, and life expectancy for each species, and assessed their relationships with the climatic conditions at species’ sites of ancestral origin and with taxonomic group (subgenus). Results: We found substantial among-species variation in survival trajectories, with mortality increasing, decreasing, or remaining constant with advancing age. Moreover, we found no relationships between demographic measures and ancestral climatic conditions but there were statistically significant differences among taxonomic groups in the rate of change in mortality with age (aging rate). Conclusions: We conclude that demographic consequences of aging can differ qualitatively, even among species in the same genus. In addition, taxonomic trends in aging rates indicate they may be genetically determined, though evolutionary drivers are still unclear. Furthermore, we suggest there is untapped potential in using botanic garden records in future studies on plant life history.</p

Specimen Data Refinery

Biodiversity_Next: Digitisation Next SessionDate: 23 October 2019Location: Leiden, NetherlandsA landscape analysis on machine learning, computer vision and automated approaches to create natural history specimen metadata.</div

Conservation Hedges:

In May 2014, the first planting of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) conservation hedge took place, when the Reverend Anne Brennan planted a tree which had originated as a cutting from the ancient and historic European yew, Taxus baccata, in the churchyard of her church at Fortingall, Perthshire. This is one of almost 2,000 plants that will eventually form a conservation hedge of significant scientific and conservation value. The International Conifer Conservation Programme (ICCP), based at RBGE, has actively sought other opportunities to establish conservation hedges via its network of ‘safe sites’, using a range of different conifer species. This initiative is being driven by the potential for relatively large numbers of genotypes from a single threatened species to be stored in a linear space. It is well established that seed banks have a great capacity to store large amounts of genetic diversity, so we should simply consider conservation hedges in a similar manner. These super-hedges cram relatively large amounts of genetic material into a small space, capturing a great range of wild traits and potentially contributing to the restoration of wild populations. To date, conservation hedges have been planted at five separate locations at RBGE’s Edinburgh Garden as well as at four ICCP external ‘safe sites’. Although this article focuses on the establishment of conservation hedges using conifers, we have also highlighted some conservation hedges that comprise non-coniferous species.</jats:p

Crowdsourcing Europe: Improving access, usability and enriching data on 385 million natural history specimens

<p><strong>Presentation given by Laurence Livermore at the The NBN Crowdsourcing Data Capture Summit. 25 September 2015. Manchester Museum.</strong></p> <p>Abstract: For natural history museums crowdsourcing label transcription for their specimens makes it viable to capture large amounts of data for scientific research. We introduce the crowdsourcing strategy for SYNTHESYS3, a consortium with 18 partners that together hold over 385 million specimens.</p> <p>The major specimen label transcription platforms are compared, case studies of previous crowdsourcing projects are given, accuracy of crowdsourcing is discussed along with participant motivation, support & rewards, and key areas for organisational investment.</p> <p>The crowdsourcing platform requirements for the SYNTHESYS Consortium are summarised along with a roadmap and an announcement of the partnership with the Smithsonian Institution's Transcription Centre.</p

T8.1 - Landscape Analysis

The aim of the landscape analysis is to: create an overview of tools and services that can enhance natural history specimen data; evaluate relevant platform based workflow approaches; identify and compile training datasets and reference libraries for image classification, resolution services and other tools; summarise relevant previous work from other projects and researchers; assess the potential to use pan-European Collaborative Data Infrastructure such as EUDAT, EGI and the European Open Science Cloud for SDR development

T8.1 - Landscape Analysis

The aim of the landscape analysis is to: create an overview of tools and services that can enhance natural history specimen data; evaluate relevant platform based workflow approaches; identify and compile training datasets and reference libraries for image classification, resolution services and other tools; summarise relevant previous work from other projects and researchers; assess the potential to use pan-European Collaborative Data Infrastructure such as EUDAT, EGI and the European Open Science Cloud for SDR development

WP8 - JRA3: Specimen Data Refinery

The aim of the Specimen Data Refinery is to develop a platform that integrates artificial intelligence and human-in-the-loop approaches to extract, enhance and annotate data from digital images and records of natural history specimens at scale

WP8 - JRA3: Specimen Data Refinery

The aim of the Specimen Data Refinery is to develop a platform that integrates artificial intelligence and human-in-the-loop approaches to extract, enhance and annotate data from digital images and records of natural history specimens at scale