Widespread mistaken identity in tropical plant collections

Specimens of plants and animals preserved in museums are the primary source of verifiable data on the geographical and temporal distribution of organisms. Museum datasets are increasingly being uploaded to aggregated regional and global databases (e.g. the Global Biodiversity Information Facility; GBIF) for use in a wide range of analyses. Thus, digitisation of natural history collections is providing unprecedented information to facilitate the study of the natural world on a global scale. The digitisation of this information utilises information provided on specimen labels, and assumes they are correctly identified. Here we evaluate the accuracy of names associated with 4,500 specimens of African gingers from 40 herbaria in 21 countries. Our data show that at least 58% of the specimens had the wrong name prior to a recent taxonomic study. A similar pattern of wrongly named specimens is also shown for Dipterocarps and Ipomoea (morning glory). We also examine the number of available plant specimens worldwide. Our data demonstrate that, while the world’s collections have more than doubled since 1970, more than 50% of tropical specimens, on average, are likely to be incorrectly named. This finding has serious implications for the uncritical use of specimen data from natural history collections.

Creating an online world flora by 2020 : a perspective from South Africa

At the 10th Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), which was held in Nagoya, Japan, in October 2010, an updated Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) was adopted as part of the plan of work of the CBD. Target 1 of the GSPC aims to produce an online Flora for all the plants of the world by 2020. Governments that have ratified the CBD will have to report over the next several years on progress towards achieving this challenging target. Floras are still widely regarded as a means of providing descriptive information and identification tools for the plants that occur in a specified region. Historically, Floras have included identification keys; scientific names with authorship for all taxa known to occur in the area; synonymy; descriptions; distributions within the region in question; specimen citations; habitat; literature references; and illustrations. Of these, nomenclature, descriptions, identification tools, illustrations and distributions are critical components. The approach being taken by South Africa, a biodiversity-rich country, in working towards achieving Target 1 of the GSPC by 2020 is presented and discussed, outlining a methodology that may be of practical use to other countries. We hope this will urge other countries to consider how they might meet this challenging conservation target.http://link.springer.com/journal/10531hb201

A catalogue of the vascular plants of the Caatinga Phytogeographical Domain: a synthesis of floristic and phytosociological surveys.

A catalogue is presented of plant names in use in the Caatinga Phytogeographical Domain (CPD), the largest semiarid ecoregion of South America. We compiled all pubished papers we could locate with floristic and/or phytosociological data relating to the CPD and created a database of all site-based surveys, all names reported in these surveys and the basic ecological data associated with each species. We then mapped the names used in survey reports to those currently accepted in Brazil, consulting specialists to resolve taxonomic and nomenclatural issues before synthesizing the data in order to present here a list of all names in use. Thus this compilation represents the taxonomic data in use by generalist botanists on a sub continental scale. Synthesizing the previously dispersed ecological data available for the species, we explored general ecological patterns in the CPD. We also classified each survey as documenting the flora of a specific type of environment within the CPD and compared the general floristic resemblance between different environments within CPD on a biogeographical scale. Rarefaction curves and species richness estimator indices were employed in order to address the question as to whether or not the Caatinga Phytogeographical Domain can be described as well-sampled. To date over 1700 species have been reported in site-based floristic and phytosociological studies in the CPD. Most surveys focused only on woody plants, ignoring the non woody component, but we show here that a large proportion of the plant biodiversity in the Caatinga is comprised of non woody plants. We estimate that 40% of the existing species were not sampled by site-based surveys. Moreover, most of the species in our database were recorded from a single site, while a few species were considered widespread. When comparing the number of widespread species in our dataset to results published for the cerrado savannas, we show that species in Caatinga seems to have a much more restricted distribution than plants in the Cerrado. We present here a catalogue of all plant names recorded and discuss sampling and geographical issues related to the floristic study of Caatinga

FIGURE 7 in A catalogue of the vascular plants of the Caatinga Phytogeographical Domain: a synthesis of floristic and phytosociological surveys

FIGURE 7. Rarefaction curves showing the number of observed species in the different environment types within the Caatinga Phytogeographical Domain, with the 95% confidence interval for the observations (calculated with 1,000 randomizations), and the number of species estimated by ICE, Chao 2, Jackknife 1 and Jackknife 2. Campo Maior and Chapada Diamantina are not shown due the dearth of data available for caatinga in these environments.Published as part of <i>Moro, Marcelo Freire, Lughadha, Eimear Nic, Filer, Denis L., Araújo, Francisca Soares De & Martins, Fernando Roberto, 2014, A catalogue of the vascular plants of the Caatinga Phytogeographical Domain: a synthesis of floristic and phytosociological surveys, pp. 1-118 in Phytotaxa 160 (1)</i> on page 19, DOI: 10.11646/phytotaxa.160.1.1, <a href="http://zenodo.org/record/10089728">http://zenodo.org/record/10089728</a&gt

FIGURE 5 in A catalogue of the vascular plants of the Caatinga Phytogeographical Domain: a synthesis of floristic and phytosociological surveys

FIGURE 5. NMS ordination showing the floristic relationsips among the environment types in the Caatinga Phytogeographic Domain based in (A) the frequency of each species in each environment type, and (B) incidence data. A: Final stress for 2-dimensional solution using frequency data= 6.29136. B: Final stress for 2-dimensional solution using presence/absence data= 4.53461.Published as part of <i>Moro, Marcelo Freire, Lughadha, Eimear Nic, Filer, Denis L., Araújo, Francisca Soares De & Martins, Fernando Roberto, 2014, A catalogue of the vascular plants of the Caatinga Phytogeographical Domain: a synthesis of floristic and phytosociological surveys, pp. 1-118 in Phytotaxa 160 (1)</i> on page 15, DOI: 10.11646/phytotaxa.160.1.1, <a href="http://zenodo.org/record/10089728">http://zenodo.org/record/10089728</a&gt

FIGURE 8 in A catalogue of the vascular plants of the Caatinga Phytogeographical Domain: a synthesis of floristic and phytosociological surveys

FIGURE 8. Rarefaction curve showing the total observed number of species (with the 95% confidence interval obtained with 1,000 randomizations) for the Caatinga Phytogeographical Domain as a whole (summing all 131 surveys) and the expected total number of species in CPD estimated by ICE, Chao 2, Jackknife 1 and Jackknife 2.Published as part of <i>Moro, Marcelo Freire, Lughadha, Eimear Nic, Filer, Denis L., Araújo, Francisca Soares De & Martins, Fernando Roberto, 2014, A catalogue of the vascular plants of the Caatinga Phytogeographical Domain: a synthesis of floristic and phytosociological surveys, pp. 1-118 in Phytotaxa 160 (1)</i> on page 20, DOI: 10.11646/phytotaxa.160.1.1, <a href="http://zenodo.org/record/10089728">http://zenodo.org/record/10089728</a&gt

FIGURE 3 in A catalogue of the vascular plants of the Caatinga Phytogeographical Domain: a synthesis of floristic and phytosociological surveys

FIGURE 3. Histogram of the constancy of species throughout the Caatinga Phytogeographical Domain. Most species were recorded at only one site.Published as part of <i>Moro, Marcelo Freire, Lughadha, Eimear Nic, Filer, Denis L., Araújo, Francisca Soares De & Martins, Fernando Roberto, 2014, A catalogue of the vascular plants of the Caatinga Phytogeographical Domain: a synthesis of floristic and phytosociological surveys, pp. 1-118 in Phytotaxa 160 (1)</i> on page 13, DOI: 10.11646/phytotaxa.160.1.1, <a href="http://zenodo.org/record/10089728">http://zenodo.org/record/10089728</a&gt