Abstract Detail

Enhancing Quality and Use of Herbarium Collection Data through Community Data Curation

Le Roux, Margaretha Marianne [1], Döring, Markus [3], Bruneau, Anne [2], Miller, Joe [3], Govaerts, Rafael [4], Black, Nick [4], Lewis, Gwilym [5], Sinou, Carole [2].

A collective effort to update the legume checklist.

Research on big data, such as distribution data, traits and phylogenomics, rely on names that link data together. This is particularly important when data are made available through online information services or comparing results among different studies. Continually changing taxonomies, and competing taxonomies, create a challenge when different names are used for a single taxon or the same name for different taxa. Accurate and up-to-date checklists are therefore needed to underpin and support big data analyses and research. The International Legume Database and Information Service (ILDIS) holds useful information (each item linked to a reference), including names, but it has not been comprehensively curated for more than 20 years. The international Legume Phylogeny Working Group (LPWG) realized that there is an urgent need for an updated species level checklist of the legume family. In May 2020, a virtual legume meeting was held and gave rise to four working subgroups of the LPWG, one of which, the Taxonomy Working Group, was tasked to update the legume species checklist. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, was approached to request the use of the World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP) as the most recent and up-to-date starting point. As a first step, legume taxonomists volunteered to check names and to create a community consensus list of accepted names and their synonyms. The updates feed back into the WCVP and subsequently to the Plants of the World Online (POWO). The updated information from the WCVP was also incorporated into the Global Biodiversity Information Facility's (GBIF) taxon backbone and is now accessible through the GBIF portal. The resulting comprehensive, verified list will be available for use by other online projects such as Catalogue of Life, World Flora Online and to support research within the legume community. In this talk, we outline the background that led to this initiative and show the impact of a collective effort in updating and maintaining a taxon-specific checklist.

1 - South African National Biodiversity Institute, Foundational Biodiversity Sciences, Private Bag X101, Silverton, Pretoria, GA, 0184, South Africa
2 - Insti De Recherche Bio Vegetal, 4101 Rue Sherbrooke Est, Montreal, H1X 2B2, Canada
3 - GBIF, GBIF Secrtariat, Universitetparken 15, Universitetsparken 15, Copenhagen, 2100, Denmark
4 - Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Jodrell Laboratory, Richmond TW9 3DS, Richmond, UK
5 - Integrated Monography Team, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 3AE, UK

Keywords:
Checklist
Fabaceae
Legume Phylogeny Working Group
World Checklist of Vascular Plants
expert network.

Presentation Type: Colloquium Presentations
Session: C02, Enhancing Quality and Use of Herbarium Collection Data through Community Data Curation
Location: /
Date: Monday, July 19th, 2021
Time: 1:30 PM(EDT)
Number: C02005
Abstract ID:574
Candidate for Awards:None