Data on introduced plants in Zimbabwe: Floristic changes and patterns of collection based on historical herbarium records.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Maroyi A
PROVIDER: S-EPMC5712053 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Dec
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Data on introduced plants in Zimbabwe: Floristic changes and patterns of collection based on historical herbarium records.
Data in brief 20170922
National herbaria with significant historical plant collections are critical to tracking floristic changes and patterns, which include the introduction and spread of non-native plant species. To explore the importance of herbarium specimen data in understanding floristic changes in Zimbabwe, the plant collections housed by the National Herbarium (SRGH) in Harare, Zimbabwe were utilized with historical specimens dating back to 1870. A list of naturalised plant taxa and collection data were compil ...[more]
Similar Datasets
Project description:Ultraviolet-B (UV-B) radiation is a key but under-researched environmental factor that initiates diverse responses in plants, potentially affecting their distribution. To date, only a few macroecological studies have examined adaptations of plant species to different levels of UV-B. Here, we combined herbarium specimens of Hieracium pilosella L. and Echium vulgare L. with a novel UV-B dataset to examine differences in leaf hair traits between the plants' native and alien ranges. We analysed scans of 336 herbarium specimens using standardized measurements of leaf area, hair density (both species) and hair length (H. pilosella only). While accounting for other bioclimatic variables (i.e. temperature, precipitation) and effects of herbivory, we examined whether UV-B exposure explains the variability and geographical distribution of these traits in the native (Northern Hemisphere) vs. the alien (Southern Hemisphere) range. UV-B explained the largest proportion of the variability and geographical distribution of hair length in H. pilosella (relative influence 67.1%), and hair density in E. vulgare (66.2%). Corresponding with higher UV-B, foliar hairs were 25% longer for H. pilosella and 25% denser for E. vulgare in records from the Southern as compared to those from the Northern Hemisphere. However, focusing on each hemisphere separately or controlling for its effect in a regression analysis, we found no apparent influence of UV-B radiation on hair traits. Thus, our findings did not confirm previous experimental studies which suggested that foliar hairs may respond to higher UV-B intensities, presumably offering protection against detrimental levels of radiation. We cannot rule out UV-B radiation as a possible driver because UV-B radiation was the only considered variable that differed substantially between the hemispheres, while bioclimatic conditions (e.g. temperature, precipitation) and other considered variables (herbivory damage, collection date) were at similar levels. However, given that either non-significant or inconclusive relationships were detected within hemispheres, alternative explanations of the differences in foliar hairs are more likely, including the effects of environment, genotypes or herbivory.
| S-EPMC5393584 | biostudies-literature
Project description:AimWe test for spatial and climatic patterns of diversification in the Orchidaceae, an angiosperm family characterized by high levels of species diversity and rarity. Globally, does orchid diversity correlate with land area? In Australia, does diversity correlate with herbarium collecting effort, range size, or climate niche breadth? Where are Australia's orchids distributed spatially, in protected areas, and in climate space?LocationGlobal, then Australia.MethodsWe compared orchid diversity with land area for continents and recognized orchid diversity hotspots. Then, we used cleaned herbarium records to compare collecting effort (for Australian Orchidaceae vs. all other plant families, and also among orchid genera). Spatial and climate distributions were mapped to determine orchids' coverage in the protected area network, range sizes, and niche breadths.ResultsGlobally, orchid diversity does not correlate with land area (depauperate regions are the subantarctic: 10 species, and northern North America: 394 species). Australian herbarium records and collecting effort generally reflect orchid species diversity (1,583 spp.), range sizes, and niche breadths. Orchids are restricted to 13% of Australia's landmass with 211 species absent from any protected areas. Species richness is the greatest in three biomes with high general biodiversity: Temperate (especially southwest and southeast Australia), Tropical, and Subtropical (coastal northern Queensland). Absence from the Desert is consistent with our realized climate niche-orchids avoid high temperature/low rainfall environments. Orchids have narrower range sizes than nonorchid species. Highly diverse orchid genera have narrower rainfall breadths than less diverse genera.Main conclusionsHerbarium data are adequate for testing hypotheses about Australian orchids. Distribution is likely driven by environmental factors. In contrast, diversification did not correlate with increases in range size, rainfall, or temperature breadths, suggesting speciation does not occur via invasion and local adaptation to new habitats. Instead, diversification may rely on access to extensive obligate symbioses with mycorrhizae and/or pollinators.
| S-EPMC6262934 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundThe herbarium of the South-Siberian Botanical Garden of Altai State University (ALTB) houses the largest collection of plants from the Altai Mountain Country (AMC), an area that extends across Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China. The collection of ALTB includes more than 450,00 specimens, making it the seventh largest in Russia and the fourth largest amongst Russian university herbaria. Altai State University (ASU), the home of ALTB, is one of the most important centres of academic education and research in Siberia and the Russian Far East. It is a sociocultural centre that provides a distinguished learning environment for undergraduate and graduate students in many scholarly and professional fields, meeting the needs of today's knowledge-based post-industrial society and contributing to regional development. It actively promotes international cooperation and strategic collaboration amongst countries of the AMC in the fields of science, education and culture. In particular, the activities of the South-Siberian Botanical Garden include: development of measures to protect rare and endangered plant species, research on the flora and vegetation of the AMC, preparation and publication of a multi-volume work "Flora Altaica", monographic study of individual plant groups, conducting laboratory classes, summer practicals and special courses. The main purpose of this article is to attract the attention of the scientific community to the botanical research of transboundary territory of the Altai Mountain Country (Russia, Kazakhstan, China and Mongolia) and to the future development of digital plant collections in partnership with Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).New informationThe Virtual Herbarium ALTB (Russian interface - altb.asu.ru) is the largest digital collection of plants from the transboundary territory of the Altai Mountain Country and the main source of primary material for the "Flora Altaica" project (http://altaiflora.asu.ru/en/). Since 2017, when Altai State University became a GBIF data publisher, data from the Virtual Herbarium ALTB has been exported to the dataset "Virtual Herbarium ALTB (South-Siberian Botanical Garden)" in GBIF. Currently, it includes images and data from 22,466 vascular plants, of which 67% have geographic coordinates (accessed on 30.03.2021). Most of the specimens have been collected since 1977, with the most intensive collecting years being 1995-2008. In 2019, the label-data table of the Virtual Herbarium ALTB was modified to bring it into conformity with the Darwin Core specification (http://altb.asu.ru/). This effectively solved the major impediment to sharing plant diversity data from the AMC and adjacent regions in a multilingual environment.
| S-EPMC8292289 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Premise of the Study:Herbarium specimens are increasingly used in phenological studies. However, natural history collections can have biases that influence the analysis of phenological events. Arctic environments, where remoteness and cold climate govern collection logistics, may give rise to unique or pronounced biases. Methods:We assessed the presence of biases in time, space, phenological events, collectors, taxonomy, and plant traits across Nunavut using herbarium specimens accessioned at the National Herbarium of Canada (CAN). Results:We found periods of high and low collection that corresponded to societal and institutional events; greater collection density close to common points of air and sea access; and preferences to collect plants at the flowering phase and in peak flower, and to collect particular taxa, flower colours, growth forms, and plant heights. One-quarter of collectors contributed 90% of the collection. Discussion:Collections influenced by temporal and spatial biases have the potential to misrepresent phenology across space and time, whereas those shaped by the interests of collectors or the tendency to favour particular phenological stages, taxa, and plant traits could give rise to imbalanced phenological comparisons. Underlying collection patterns may vary among regions and institutions. To guide phenological analyses, we recommend routine assessment of any herbarium data set prior to its use.
| S-EPMC6426279 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Premise of the studyMycorrhiza are critical to ecosystem functioning, but a lack of historical baseline data limits our understanding of the long-term belowground effects of global change. Herbarium specimens may provide this needed insight. However, it is unknown whether DNA of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) can be reliably extracted from vascular plant specimen roots.MethodsWe sampled roots from herbarium specimens of four herbaceous forest species collected in western Pennsylvania between 1881-2008. Using molecular methods (terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism and sequence analysis), we quantified AMF communities from specimen roots and tested for contamination.ResultsWe successfully amplified AMF DNA from 44% (21/48) of the root but not leaf samples, indicating specimen contamination was negligible. As expected, there were significant differences in AMF composition between plant species (P < 0.05). However, no differences in AMF communities were detected through time, possibly due to limited sample size and low amplification rates in recent collections.DiscussionHerbaria have potential as sources of valuable belowground microbial data to answer questions across geographic, temporal, and taxonomic scales otherwise not feasible. Ongoing methodological developments will only magnify this potential. Further tests are needed to determine curatorial practices that maximize this innovative use of herbarium specimens.
| S-EPMC6476165 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundThe dataset with 49,726 bryophytes occurrences (49,261 moss occurrences and 465 liverworts occurrences), located predominantly on the territory European north-east Russia, is described in this data paper. The dataset was based on the digitised moss labels from the Institute of Biology of Komi Scientific Сenter of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences herbarium (SYKO). The information from the labels was recognised, cleaned and brought into compliance with the Darwin Core. More than 99.9% of occurrences were georeferenced with a precision of at least 3 km. For each occurrence, the original label image URL was given. The dataset contains occurrences of 539 moss and liverworts taxa (species and lower ranks) belonging to 190 genera and 75 families.New informationInformation about 49,726 bryophytes occurrences was published in GBIF. The dataset was based on label data of 94% of SYKO herbarium moss collection specimens. Most of the occurrences were described with the following fields: occurrenceID, institutionID, collectionCode, catalogNumber, basisOfRecord, scientificName, taxonRank, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, recordedBy, identifiedBy, associatedMedia, day, month, year, country, countryCode, decimalLatitude, decimalLongitude, geodeticDatum, coordinateUncertaintyInMetres, georeferencedBy.
| S-EPMC7575639 | biostudies-literature
Project description:In many tropical regions the development of informed conservation strategies is hindered by a dearth of biodiversity information. Biological collections can help to overcome this problem, by providing baseline information to guide research and conservation efforts. This study focuses on the timber trees of Angola, combining herbarium (2670 records) and bibliographic data to identify the main timber species, document biogeographic patterns and identify conservation priorities. The study recognized 18 key species, most of which are threatened or near-threatened globally, or lack formal conservation assessments. Biogeographical analysis reveals three groups of species associated with the enclave of Cabinda and northwest Angola, which occur primarily in Guineo-Congolian rainforests, and evergreen forests and woodlands. The fourth group is widespread across the country, and is mostly associated with dry forests. There is little correspondence between the spatial pattern of species groups and the ecoregions adopted by WWF, suggesting that these may not provide an adequate basis for conservation planning for Angolan timber trees. Eight of the species evaluated should be given high conservation priority since they are of global conservation concern, they have very restricted distributions in Angola, their historical collection localities are largely outside protected areas and they may be under increasing logging pressure. High conservation priority was also attributed to another three species that have a large proportion of their global range concentrated in Angola and that occur in dry forests where deforestation rates are high. Our results suggest that timber tree species in Angola may be under increasing risk, thus calling for efforts to promote their conservation and sustainable exploitation. The study also highlights the importance of studying historic herbarium collections in poorly explored regions of the tropics, though new field surveys remain a priority to update historical information.
| S-EPMC4111583 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The goal of this study is the discovery of (a) meaningful phylogenomic relationships among members of this B. cereus/B. anthracis group, and (b) reliable gene-phenotype associations, e.g. recognition of links between genomic traits and the ability of certain strains to cause various forms of disease. We also tried to elucidate genome evolution aspects that may lead to the emergence of variants that are capable (or have the potential) of causing anthrax-like disease. This large-scale comparative genomics approach is unprecedented for this taxonomic group. Dr. A. Hoffmaster (CDC) provided the PFGRC with 73 B. cereus and B. anthracis isolates from the CDC culture collection. Of these, 27 were isolated from patients with severe or systemic disease; ten isolates of this group were obtained from patients (welding factory workers) with anthrax-like disease or from the environment near their workplace. Another set of 26 represented isolates from food-born illnesses. Of the 26 gastrointestinal disease isolates (GIDI), 10 were obtained from patients with diarrhea, whereas another set of 10 had been shown to harbor the emetic (vomit) toxin gene by PCR. The rest of the group consisted of 20 isolates with various phenotypes. All strains were screened for their genomic content using the B. cereus/B. anthracis species microarray.
2009-11-25 | GSE19125 | GEO
Project description:BackgroundWorld herbaria with 387.5M specimens (Thiers 2019) are being rapidly digitised. At least 79.9M plant specimens (20.6%) are already databased throughout the globe in the standard form of GBIF-mediated data. The contribution of smaller herbaria has been steadily growing over the last few years due to cost reduction, usage of platforms and solutions developed by the leaders. A web-resource the Moscow Digital Herbarium (Seregin 2020b) was launched by the Lomonosov Moscow State University in October, 2016 for publication of specimens imaged and databased in the Moscow University Herbarium (MW). As of 31 December 2018, the web-portal included 968,031 images of 971,732 specimens digitised in MW. This dataset is available in GBIF (Seregin 2020). The global trend is largely the same in Russia, where a dozen herbaria started to scan their holdings after imaging of the nation's second largest herbarium (Kislov et al. 2017, Kovtonyuk et al. 2019, Seregin 2020a). In 2019, we started to use Moscow Digital Herbarium as a web-repository for digitised herbarium specimens from some Russian collections, starting with the Herbarium of Tsitsin Main Botanical Gaden, Russian Academy of Sciences (MHA). Due to this, a single-university system became a multi-institutional consortium in April 2019 (Seregin 2020a). The dataset of the Moscow collections and partly of the Eastern European collections of the MHA Herbarium is now available in GBIF (Seregin and Stepanova 2020).New informationMHA Herbarium imaged 64,008 specimens from Moscow Region and partly from other regions of Eastern Europe at 600 dpi and provided key metadata. These data are now fully available in the Moscow Digital Herbarium and GBIF. Complete georeferencing of the specimens from the City of Moscow was a key task in 2020. As of May 2020, 50,324 specimens, including 49,732 specimens from Russia, have been georeferenced (78.6%) and 39,448 specimens have fully-captured label transcriptions (61.6%). Based on these data, we give a detailed overview of the collections including spatial, temporal and taxonomic description of the dataset.
| S-EPMC7599204 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundThe vascular flora of Greece comprises no less than 6,705 vascular plant taxa (species and subspecies, including established aliens) in an area of 131,957 km2. The phytogeographic region of north-east Greece (NE), an area characterised by physiographic diversity, is the richest floristic region in Greece, yet it remains less-explored compared to other regions.New informationWe present an annotated inventory of 32 vascular plant taxa collected predominantly from the East Macedonia and Thrace Regions (Makedonia and Thraki, NE Greece), following fieldwork that took place between 2013 and 2021. In our results, we identify seven new additions to the Greek flora (Aethionemasaxatilesubsp.rhodopaeum, Anthericumramosum, Asteramellus, Euphorbiacarniolica, Hesperismatronalissubsp.matronalis, Saponariastranjensis and Silenefetlerii) and 25 new records to the regional Greek flora consisting of mostly rare Balkan endemics of a restricted distribution and presumable conservation priorities. Taxonomic comments are added, where necessary. IUCN threat categories are assigned to certain taxa. Our investigation highlights the importance of the Balkan border areas as a source of new floristic elements for single countries and points to the importance of range-restricted taxa, in addition to single-country endemics, to address plants with a narrow distribution pattern.
| S-EPMC9050803 | biostudies-literature