FlorItaly - the portal to the Flora of Italy.

Riccardo Pennesi,Gabriele Galasso,Lorenzo Peruzzi,Stefano Martellos,Fabrizio Bartolucci,Pier Luigi Nimis,Elena Pittao,Fabio Conti,Andrea Moro

doi:10.3897/phytokeys.156.54023

Abstract

Digital data concerning the flora of Italy are largely fragmented among different resources hosted on different platforms, and often with different data standards, which are neither connected by a common access point, nor by web services, thus constituting a relevant obstacle to data access and usage. Taxonomic incongruences add a further complication. This paper describes “FlorItaly”, an online information system which allows to access and query updated information on the checklist of the flora of Italy, aiming at becoming an aggregator for Italian botanical resources. “FlorItaly” was developed in a collaborative effort by more than 50 taxonomists, with the support of the Italian Botanical Society, and of Project “Dryades” (University of Trieste), to provide a better and reliable organization of botanical knowledge in Italy, as well as a relevant simplification for data retrieval, and a further stimulus towards a more collaborative approach in botanical research.

Highlights

Taxonomic checklists summarize the hitherto available knowledge of the biodiversity in a given area
Checklists can potentially be of use for connecting information from different sources, ideally making biodiversity data interoperable through names
Being open-ended works, checklists can greatly benefit from a digital “publication”, which allows their updating with new information, continuously, or at regular intervals

Summary

Introduction

Taxonomic checklists summarize the hitherto available knowledge of the biodiversity in a given area. The Plants of the World Online portal (POWO 2020) has a broader aim, since it focuses on enabling users to access information on all seed-bearing plants known worldwide by 2020 It is part of the Science Strategy of Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, which aims at disseminating Kew’s scientific knowledge of plants and fungi to maximize its impact in science, education, conservation policy and management. Another “global” effort is the World Flora Online (WFO 2020), a project carried on since 2010 in the framework of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) of the U.N., and supported by the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Materials and methods

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Discussion