Geographic review on the specimens of the Caatinga Biome in the Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro (RB) herbarium.

Ulises Magdalena,João Lanna,Ernani Bellon,Luís Alexandre Silva,Felipe Oliveira,Rafael Ribeiro,Rafael Lima,Aline Amorim,Maria Luiza Abieri,Gabriel Cardoso,Rafaela Forzza

doi:10.3897/bdj.7.e38248

Abstract

BackgroundThis article provides a quantitative description of flora specimens stored in the Jardim Botânico of Rio de Janeiro Herbarium that belongs to the Federal Conservation Units of Caatinga’s phytogeography domain. The Caatinga represents 11% of Brazilian territory and is, in South America, the largest and most biodiverse semi-arid tropical ecoregion, yet only 5% of its territory is covered by Federal Conservation Units, with few collections of flora samples. Thus, providing a georeferenced inventory of existing collections is essential for purposes of species distribution, environmental management and conservation. The aim of this data paper is to gauge, by means of geographic coordinates correction and retrieval of the flora specimens present in the RB Herbarium, the amount of specimen gatherings performed in the Federal Conservation Units belonging to the Caatinga domain.New informationCurrently, the RB data is publicly available online at several biodiversity portals, such as our institutional database JABOT, the Reflora Virtual Herbarium, the SiBBr and the GBIF portal (Lanna et al. 2019). However, a description of the dataset that belongs to the Federal Conservation Units of Caatinga’s phytogeography domain as a whole is not yet available in the literature.

Highlights

The Caatinga phytogeographic domain is South America’s largest and most biodiverse tropical semi-arid ecoregion (Moro et al 2016)
The diversity of plants and animals may be considered low when compared with other regions, the biological patrimony in this region is adapted to the local extreme conditions, resulting in high endemism rates (Queiroz et al 2017)
Caatinga encompasses woody vegetation that is thorny and deciduous (Ab’Saber 1974) and can be divided into 12 types according to abiotic variations of altitude, continentality and soil features (Alves et al 2008, Araújo et al 2005)

Summary

Background

This article provides a quantitative description of flora specimens stored in the Jardim Botânico of Rio de Janeiro Herbarium that belongs to the Federal Conservation Units of Caatinga’s phytogeography domain. Providing a georeferenced inventory of existing collections is essential for purposes of species distribution, environmental management and conservation. The aim of this data paper is to gauge, by means of geographic coordinates correction and retrieval of the flora specimens present in the RB Herbarium, the amount of specimen gatherings performed in the Federal Conservation Units belonging to the Caatinga domain. A description of the dataset that belongs to the Federal Conservation Units of Caatinga’s phytogeography domain as a whole is not yet available in the literature

Introduction

Findings

Sampling methods