Main collectors of Mexico’s vascular plants: a catalogue built from online databases

Abstract

Databases of biological collections contain fundamental information for the study of biodiversity, hence the importance of their quality, which includes the data on collectors. For this purpose, a list of the main vascular plant collectors in Mexico was constructed to improve the quality of this information. A total of 3.7 million records of vascular plant specimens collected in Mexico were analyzed from the National System of Biodiversity Information (Sistema Nacional de Información sobre Biodiversidad; SNIB) of the Mexican National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad de México; Conabio) and the database of the National Herbarium of Mexico (Herbario Nacional de México; MEXU) of the Institute of Biology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). A “main collector” was considered anyone with 500 or more unique collection numbers in the database. A total of 610 main collectors were identified, who together contributed 83% of the records of vascular plants collected in Mexico, and a standardized list of their names is presented. The list of names of main collectors of vascular plants in Mexico is a useful tool for the cleaning and extraction of information from biodiversity databases.