The role of digital herbarium collections in the taxonomic revision of complex plant families: Salicaceaesensu stricto

Nataliya Kovtonyuk,Irina Belyaeva

doi:10.1051/bioconf/20213800014

Abstract

The importance of digitisation and digital resources in botanical research is underlined. Advantages and disadvantages of the use of digital herbaria in taxonomic research in Salicaceaesensu strictoare discussed and some suggestions on possible improvements are made.

Highlights

Digitisation has become a necessary element of modern life, and science is no exception
Botanical research benefits most from digital Internet resources which provide fast access to scanned old and rare literature where botanical names were published (Biodiversity Heritage Library, BHL [1]) and nomenclatural (International Plant Names Index, IPNI [2]) and taxonomic databases (The World Checklist of Vascular Plants, WCVP [3], Plants of the World Online, POWO [4]), Catalogue of Life, CoL [5], Tropicos [6], and digital herbarium collections [7, 8]. Some of these online resources have hyperlinks to each other as for example at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (IPNI, WCVP, POWO) and to other valuable external resources, such as BHL [1], and internal Kew resources, such as the Kew Herbarium’s Digital Collection [9] and the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew DNA Bank [10], all of which is a good example for other institutions in the world to follow
The most important target of botanical research is an inventory of worldwide and regional floras [11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16] and it cannot be achieved without the study of herbarium collections

Summary

Introduction

Digitisation has become a necessary element of modern life, and science is no exception. Botanical research benefits most from digital Internet resources which provide fast access to scanned old and rare literature where botanical names were published (Biodiversity Heritage Library, BHL [1]) and nomenclatural (International Plant Names Index, IPNI [2]) and taxonomic databases (The World Checklist of Vascular Plants, WCVP [3], Plants of the World Online, POWO [4]), Catalogue of Life, CoL [5], Tropicos [6], and digital herbarium collections [7, 8]. According to the comprehensive review by James and colleagues [26] and other publications [17, 27, 28] herbarium collections have been used in ecological research, bioengineering, forestry, food and medical security, ethnobotany and in training a new generation of botanists

Digital herbarium collections and their current use in taxonomic research

Type collections

Voucher collections

Collections of cultivated plants