Type collections of plants and fungi in Ukraine: realities and prospects

Abstract

For the stability of the nomenclature of biological organisms an important condition is the presence and preservation of type specimens of the described taxa. The type specimens of plants and fungi typically are accumulated and stored in herbaria of specialized scientific institutions (e.g. botanical gardens and universities) or natural history museums. In Ukraine, there are nearly 80 herbaria of various volumes of collections but only 22 of them have type materials of taxa of different ranks, which were described from the territory of Ukraine and the world. The article includes a quantitative assessment of type materials of Ukrainian herbaria and emphasizes their role in regional and global biodiversity surveys. On the basis of own research of the Ukrainian herbarium fund, the estimation of preservation conditions of type specimens of plants and fungi and their collections in Ukraine is given, and the prospects of functioning of these collections are considered.