scholarly journals A Collective Effort to Update the Legume Checklist

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marianne Le Roux ◽  
Markus Döring ◽  
Anne Bruneau ◽  
Joe Miller ◽  
Rafaël Govaerts ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Information Service ◽  
Distribution Data ◽  
Herbarium Specimens ◽  
Global Biodiversity Information Facility ◽  
Specialty Area ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
Royal Botanic Gardens ◽  
Plant Families ◽  
Taxonomic Groups

Taxonomic names are critical to the communication of biodiversity—they link data together whether it be distribution data, traits or phylogeny. Large taxonomic groups, such as many plant families, are globally distributed as is the taxonomic expertise of the family. A growing knowledge base requires collaboration to develop an up-to-date checklist as a research foundation. The legume (Fabaceae) community has a strong history of collaboration including the International Legume Database and Information Service (ILDIS), which curated the names but ILDIS is no longer up to date. In 2020, under the umbrella of the Legume Phylogeny Working Group (LPWG), a group of taxonomists began updating the legume taxonomy as part of a larger collaboration around a legume data portal. Currently the World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP) is the most up-to-date reference and was used as the starting point for the project. The workflow begins with over 80 volunteer taxonomic experts updating the checklist in their specialty area. These lists are manually collated, centrally creating a consensus taxonomy with synonyms. Any taxonomic conflicts are adjudicated within the group. The checklist then undergoes a comprehensive nomenclature assessment at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and becomes part of the WCVP. This checklist was submitted to the Catalogue of Life Checklist Bank and is integrated as the preferred legume checklist in the GBIF taxonomic backbone. After one round of taxonomic curation, 38% of the legume names in GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility), which were previously unmatched to WCVP, are now connected to GBIF names, therefore also improving the occurrence records of those species. The GBIF taxonomic backbone contains names found on herbarium specimens and in the literature, which are not currently part of the legume expert community checklist or WCVP. This list of unresolved names will be forwarded to the legume community for curation, thereby developing a cycle of data improvement. It is anticipated that after a few rounds of expert curation, the WCVP and GBIF taxonomies will converge. At each cycle, a snapshot of GBIF occurrences is taken and the improvement of the occurrences is quantified to measure the value of the expert taxonomic work. The current checklist is also available via Catalogue of Life and soon via the World Flora Online to support research. In this talk, we describe the workflow and impact of the expert curated legume taxonomy.

Orchids of the Solomon Islands

1969 ◽  
Vol 255 (800) ◽  
pp. 581-587 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Solomon Islands ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
Herbarium Specimens ◽  
Flowering Period ◽  
Sudden Drop ◽  
Incomplete Knowledge ◽  
The World ◽  
Plant Families ◽  
Whole Plants ◽  
Time Of Collection

This paper deals very much with generalizations rather than statistically usable facts. The science of orchidology has never attracted many workers, never as many as, say, the fungi or the grasses or the ferns. The orchidologists there are and have been and probably will be are mostly involved with describing new species and relegating to synonymy those species described by their past and present colleagues! There has been very, very little geographical and phylogenetic speculation in the orchids by orchidologists and in our present state of incomplete knowledge, generalizations are all that can be aimed for. Altogether 350 gatherings of orchids were made during the Expedition and most of these are represented by dried, i.e. pressed, herbarium specimens. For the information of nonbotanists, as with the herbarium specimens of other plant families, the great majority of orchids had more than one specimen collected, and the duplicates have been distributed to Herbaria in all parts of the world. In fact at least 17 Herbaria have received some specimens of orchids collected on the Expedition. The usual policy is to distribute only those that are fully identified—otherwise somebody may describe it as new! The great majority of the 350 collected were also preserved in liquid, either as whole plants if these were very small or a sample of the flowers of the larger species. In addition, 130 living plants were sent back to Kew for cultivation such as Sarcochilus moorei , which has such a short flowering period, the flowering probably being brought on by a sudden drop in temperature as has been recorded in some Malayan species. About half of these are represented by pressed specimens made at the time of collection, but the remainder were collected only as living plants as they were not flowering at the time. As they flower at Kew they are identified and specimens made. Many have also been photographed and several painted by the official Kew artist for the collection of orchid drawings housed at Kew.

scholarly journals Challenges, Solutions, and Workflows Developed for the Taxonomic Backbone of the World Flora Online.

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Ulate ◽  
Sunitha Katabathuni ◽  
Alan Elliott
Keyword(s):  
Working Group ◽  
Botanical Garden ◽  
Botanic Gardens ◽  
Missouri Botanical ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Plant Names ◽  
The World ◽  
Name Matching ◽  
Royal Botanic Gardens ◽  
Missouri Botanical Garden

The World Flora Online (WFO) is the collaborative, international initiative to achieve Target 1 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC): "An online flora of all known plants." WFO provides an open-access, web-based compendium of the world’s plant species, which builds upon existing knowledge and published floras, checklists and revisions but will also require the collection and generation of new information on poorly known groups and unexplored regions (Borsch et al. 2020). The construction of the WFO Taxonomic Backbone is central to the entire WFO as it determines the accessibility of additional content data and at the same time, represents a taxonomic opinion on the circumscription of those taxa. The Plant List v.1.1 (TPL 2013) was the starting point for the backbone, as this was the most comprehensive resource covering all plants available. We have since curated the higher taxonomy of the backbone, based on the following published community-derived classifications: the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG IV 2016), the Pteridophyte Phylogeny Group (PPG I 2016), Bryophytes (Buck et al. 2008), and Hornworts & Liverworts (Söderström et al. 2016). The WFO presents a community-supported consensus classification with the aim of being the authoritative global source of information on the world's plant diversity. The backbone is actively curated by our Taxonomic Expert Networks (TEN), consisting of specialists of taxonomic groups, ideally at the Family or Order level. There are currently 37 approved TENs, involving more than 280 specialists, working with the WFO. There are small TENs like the Begonia Resource Center and the Meconopsis Group (with five specialists), medium TENs like Ericaceae and Zingiberaceae Resource Centers or SolanaceaSource.org (around 15 experts), and larger TENs like Caryophyllales.org and the Legume Phylogeny Working Group, with more than 80 specialists involved. When we do not have taxonomic oversight, the World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP 2019) has been used to update those families from the TPL 2013 classification. Full credit and acknowledgement given to the original sources is a key requirement of this collaborative project, allowing users to refer to the primary data. For example, an association with the original content is kept through the local identifiers used by the taxonomic content providers as a link to their own resources. A key requirement for the WFO Taxonomic Backbone is that every name should have a globally unique identifier that is maintained, ideally forever. After considering several options, the WFO Technology Working Group recommended that the WFO Council establish a WFO Identifier (WFO-ID), a 10-digit number with a “wfo-” prefix, aimed at establishing a resolvable identifier for all existing plant names, which will not only be used in the context of WFO but can be universally used to reference plant names. Management of the WFO Taxonomic Backbone has been a challenge as TPL v1.1 was derived from multiple taxonomic datasets, which led to duplication of records. For that reason, names can be excluded from the public portal by the WFO Taxonomic Working Group or the TENs, but not deleted. A WFO-ID is not deleted nor reused after it has been excluded from the WFO Taxonomic Backbone. Keeping these allows for better matching when assigning WFO-IDs to data derived from content providers. Nevertheless, this implies certain considerations for new names and duplications. New names are added to the WFO Taxonomic Backbone via nomenclators like the International Plants Name Index (IPNI, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew et al. 2021) for Angiosperms, and Tropicos (Missouri Botanical Garden 2021) for Bryophytes, as well as harvesting endemic and infraspecific names from Flora providers when providing descriptive content. New names are passed to the TEN to make a judgement on their taxonomic status. When TENs provide a new authoritative taxonomic list for their group, we first produce a Name Matching report to ensure no names are missed. Several issues come from managing and maintaining taxonomic lists, but the process of curating an ever-growing integrated resource leads to an increase in the challenges we face with homonyms, non-standard author abbreviations, orthographic variants and duplicate names when Name Matching. The eMonocot database application, provided by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, (Santarsiero et al. 2013) and subsequently adapted by the Missouri Botanical Garden to provide the underlying functionality for WFO's current toolset, has also proven itself to be a challenging component to update. In this presentation, we will share our hands-on experience, technical solutions and workflows creating and maintaining the WFO Taxonomic Backbone.

Dreams Give Birth to Reality”. Engraving Austroseraphicum Coelum as an Attempt to Create a New Reality by the Spanish Habsburgs Dynastic Propaganda / Sny rodzą rzeczywistość…”. Grafika Austroseraphicum Coelum jako próba kreowania nowej rzeczywistości za pomocą propagandy dynastycznej Habsburgów hiszpańskich

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Kurowiak
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
General Condition ◽  
Symbolic System ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Mission Of God ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
The Church

AbstractAs a work of propaganda, graphics Austroseraphicum Coelum Paulus Pontius should create a new reality, make appearances. The main impression while seeing the graphics is the admiration for the power of Habsburgs, which interacts with the power of the Mother of God. She, in turn, refers the viewer to God, as well as Franciscans placed on the graphic, they become a symbol of the Church. This is a starting point for further interpretation of the drawing. By the presence of certain characters, allegories, symbols, we can see references to a particular political situation in the Netherlands - the war with the northern provinces of Spain. The message of the graphic is: the Spanish Habsburgs, commissioned by the mission of God, they are able to fight all of the enemies, especially Protestants, with the help of Immaculate and the Franciscans. The main aim of the graphic is to convince the viewer that this will happen and to create in his mind a vision of the new reality. But Spain was in the seventeenth century nothing but a shadow of former itself (in the time of Philip IV the general condition of Spain get worse). That was the reason why they wanted to hold the belief that the empire continues unwavering. The form of this work (graphics), also allowed to export them around the world, and the ambiguity of the symbolic system, its contents relate to different contexts, and as a result, the Habsburgs, not only Spanish, they could promote their strength everywhere. Therefore it was used very well as a single work of propaganda, as well as a part of a broader campaign

The Paradox of “A High Standard of Public Honesty”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Kennedy ◽  
Ronald Kroeze
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Side Effect ◽  
High Standard ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Liberal Politics ◽  
Patronage Politics ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This chapter takes as its starting point the contemporary idea that the Netherlands is one of the least corrupt countries in the world; an idea that it dates back to the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. In this chapter, the authors explain how corruption was controlled in the Netherlands against the background of the rise and fall of the Dutch Republic, modern statebuilding and liberal politics. However, the Dutch case also presents some complexities: first, the decrease in some forms of corruption was due not to early democratization or bureaucratization, but was rather a side-effect of elite patronage-politics; second, although some early modern forms of corruption disappeared around this period, new forms have emerged in more recent times.

scholarly journals Contracting in land and natural resources: a tale of exclusion

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-153
Author(s):  
Federica Violi
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Host Countries ◽  
Developmental Needs ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Short Essay ◽  
Public Environment

By browsing the website of Land Matrix, one can measure the extent of land-related large-scale investments in natural resources (LRINRs) and place it on the world map. At the time of writing, the extent of these investments covers an area equal to the surfaces of Spain and Portugal together – or, for football fans, around 60 million football pitches. These investment operations have often been saluted as instrumental to achieve the developmental needs of host countries and as the necessary private counterpart to state (and interstate) efforts aimed at (sustainable) development goals. Yet, the realities on the ground offer a scenario characterised by severe instances of displacement of indigenous or local communities and environmental disruptions. The starting point of this short essay is that these ‘externalities’ are generated through the legal construct enabling the implementation of these investment operations. As such, this contribution lies neatly in the line of research set forth in the excellent books of Kinnari Bhatt and Jennifer Lander, from the perspective of both the development culture shaping these investment operations and the private–public environment in which these are situated. The essay tries and dialogues with both components, while focusing at a metalevel on the theoretical shifts potentially geared to turn a ‘tale of exclusion’ into a ‘tale of inclusion’.

scholarly journals Big hitting collectors make massive and disproportionate contribution to the discovery of plant species

2012 ◽  
Vol 279 (1736) ◽  
pp. 2269-2274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel P. Bebber ◽  
Mark A. Carine ◽  
Gerrit Davidse ◽  
David J. Harris ◽  
Elspeth M. Haston ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Plant Species ◽  
Biological Diversity ◽  
High Rate ◽  
Type Specimens ◽  
Fundamental Goal ◽  
The World ◽  
Plant Families ◽  
The Right ◽  
Geographical Locations

Discovering biological diversity is a fundamental goal—made urgent by the alarmingly high rate of extinction. We have compiled information from more than 100 000 type specimens to quantify the role of collectors in the discovery of plant diversity. Our results show that more than half of all type specimens were collected by less than 2 per cent of collectors. This highly skewed pattern has persisted through time. We demonstrate that a number of attributes are associated with prolific plant collectors: a long career with increasing productivity and experience in several countries and plant families. These results imply that funding a small number of expert plant collectors in the right geographical locations should be an important element in any effective strategy to find undiscovered plant species and complete the inventory of the world flora.

scholarly journals The World Checklist of Vascular Plants, a continuously updated resource for exploring global plant diversity

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafaël Govaerts ◽  
Eimear Nic Lughadha ◽  
Nicholas Black ◽  
Robert Turner ◽  
Alan Paton
Keyword(s):  
Plant Diversity ◽  
Vascular Plants ◽  
Sustainable Use ◽  
Data Reuse ◽  
Global Biodiversity Information Facility ◽  
Full Dataset ◽  
The World ◽  
Technical Validation ◽  
International Data ◽  
Data Collation

AbstractThe World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP) is a comprehensive list of scientifically described plant species, compiled over four decades, from peer-reviewed literature, authoritative scientific databases, herbaria and observations, then reviewed by experts. It is a vital tool to facilitate plant diversity research, conservation and effective management, including sustainable use and equitable sharing of benefits. To maximise utility, such lists should be accessible, explicitly evidence-based, transparent, expert-reviewed, and regularly updated, incorporating new evidence and emerging scientific consensus. WCVP largely meets these criteria, being continuously updated and freely available online. Users can browse, search, or download a user-defined subset of accepted species with corresponding synonyms and bibliographic details, or a date-stamped full dataset. To facilitate appropriate data reuse by individual researchers and global initiatives including Global Biodiversity Information Facility, Catalogue of Life and World Flora Online, we document data collation and review processes, the underlying data structure, and the international data standards and technical validation that ensure data quality and integrity. We also address the questions most frequently received from users.

On properties of seawater defined by temperature, salinity, and pressure

2021 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 121-147
Author(s):  
George Veronis
Keyword(s):  
Vertical Direction ◽  
Great Depth ◽  
Local Potential ◽  
Potential Density ◽  
Marine Research ◽  
Station Data ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
Gravitational Stability

Hydrographic station data, consisting principally of temperature and salinity determinations, have been used by physical oceanographers to develop a climatological picture of the distribution of these quantities in the oceans of the world. Density as determined by Knudsen's formula, taken together with hydrostatic and geostrophic dynamics, also provides a crude picture of oceanic flow. However, the data probably contain substantially more information than has been derived from them in the past.The quantity that is orthogonal to potential-density curves in the S plane is suggested as a useful variable to complement the information contained in potential density. The derivation of this quantity, denoted by τ in this paper, is straightforward. A polynomial expression for τ that is suitable for computer calculations of τ from hydrographic station data is given. Shown are examples of hydrographic station data from the Atlantic plotted on the τσ diagram. The information contained in the τσ diagram shows many of the features exhibited in the TS plane. Vertical sections of τ appear to provide information about mixing in different parts of the Atlantic. The distribution of τ for abyssal waters at selected stations in the oceans of the world resembles the distribution of abyssal density as plotted by Lynn and Reid (1968). From the data presented, it appears that τ may serve as a good tracer for abyssal water movements.Since τ is defined to be orthogonal to σ, the expectation is that τ is a dynamically passive variable. However, since σ does not correlate with abyssal densities, it appears to lose dynamical significance at great depth, and τ assumes dynamical significance because of its orthogonality to σ. This unexpected feature leads to an exploration of the dynamical significance of σ. A natural starting point is the question of stability of abyssal water.A distinction is made between stability as determined by in situ determinations and as determined by the potential-density (σ) distribution. Simple examples are presented to show that analysis based on σ alone can lead to incorrect conclusions about gravitational stability of the water in the abyssal ocean. The reason is that seawater is a multicomponent thermodynamic system, and the thermodynamic coefficients are functions of pressure, salinity, and temperature. This functional dependence leads to adjustments in density as a water particle moves adiabatically in the vertical direction so that a layer of water that appears to be unstable near the surface may be stable (as determined by in situ determination) at great depth. A local potential density, which is simply the vertical integral of the in situ stability, is derived. This quantity gives a precise picture of gravitational stability in the vertical direction. Some distributions of local potential density are shown.Originally published May 15, 1972, in the Journal of Marine Research 30(2), 227???255.

The Strait of Magellan—a Gateway to New Worlds

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mauricio Onetto Pavez
Keyword(s):  
Global Scale ◽  
Modern World ◽  
American Continent ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Strait Of Magellan ◽  
The World ◽  
The Strait Of Magellan ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Time

The year 2020 marks the five hundredth anniversary of the “discovery” of the Strait of Magellan. The unveiling of this passage between 1519 and 1522 allowed the planet to be circumnavigated for the first time in the history of humanity. All maritime routes could now be connected, and the idea of the Earth, in its geographical, cosmographic, and philosophical dimensions, gained its definitive meaning. This discovery can be considered one of the founding events of the modern world and of the process of globalization that still continues today. This new connectivity awoke an immediate interest in Europe that led to the emergence of a political consciousness of possession, domination, and territorial occupation generalized on a global scale, and the American continent was the starting point for this. This consciousness also inspired a desire for knowledge about this new form of inhabiting the world. Various fields of knowledge were redefined thanks to the new spaces and measurements produced by the discovery of the southern part of the Americas, which was recorded in books on cosmography, natural history, cartography, and manuscripts, circulating mainly between the Americas and Europe. All these processes transformed the Strait of Magellan into a geopolitical space coveted by Europeans during the 16th century. As an interoceanic connector, it was used to imagine commercial routes to the Orient and political projects that could sustain these dynamics. It was also conceived as a space to speculate on the potential wealth in the extreme south of the continent. In addition, on the Spanish side, some agents of the Crown considered it a strategic place for imperial projections and the defense of the Americas.

Leviathan on a Leash

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Fleming
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Sovereign Debt ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
The State ◽  
State Responsibility ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World

States are commonly blamed for wars, called on to apologize, held liable for debts and reparations, bound by treaties, and punished with sanctions. But what does it mean to hold a state responsible as opposed to a government, a nation, or an individual leader? Under what circumstances should we assign responsibility to states rather than individuals? This book demystifies the phenomenon of state responsibility and explains why it is a challenging yet indispensable part of modern politics. Taking Thomas Hobbes' theory of the state as a starting point, the book presents a theory of state responsibility that sheds new light on sovereign debt, historical reparations, treaty obligations, and economic sanctions. Along the way, it overturns longstanding interpretations of Hobbes' political thought, explores how new technologies will alter the practice of state responsibility as we know it, and develops new accounts of political authority, representation, and legitimacy. The book argues that Hobbes' idea of the state offers a far richer and more realistic conception of state responsibility than the theories prevalent today and demonstrates that Hobbes' Leviathan is much more than an anthropomorphic “artificial man.” The book is essential reading for political theorists, scholars of international relations, international lawyers, and philosophers. It recovers a forgotten understanding of state personality in Hobbes' thought and shows how to apply it to the world of imperfect states in which we live.

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