A brief post acknowledging, learning from and starting discussion of this:
Recent 2023 scholarly published article’s evidences
regarding four global plants names checklists :
(Aspirationally–global plants’ taxonomy tertiary aggregation sources).
Schellenberger Costa, D., Boehnisch, G., Freiberg, M., Govaerts, R., Grenié, M., Hassler, M., Kattge, J., Muellner-Riehl, A.N., Rojas Andrés, B.M., Winter, M., Watson, M., Zizka, A. and Wirth, C. (2023)
The big four of plant taxonomy – a comparison of global checklists of vascular plant names.
New Phytologist.
https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.18961
Sharing now as only now this last week I came across this.
I was busy doing ecology–botany–ecological restoration outdoors for most of the last 3+ months.
Regarding the necessity of plants taxa’ authors’ names (as standard according to the ICBN: https://www.iapt-taxon.org/icbn/main.htm ) .
(For animals too: author names and publication dates as standard according to the IZN: https://code.iczn.org/ ).
An important quotation:
"
But the sheer scale of differences in accepted names linked to taxon names across all lists means that it is unlikely they will be checked in the short term, leaving users with no choice but to acknowledge the idiosyncrasies and potentially test for their effect on name resolution.
Such tests, however, should include botanical author names, but unfortunately, at a time where large global databases as TRY, GBIF, or GIFT make huge amounts of data available to ecologists, there is a tendency to omit author names for simplicity.
This is not only the fault of the users themselves – the majority (76%) of the taxon names submitted to the v.6 of TRY had no author names.
Problems arising through this are well known among taxonomists, but mostly ignored or unknown in other research communities.
Examples include wrong distribution models or animal names ending up in botanical databases.
While only 3–5% of taxon names in the different checklists are homonyms (Fig. 2h), their author names being necessary for correct assignment, we argue increased attention should be paid when submitting data involving taxonomic information to any database.
Especially for homonyms, which have a list dependence of > 0.5, inconsistencies in databases may have a substantial impact on inferences drawn.
"
Supporting scholarly references:
• Park, Daniel S., Feng, X., Akiyama, S. et al. (2023)
The colonial legacy of herbaria.
Nature Human Behaviour 7 1059–1068.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01616-7
Abstract: "
Herbarium collections shape our understanding of Earth’s flora and are crucial for addressing global change issues. Their formation, however, is not free from sociopolitical issues of immediate relevance. Despite increasing efforts addressing issues of representation and colonialism in natural history collections, herbaria have received comparatively less attention. While it has been noted that the majority of plant specimens are housed in the Global North, the extent and magnitude of this disparity have not been quantified. Here we examine the colonial legacy of botanical collections, analysing 85,621,930 specimen records and assessing survey responses from 92 herbarium collections across 39 countries. We find an inverse relationship between where plant diversity exists in nature and where it is housed in herbaria. Such disparities persist across physical and digital realms despite overt colonialism ending over half a century ago. We emphasize the need for acknowledging the colonial history of herbarium collections and implementing a more equitable global paradigm for their collection, curation and use.
"
Full list of the authors: "
Daniel S. Park, Xiao Feng, Shinobu Akiyama, Marlina Ardiyani, Neida Avendaño, Zoltan Barina, Blandine Bärtschi, Manuel Belgrano, Julio Betancur, Roxali Bijmoer, Ann Bogaerts, Asunción Cano, Jiří Danihelka, Arti Garg, David E. Giblin, Rajib Gogoi, Alessia Guggisberg, Marko Hyvärinen, Shelley James, Ramagwai J. Sebola, Tomoyuki Katagiri, Jonathan A. Kennedy, Tojibaev Sh. Komil, Byoungyoon Lee, Serena M. L. Lee, Donatella Magri, Rossella Marcucci, Siro Masinde, Denis Melnikov, Patrik Mráz, Wieslaw Mulenko, Paul Musili, Geoffrey Mwachala, Burrell E. Nelson, Christine Niezgoda, Carla Novoa Sepúlveda, Sylvia Orli, Alan Paton, Serge Payette, Kent D. Perkins, Maria Jimena Ponce, Heimo Rainer, L. Rasingam, Himmah Rustiami, Natalia M. Shiyan, Charlotte Sletten Bjorå, James Solomon, Fred Stauffer, Alex Sumadijaya, Mélanie Thiébaut, Barbara M. Thiers, Hiromi Tsubota, Alison Vaughan, Risto Virtanen, Timothy J. S. Whitfeld, Dianxiang Zhang, Fernando O. Zuloaga and Charles C. Davis .
"
—in easy reading plain English, a synopsis of the foregoing scholarly article:
Daniel Park
Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences, Purdue University
Published: 2023 June 13th 1.00am AEST
Colonialism has shaped scientific plant collections around the world – here’s why that matters
The Conversation
https://theconversation.com/colonialism-has-shaped-scientific-plant-collections-around-the-world-heres-why-that-matters-207375
Discuss here please:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/the-colonial-legacy-of-herbaria-re-plants-and-fungi-specimens-official-collections/44531
• Daru, B. H. and J. Rodriguez (2023 May 1st)
Mass production of unvouchered records fails to represent global biodiversity patterns.
Nature Ecology and Evolution 7 816–831.
Publisher official publication page (paywalled): https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02047-3
Full text: https://darulab.org/docs/46_Daru_Rodriguez_2023_NatEcolEvol.pdf
Discuss here please: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/mass-production-of-unvouchered-no-specimens-records-fails-to-represent-global-biodiversity-patterns/44529
.
• Alexandre Antonelli – Professor of Biodiversity, Director of Science, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Published: 2020 June 19th 11.11pm AEST
Director of science at Kew: it’s time to decolonise botanical collections
The Conversation
https://theconversation.com/director-of-science-at-kew-its-time-to-decolonise-botanical-collections-141070
<Beware of the English demagoguery backlash I read in the English media!!!> .
Please discuss here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/director-of-science-at-kew-it-s-time-to-decolonise-botanical-collections/44533 .
• etc.
.
I propose, to discuss these in future separate posts for each.
.