Biodiversity Information Science and Standards :
Conference Abstract
|
Corresponding author: Walter G. Berendsohn (w.berendsohn@bgbm.org)
Received: 25 Sep 2024 | Published: 26 Sep 2024
© 2024 Walter Berendsohn, Silvia Lusa Bernal, Banessa Falcón Hidalgo, Dagoberto Rodríguez Delcid, Peter Moonlight, Henry Engledow
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Berendsohn WG, Lusa Bernal S, Falcón Hidalgo B, Rodríguez Delcid D, Moonlight PW, Engledow H (2024) Enhancing Herbarium Systems Using Name Matching Mechanisms. Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 8: e137867. https://doi.org/10.3897/biss.8.137867
|
|
Virtual aggregators of organism names and taxa play a normative role in consolidating the global biodiversity information infrastructure, serving as resources for researchers worldwide. These aggregators may serve as the glue that binds together local data, ranging from individual researchers' spreadsheets to large databases containing taxonomic checklists for countries or entire regions of the world. The European Union-funded TETTRIs project (Transforming European Taxonomy through Training, Research and Innovations) targets both local data holders and aggregators, aiming to motivate and enable local users to verify their data with the aggregators and, optionally, to link to the aggregators’ services (
Here we focus specifically on botanical collection databases, i.e., the plant names contained in herbarium databases. By matching these names to botanical data aggregators like the World Flora Online (WFO) Plant List or the World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP), curators can identify and correct obvious errors in their records. Where an exact match is obtained, the curators can check the aggregator’s opinion about the nomenclatural validity, the taxonomic acceptance and the classification of their name, which may help e.g., in the processing of loan requests. Additionally, by reporting missing or incorrect names or commonly used orthographic variants, curators contribute to improving the overall quality of the infrastructure.
There are several services that may be used for name matching. We strongly suggest using the service offered by the WFO Plant List, because the dataset is becoming the most comprehensive global resource for the names of plants (excluding algae). It is inclusive, i.e., it tries to cover all names and name-like designations that have been used in published taxonomic sources. It provides unique, resolvable and stable WFO name identifiers (
We looked at specimen occurrence data supplied by herbaria to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). GBIF facilitated a dataset (
Some measures can be taken on the aggregator’s side to improve the matching process. For example, aggregators should optionally provide exact matches for minor discrepancies in name strings that do not reflect true differences, such as spacing in abbreviated author citations or removing designations like 'spp.' or 'Indet.' to match only the name-citing portion. Other corrections have to be made in the herbarium database itself, e.g., the addition of name authors where these are missing. We found that author citations or the lack of these, represented the main issue of non-exact matching in the data uploaded to GBIF.
With local databases and aggregators improving their data and services, a subscription service using aggregator IDs as outlined in
herbarium management system, JACQ, Specify, WFO, WFO Plant List, Catalogue of Life
Walter G. Berendsohn
SPNHC-TDWG 2024
Horizon Europe Programme Grant Agreement 101081903
TETTRIs, Transforming European Taxonomy through Training, Research and Innovations