Biodiversity Information Science and Standards : Conference Abstract
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Corresponding author: Sabine von Mering (s.vonmering@bgbm.org)
Received: 10 Apr 2019 | Published: 13 Jun 2019
© 2019 Sabine von Mering, Hossein Akhani, Salvador Arias, Walter G. Berendsohn, Thomas Borsch, Idelfonso Castañeda-Noa, Jurriaan de Vos, Markus Dillenberger, Urs Eggli, Andreas Fleischmann, Maria Hilda Flores-Olvera, Patricia Hernández-Ledesma, Gudrun Kadereit, Cornelia Klak, Nadja Korotkova, Maryam Malekmohammadi, Abigail Moore, Reto Nyffeler, Gilberto Ocampo, Juan Javier Ortiz Díaz, Bengt Oxelman, Richard Rabeler, Boris Schlumpberger, Tanja Schuster, Martín Timaná, Pertti Uotila, Fernando Zuloaga
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: von Mering S, Akhani H, Arias S, Berendsohn W, Borsch T, Castañeda-Noa I, de Vos J, Dillenberger M, Eggli U, Fleischmann A, Flores-Olvera M, Hernández-Ledesma P, Kadereit G, Klak C, Korotkova N, Malekmohammadi M, Moore A, Nyffeler R, Ocampo G, Ortiz Díaz J, Oxelman B, Rabeler R, Schlumpberger B, Schuster T, Timaná M, Uotila P, Zuloaga F (2019) The Global Caryophyllales Initiative: Towards an updated taxonomic backbone and a dynamic monograph of a major plant group. Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 3: e35357. https://doi.org/10.3897/biss.3.35357
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The ongoing paradigm shift in taxonomy from individual contributions to a truly collaborative and forward-looking endeavour results in a number of challenges related to distributed data management. Examination of physical specimens remains a key task, but searching for specimen data, literature, and name information is now mostly done online. In the past, these research steps involved many physical visits to collections and libraries. Although these infrastructures were and are still freely accessible and supportive for research carried out by individuals, the amount of characters, specimens, and the complexity of current analytical approaches limit what can be achieved by individual workers. Monographing is challenged because:
The process towards generating truly community-based integrative dynamic taxonomic treatments is ongoing. In botany, specialist communities and networks have formed for certain plant groups, for example in the families Solanaceae, Brassicaceae, Fabaceae, Poaceae, Melastomataceae-Miconieae, Asteraceae-Cichorieae, and in the order Caryophyllales. Their common aim is to create sustainable information systems according to the FAIR principles, making the information Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. At the same time, the information system is meant to support and document ongoing taxonomic research as an iterative process with tracking of changes, and backlinks to original data sources. This represents a big step forward with respect to the efficiency of the entire field of taxonomy.
The Global Caryophyllales Initiative aims at creating a global synthesis of species diversity in this group (
Caryophyllales diversity: Examples shown are Pereskia sacharosa Griseb. (Cactaceae), Portulaca mexicana P.Wilson (Portulacaceae), Agrostemma githago L. (Caryophyllaceae), Limonium mucronatum (L.f.) Chaz. (Plumbaginaceae), Drosera aliciae Raym.-Hamet. (Droseraceae), and Antigonon leptopus Hook. & Arn. (Polygonaceae). Photographs: B. Schlumpberger (A), G. Ocampo (B), N. Korotkova (C-E), I. Castañeda-Noa (F).
Advances by the network are presented in the open-access Caryophyllales Portal (http://caryophyllales.org/), aiming to provide up-to-date phylogenetic and taxonomic information. The systematic treatment is powered by the EDIT Platform for Cybertaxonomy (https://cybertaxonomy.eu/), with the generic checklist (http://caryophyllales.org/Checklist) and some family treatments already publicly available (e.g. Cactaceae). The checklist is regularly updated in consultation with family editors. A species-level taxonomic backbone incorporating all names and pertinent nomenclatural acts and evaluations is being compiled. A compilation of the Nepenthaceae (
Several challenges remain, inter alia the genomics perspective in biodiversity informatics, proper attribution and unique identification of taxonomic concepts, review and impact assessment of individual contributions, possibilities to simultaneously display contrasting taxonomical concepts and classifications, and engaging both the wider taxonomic community and the public.
The ongoing implementation shows that a dynamic online monograph requires rethinking of editorial workflows. Based on experiences with the Caryophyllales network, the taxonomic and biodiversity informatics communities are ready to meet this challenge.
Sabine von Mering