Specimen Citations

[Mary Barkworth]

How about one of the plant taxonomy societies offering such a Web site? For
*voluntary* submission of data? Let the enforcement come from Journals. ASPT
officers - any comment?
-----Original Message-----
From: MARK WATSON [mailto:M.Watson at RBGE.ORG.UK]
Sent: Monday, November 15, 1999 10:04 AM
To: TAXACOM at USOBI.ORG
Subject: Re: Specimen Citations


> I am struggling with the problem of specimen citations.  As was noted
> recently, specimens are the data on which taxonomic research is based, so
> citations of those specimens are critically important.  However, it is a
> time-consuming process to enter specimen data into a spreadsheet/database.
> Recently, it took about six hours to enter data on just over 100 specimens
> (most were fairly quick, but about a third of them were from Europe and I
> had to spend some time trying to decipher foreign languages to determine
> locality).  -- I could annotate a lot of specimens in the time it took me
> to enter those data (and I have a lot waiting to be annotated!), and no
> editor is going to allow publication of all those citations (however, I
> realize a copy could be placed in some library to make them available).

Incorporating specimen data into a database should be a routine
part of a preparing a taxonomic revision or floristic treatment. Due
to limited space publishers are unwilling to include lengthy lists,
but those that do immediately increase the scientific usefulness of
the work by several orders of magnitude. I would argue that the list
of specimens cited is the ONLY objective measure of the
circumscription we have for the  taxonomic concept of the author.
Text descriptions cannot be used to accurately circumscribe taxa
as they may contain elements from the author's experience and
not derived from the specimens he/she was using at the time.
Having a complete specimen lists enables direct comparasions of
alternative classifications.

In an earlier posting Colin Hughes and Denis Filer make a plea for
a respositary for such specimen listing, comparable say to
Genbank for molecular sequences. I would totally endorse this
suggestion but at the moment cannot suggest a way to bring this
about!

> The info. I include in my specimen citations includes as much as possible
> of the following:
> Determination (mine)
> Date Determined
> Country
> Province/State
> County
> lat/long
> Sec/Township/range
> Specific Locality, incl. ecol.
> Collector
> Collection #/Date
> Notes (mine, on the specimen)
> Original determination
> Herbarium Acronym

Altitude would be an obvious addition, maybe also the herbarium
accession number and/or barcode when appropriate. For the
purpose of identifying a single specimen only basic collecting data
is needed, e.g.
Collector, collector number, herbarium abbreviation
other data can be added if these do not accurately identify a single
sheet/collection
eg date, accession number, barcode number, sheet number, etc.

Regards Mark

__________________________________________________
Dr Mark F.Watson
Umbelliferae/Apiaceae and Flora of China

Royal Botanic Garden
Edinburgh, EH3 5LR
SCOTLAND, U.K.

Telephone: 0131 248 2828
Facsimile: 0131 248 2901

Electronic Mail: m.watson at rbge.org.uk
Institute Homepage: http://www.rbge.org.uk
Araliales Homepage: http://www.rbge.org.uk/data/URC/arc.htm
__________________________________________________