Specimen Citations

[Stinger]

I have been asking for specimen databases for years and haven't had many
offers. I will reiterate that I will be happy to post specimen databases
on our website as a provisional measure until a proper venue and format
can be established.  We can translate from almost any windows based
database or spreadsheet, or delimited text files from anything.  I try
to integrate them as much as possible.

There are about 8 million herbarium specimens online already in the
world and the number is rapidly growing.  We have 30,000 online right
now here at FTG - all with pictures (Actually, wait till the end of the
week to check, we're installing a new RAID system so the server is down
for a few days).  The great thing about virtual herbaria is that you
don't have to have the specimens physically to have them in your
database.  We have the National Herbarium of the Cayman Islands on our
site are experimenting with Z39.50 type interfaces and XML to link
several herbaria.  Ideally, eventually all herbarium specimens will be
on the web in an enormous virtual herbarium and you will simply be able
to check off which ones you use.  We already database every specimen
that we send out and make those records (as well as the jpegs of the
specimens) available to researchers who request them.

There are several specimen management programs available, For example,
BIOTA and SPECIFY may be the most popular among independant researchers
in the US and go far toward getting standard files that everybody can
use.  Dominant herbaria have incorporated their own formats - Missouri
Botanical Garden has quite a hidden industry of specimen data entry in
their own proprietary system.  Australian herbaria have a clear and
useable format HISPID and about 1/4 of the world's online herbarium
specimens.

As for a big database - This is already happening.  I have been working
on just the sort of thing that you mention, a sort of GENBANK for
herbarium specimens, for some time now.  The problem is a lack of
complete and readily available authority files, everyone has to use the
same ones and there just aren't complete and readily available standards
yet.  I am working on  ways to fix this, a lot of other people are as
well.  The Taxonomic Databases Working Group meeting in Boston last
month was well attended and there are several other similar meetings
getting a lot of attention these days.

To my knowledge Systematic Botany, especially SB Monographs still
publish lists of material examined.  It is essential information for a
taxonomist, especially in works such as floras or simple treatments that
do not include a complete diagnosis of the taxa. I am highly suspicious
of any monograph or revision that does not cite the specimens examined
somewhere.  In the case of a dissertation publication , the reader can
be referred to the original dissertation, but the citations need to be
somewhere.







--
Gerald "Stinger" Guala, Ph.D.
Keeper and Curator of the Herbarium
Systematist
Fairchild Tropical Garden
11935 Old Cutler Rd.
Miami, FL 33156

http://www.ftg.fiu.edu/