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Plants, fungi and algae are important components of global biodiversity and are fundamental to all ecosystems. They are the basis for human well-being, providing food, materials and medicines. Specimens of all three groups of organisms are accommodated in herbaria, where they are commonly referred to as botanical specimens.The large number of specimens in herbaria provides an ample, permanent and continuously improving knowledge base on these organisms and an indispensable source for the analysis of the distribution of species in space and time critical for current and future research relating to global biodiversity. In order to make full use of this resource, a research infrastructure has to be built that grants comprehensive and free access to the information in herbaria and botanical collections in general. This can be achieved through digitization of the botanical objects and associated data.The botanical research community can count on a long-standing tradition of collaboration among institutions and individuals. It agreed on data standards and standard services even before the advent of computerization and information networking, an example being the Index Herbariorum as a global registry of herbaria helping towards the unique identification of specimens cited in the literature.In the spirit of this collaborative history, 51 representatives from 30 institutions advocate to start the digitization of botanical collections with the overall wall-to-wall digitization of the flat objects stored in German herbaria. Germany has 70 herbaria holding almost 23 million specimens according to a national survey carried out in 2019. 87% of these specimens are not yet digitized. Experiences from other countries like France, the Netherlands, Finland, the US and Australia show that herbaria can be comprehensively and cost-efficiently digitized in a relatively short time due to established workflows and protocols for the high-throughput digitization of flat objects.Most of the herbaria are part of a university (34), fewer belong to municipal museums (10) or state museums (8), six herbaria belong to institutions also supported by federal funds such as Leibniz institutes, and four belong to non-governmental organizations. A common data infrastructure must therefore integrate different kinds of institutions.Making full use of the data gained by digitization requires the set-up of a digital infrastructure for storage, archiving, content indexing and networking as well as standardized access for the scientific use of digital objects. A standards-based portfolio of technical components has already been developed and successfully tested by the Biodiversity Informatics Community over the last two decades, comprising among others access protocols, collection databases, portals, tools for semantic enrichment and annotation, international networking, storage and archiving in accordance with international standards. This was achieved through the funding by national and international programs and initiatives, which also paved the road for the German contribution to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).Herbaria constitute a large part of the German botanical collections that also comprise living collections in botanical gardens and seed banks, DNA- and tissue samples, specimens preserved in fluids or on microscope slides and more. Once the herbaria are digitized, these resources can be integrated, adding to the value of the overall research infrastructure. The community has agreed on tasks that are shared between the herbaria, as the German GBIF model already successfully demonstrates.We have compiled nine scientific use cases of immediate societal relevance for an integrated infrastructure of botanical collections. They address accelerated biodiversity discovery and research, biomonitoring and conservation planning, biodiversity modelling, the generation of trait information, automated image recognition by artificial intelligence, automated pathogen detection, contextualization by interlinking objects, enabling provenance research, as well as education, outreach and citizen science.We propose to start this initiative now in order to valorize German botanical collections as a vital part of a worldwide biodiversity data pool.
Eine komplette Liste aller auf den Seychellen gefundenen Laubmoose wird gegeben, die 107 Arten enthält. Darin werden 24 Arten angeführt, welche von S. Porembski im Frühjahr 1995 auf den Seychellen gesammelt wurden. Sieben Arten [Acanthorrhynchium loucoubense (Besch.) Fleisch., Brachymenium exile (Dozy & Molk.) Bosch & Lac., Campylopus robillardei Besch., Campylopus nanophyllus C. Müll. in Broth., Fissidens crispulus Brid., Leucoloma sinuosulum C. Müll. ex Besch. und Vesicularia albo-viridis (Ren.) Broth.] werden neu für die Seychellen nachgewiesen. Acroporium punctuliferum (Thw. & Mitt.) und Luisierella barbula (Schwaegr.) Steere Fleisch. sind neu für Afrika. Die floristischen Bezüge der Laubmoosflora der Seychellen zu denen der anderen ostafrikanischen Inseln wird kalkuliert.
Anläßlich der Untersuchung der Vegetation westafrikanischer Inselberge in der Republik Elfenbeinküste, in Senegal und in Guinea wurden auch Moose gesammelt. Ihre Bestimmung ergab 43 Neunachweise für diese Länder, die zu den floristisch am wenigsten bekannten tropischen Länder gehören. Es handelt sich überwiegend um Arten mit sehr weiten Arealen. Es wird angenommen, daß Inselbergstandorte aufgrund ihrer besonderen ökologischen Bedingungen eine Standortskonstanz über lange Zeit und auch in wechselnden Klimaperioden geboten haben. An solchen Refugien konnten trockenadaptierte Sippen in feuchteren Klimaperioden überdauern und sich in trockeneren Klimaperioden wieder auf Savannen ausdehnen. Die Neukombination Archidium globiferum (Brid.) Frahm (Pleuridium globiferum Brid.) wird für Archidium ohioense Schimp. ex C. Müll., eingeführt.
Acht Leber- und zehn Laubmoosarten werden von Inselbergen aus Benin angegeben. Fünf der Lebermoose (Acrolejeunea emergens, Riccia atropurpurea, R. congoana, R. discolor, R. moenkemeyeri) und alle Laubmoose (Archidium ohioense, Brachymenium acuminatum, B. exile, Bryum arachnoideum, B. argenteum, Bryum deperssum, Garckea moenkemeyeri, Hyophila involuta, Philonotis mniobryoides und Weissia cf. edentula) werden neu für Benin angegeben.
Over the last decades agroforestry parklands in Burkina Faso have come under increasing demographic as well as climatic pressures, which are threatening indigenous tree species that contribute substantially to income generation and nutrition in rural households. Analyzing the threats as well as the species vulnerability to them is fundamental for priority setting in conservation planning. Guided by literature and local experts we selected 16 important food tree species (Acacia macrostachya, Acacia senegal, Adansonia digitata, Annona senegalensis, Balanites aegyptiaca, Bombax costatum, Boscia senegalensis, Detarium microcarpum, Lannea microcarpa, Parkia biglobosa, Sclerocarya birrea, Strychnos spinosa, Tamarindus indica, Vitellaria paradoxa, Ximenia americana, Ziziphus mauritiana) and six key threats to them (overexploitation, overgrazing, fire, cotton production, mining and climate change). We developed a species-specific and spatially explicit approach combining freely accessible datasets, species distribution models (SDMs), climate models and expert survey results to predict, at fine scale, where these threats are likely to have the greatest impact. We find that all species face serious threats throughout much of their distribution in Burkina Faso and that climate change is predicted to be the most prevalent threat in the long term, whereas overexploitation and cotton production are the most important short-term threats. Tree populations growing in areas designated as ‘highly threatened’ due to climate change should be used as seed sources for ex situ conservation and planting in areas where future climate is predicting suitable habitats. Assisted regeneration is suggested for populations in areas where suitable habitat under future climate conditions coincides with high threat levels due to short-term threats. In the case of Vitellaria paradoxa, we suggest collecting seed along the northern margins of its distribution and considering assisted regeneration in the central part where the current threat level is high due to overexploitation. In the same way, population-specific recommendations can be derived from the individual and combined threat maps of the other 15 food tree species. The approach can be easily transferred to other countries and can be used to analyze general and species specific threats at finer and more local as well as at broader (continental) scales in order to plan more selective and efficient conservation actions in time. The concept can be applied anywhere as long as appropriate spatial data are available as well as knowledgeable experts.