Taxonomy and Herbaria in Service of Plant Conservation: Lessons from Madagascar's Endemic Families

By G. Schatz. 2002

94 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Our actions during the next two decades will largely determine how many of the worlds ca. 300,000 species of vascular plants will survive for future generations. The fundamental data that define both the taxonomic frameworks within which species are circumscribed and delimited from related species, as well as the geographical distributions of those species, reside in the world's ca. 3000 herbaria. These herbaria, and the taxonomists who work in them, can and must play a critical role in identifying as rapidly as possible those species most threatened with extinction. A project that has focused on the species in Madagascar's seven endemic plant families has demonstrated the necessity of reviewing, and then revising when necessary, the existing taxonomic framework. Comprehensive databasing and georeferencing of primary occurrence data then facilitated simple GIS analyses of Extent of Occurrence, Area of Occupancy, estimates of the number of "subpopulations," and their presence/absence in protected areas, all of which are parameters that contribute to an expedient preliminary assessment of extinction risk. In addition, simultaneous mapping of all species in the endemic families revealed centers of species richness and endemism of particular conservation importance: both those already incorporated in the protected areas system, and, more importantly, those that currently fall outside of the protection network. Partnerships among the world's herbaria can efficiently achieve an initial global assessment of the most threatened vascular plant species by focussing on taxa endemic at political and regional (e.g., Hotspot) scales. The synthesis and analysis of the primary data housed in the world's herbaria-our only incontestable record of plant life on Earth-constitutes the most effective and robust means of directly informing conservation planning, and thereby minimizing the loss of plant diversity.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0f201804c7d4549f7146c944ae77b12e1b0edc8b

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Citations in the corpus

Identification of priority areas for plant conservation in Madagascar using Red List criteria: rare and threatened Pandanaceae indicate sites in need of protection (2007, methodology): “evaluating restricted range plant species using primary occurrence data from herbarium collections and recent field observations ( Schatz, 2002; Raharimampionona et al., 2006).”
IUCN Red List assessment and the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation: taxonomists must act now (2005, background): “…frameworks are, by definition, never “carved in stone”, and that new collections (and new eyes) will inevitably lead to their revision (and often expansion) by refining and re-evaluating hypotheses in the light of new data (Schatz, 2002) — a job that we are uniquely qualified to undertake.”
Deficiency in African plant distribution data - missing pieces of the puzzle (2006, background): “…Herbarium (http://www.chah.gov.au/avh/ avh.html), the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (http://www.gbif.org). or even a ‘specimen bank’ (Schatz, 2002) where standardized biogeographical information can be submitted, reviewed and exchanged by taxonomists, biogeographers and…”
Assessing the Relevance of Herbarium Collections as Tools for Conservation Biology (2017, background): “Such problems can be grouped into: (1) errors in the identification of samples (Schatz, 2002); (2) mismatches in the distribution caused by biased effort of collectors, either by collecting in places with easy access—the Broad-map effect^—, in areas close to the researchers’ place of residence or…”