Abstract 1. The widespread digitization of natural history collections, combined with novel tools and approaches is revolutionizing biodiversity science. The ‘extended specimen’ concept advocates a more holistic approach in which a specimen is framed as a diverse stream of interconnected data. Herbarium specimens that by their very nature capture multispecies relationships, such as certain parasites, fungi and lichens, hold great potential to provide a broader and more integrative view of the ecology and evolution of symbiotic interactions. This particularly ap- plies to parasite–host associations, which owing to their interconnectedness are especially vulnerable to global environmental change. 2. Here, we present an overview of how parasitic flowering plants is represented in herbarium collections. We then discuss the variety of data that can be gathered from parasitic plant specimens, and how they can be used to understand global change impacts at multiple scales. Finally, we review best practices for sampling parasitic plants in the field, and subsequently preparing and digitizing these specimens. 3. Plant parasitism has evolved 12 times within angiosperms, and similar to other plant taxa, herbarium collections represent the foundation for analysing key aspects of their ecology and evolution. Yet these collections hold far greater potential. Data and metadata obtainedmore »
The Herbarium 2021 Half–Earth Challenge Dataset and Machine Learning Competition
Herbarium sheets present a unique view of the world's botanical history, evolution, and biodiversity. This makes them an all–important data source for botanical research. With the increased digitization of herbaria worldwide and advances in the domain of fine–grained visual classification which can facilitate automatic identification of herbarium specimen images, there are many opportunities for supporting and expanding research in this field. However, existing datasets are either too small, or not diverse enough, in terms of represented taxa, geographic distribution, and imaging protocols. Furthermore, aggregating datasets is difficult as taxa are recognized under a multitude of names and must be aligned to a common reference. We introduce the Herbarium 2021 Half–Earth dataset: the largest and most diverse dataset of herbarium specimen images, to date, for automatic taxon recognition. We also present the results of the Herbarium 2021 Half–Earth challenge, a competition that was part of the Eighth Workshop on Fine-Grained Visual Categorization (FGVC8) and hosted by Kaggle to encourage the development of models to automatically identify taxa from herbarium sheet images.
- Award ID(s):
- 2054684
- Publication Date:
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10382227
- Journal Name:
- Frontiers in Plant Science
- Volume:
- 12
- ISSN:
- 1664-462X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Herbarium collections shape our understanding of the world’s flora and are crucial for addressing global change and biodiversity conservation. The formation of such natural history collections, however, are not free from sociopolitical issues of immediate relevance. Despite increasing efforts addressing issues of representation and colonialism in natural history collections, herbaria have received comparatively less attention. While it has been noted that the majority of plant specimens are housed in the global North, the extent of this disparity has not been rigorously quantified to date. Here, by analyzing over 85 million specimen records and surveying herbaria across the globe, we assess the colonial legacy of botanical collections and how we may move towards a more inclusive future. We demonstrate that colonial exploitation has contributed to an inverse relationship between where plant biodiversity exists in nature and where it is housed in herbaria. Such disparities persist in herbaria across physical and digital realms despite overt colonialism having ended over half a century ago, suggesting ongoing digitization and decolonization efforts have yet to alleviate colonial-era discrepancies. We emphasize the need for acknowledging the inconvenient history of herbarium collections and the implementation of a more equitable, global paradigm for their collection, curation, and use.
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Publisher's Version of Record
- https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2021.787127
