Literature as a source of Latimer core specimen groupings across institutional boundaries

[rondlg]

from: | Nicky Nicolson [email protected]
to: | "[email protected]" [email protected]
date: | 5 Sept 2024, 00:57

Hello Sharon,

Congratulations to you and your colleagues on getting Latimer core ratified.

I asked at the symposium session about how to represent groups of specimens which extend across multiple herbaria, such as those cited in bibliographic work, which you thought should be possible by establishing the article as the (parent of the?) object group

Here’s an example (this is from a Pensoft journal so possible that the specimens cited are mobilised to GBIF as material citations, but the principle applies to work published in any journal)

Stirton CH, Bello A, Muasya AM (2024) Ten new species and notes on the genus Psoralea L. (Psoraleeae, Fabaceae) from South Africa. Plant Ecology and Evolution 157(3): 291-312. https://doi.org/10.5091/plecevo.120171

Some relevant parts of the article:

Keywords include taxonomic and geographic scope: Fynbos, new species, Otholobium, Psoralea, South Africa, taxonomy

Abstract / Material and methods – Standard practices of herbarium and field taxonomy have been applied to study herbarium material available at B, BLFU, BM, BOL, BR, E, GRA, J, JRAU, K, KEI, L, LE, LINN, M, MO, NBG, NH, NU, NY, OXF, P, PRA, PRC, PRE, PRU, S, SAM, SCHG, SRGH, TCD, Z, ZT, and US. Additional material was provided from fieldwork by the authors and collaborators.

Main article / materials and methods - Voucher materials collected during this study were prepared and deposited in the Bolus herbarium (BOL).

Acknowledgements [thanks] to the Curators and staff of the following herbaria: BM, BOL, G, K, MO, NU, P, PRE, PRC, SAM, TUB, and W for the loan of their material or hosting visits to their herbaria.

We should be able to use Latimer core to define that these herbaria contain specimens in the genus Psoralea from South Africa.

Some questions relating to this example:

Should the long list of herbaria (in materials and methods) be used in preference to the shorter list cited in acknowledgements?
Should BOL (holder of material collected for the study) be differentiated from the other collections cited (which hold material cited).

Happy to add to the Latimer core github project / wiki if you like - have you guidelines for the format of use cases now that you are a ratified standard?

As I mentioned, I have a plant sciences intern with me for the next 12 months, this could be a nice short project for her, particularly if we were able to develop a pipeline using a large language model to reformat the specified parts of the article to Latimer core.

All the best

Nicky