Abstract

MURGUIA-ROMERO, Miguel; ORTIZ, Enrique; SERRANO-ESTRADA, Bernardo  and  VILLASENOR, José Luis. Main collectors of Mexico’s vascular plants: a catalogue built from online databases. Rev. Mex. Biodiv. [online]. 2022, vol.93, e934044.  Epub Jan 20, 2023. ISSN 2007-8706.  https://doi.org/10.22201/ib.20078706e.2022.93.4044.

Databases of biological collections contain fundamental information for the study of biodiversity, hence the importance of their quality, which includes the data on collectors. For this purpose, a list of the main vascular plant collectors in Mexico was constructed to improve the quality of this information. A total of 3.7 million records of vascular plant specimens collected in Mexico were analyzed from the National System of Biodiversity Information (Sistema Nacional de Información sobre Biodiversidad; SNIB) of the Mexican National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad de México; Conabio) and the database of the National Herbarium of Mexico (Herbario Nacional de México; MEXU) of the Institute of Biology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). A “main collector” was considered anyone with 500 or more unique collection numbers in the database. A total of 610 main collectors were identified, who together contributed 83% of the records of vascular plants collected in Mexico, and a standardized list of their names is presented. The list of names of main collectors of vascular plants in Mexico is a useful tool for the cleaning and extraction of information from biodiversity databases.

Keywords : Biological collections; Biodiversity informatics; Collecting effort; Data cleaning; Floristics.

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