Format: ORAL

Mara Sanz-Arnal1, Pablo Garca-Moro1, Carmen Bentez-Bentez2, Marina Coca-de-la-Iglesia3, Anglica Gallego-Narbn3, Consolacin Barciela1, Fabrizio Bartolucci4, Matthew Bradley5, Asuncin Cano6, Antoine Derouaux7, Sabina Donado8, Marcial Escudero2, Gabriele Galasso9, Sebastian Gebauer10, Mariela Fabbroni11, Kerry A. Ford12, M. Socorro Gonzlez-Elizondo13, David Hamon14, Matthias H. Hoffmann10, Xiao-Feng Jin 15, Jacob Koopman16, Bangze Li17,18, 19, Ral Lois 3,20, Yi-Fei Lu15, 21, Modesto Luceo1, Santiago Martn-Bravo 1, Jos Ignacio Mrquez-Corro1, Attila Mesterhzy22, Mnica Mguez1, Ana Morales-Alonso1, Muthama Muasya23, Paulo Muoz-Schler24, Robert F.C. Naczi25, Nora Oleas26, Luciana Pereira-Silva27, Radomr Repka28, Anton A. Reznicek29, Katie K. Sanbonmatsu5, Enmily Snchez26, Daniel Spalink5, Arne Strid30, Pieter Vanormelingen31, Filip Verloovee32, Karen L. Wilson 33, Shuren Zhang17, 18, Pedro Jimnez-Mejas1

1 Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain 2 Universidad de Sevilla, Seville, Spain 3 Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain 4 Centro Ricerche Floristiche dell’Appennino, Barisciano, Italy 5 Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA 6 Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Museo de Historia Natural y Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Lima, Perú 7 Natagora asbl, Namur, Belgium 8 Instituto de Botánica Darwinion (CONICET-ANCEFN), Buenos Aires, Argentina 9 Museo di Storia Naturale di Milano, Milano, Italy 10 Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Geobotany and Botanical Garden, Halle (Saale), Germany 11 Universidad Nacional de Salta, Salta, Argentina 12 Allan Herbarium (CHR), Manaaki Whenua, Landcare Research, Lincoln, New Zealand 13 CIIDIR, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Durango, México 14 Independent Researcher, Lavau-sur-Loire, France 15 Zhejiang Agricultural and Forestry University, Lin’an, Zhejiang, China 16 ul.Kochanowskiego, Choszczno, Poland 17 Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China 18 China National Botanical Garden, Beijing, China 19 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China 20 Universidad de León, Campus de Vegazana s/n, 24007, León, Spain 21 College of Life Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China 22 Independent Researcher, Celldömölk, Hungary 23 University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa 24 Herbario CONC, Universidad de Concepción, Concepción, Chile 25 New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY 10458, USA 26 Universidad Indoamérica, Machala y Sabanilla, Quito, Ecuador 27 Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Campus Trindade, Santa Catarina, Brazil 28 Mendelova univerzita v Brne, Brno, Jihomoravský, Czech Republic 29 University of Michigan Herbarium, Michigan, USA 30 Bakkevej 6, Ørbæk, Denmark 31 Natuurpunt Studie vzw, Mechelen, Belgium 32 Meise Botanic Garden, Meise, Belgium 33 National Herbarium of New South Wales, New South Wales, Australia

Species occurrences are essential for research requiring spatially-based information. The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is the primary and most popular source of occurrences. However, species identification and georeferencing data in GBIF is often affected by imprecision. Accordingly, a curation process is needed to prevent downstream errors, biases and/or inaccuracies derived from their use. Because of its high species diversity, taxonomic complexity, and wide distribution, occurrence data from Carex L. (Cyperaceae) are not exempt from these errors. In this context, we present an expert-curated global compilation of Carex occurrences mined from different sources (online databases, herbaria, literature, and fieldwork collections). Beyond basic quality-control procedures, the dataset was reviewed by experts, who curated both geographical inaccuracies and misidentifications. The final expert-curated database contains 397,239 records. During the curation, 16,604 occurrences were flagged as potentially erroneous, and 7,672 taxa names were changed. The resulting dataset has occurrences for 1,679 Carex species (c. 80% of all currently accepted species). Finally, we compared the differences between the raw and the expert-curated database. Our work highlights the importance of high-quality taxonomic and geographic data and provides a significantly enhanced Carex occurrence database that is made available for future research in the genus.