Format: ORAL

Farminho, J.

Jardim Botânico da Universidade de Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal. Sociedade Portuguesa de Botânica, A-dos-Potes, Portugal

Platforms such as iNaturalist provide botanists with unprecedented, accurate and universal access to information on spatially-structured and taxonomically significant colour variation in angiosperms, which was historically inaccessible through herbarium specimens or, more recently, highly dispersed through slide collections and multiple web resources. This wealth of newly and readily available data will accelerate the pace of species description and taxonomic revision of multiple taxa in which flower colour is key to diagnosis. As a proof of concept, I here illustrate the potential of iNaturalist, and other online platforms, to uncover unaccounted or long-neglected taxonomic diversity in three genera of the Iberian Flora. On a more practical side, I present a quick guide for online species discovery using photographic data, and introduce a citizen science initiative to map colour variation in iris plants on iNaturalist, championed by the Botanical Society of Portugal.