Format: ORAL

Roger Hyam

Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

The WFO Plant List is a collaboratively built, consensus classification of the vascular plants and bryophytes of the world. Its primary purpose is as the taxonomic backbone for the WFO portal but versions of the list are also published twice a year as an API, downloadable files and deposits in GBIF and ChecklistBank. Data for the list is provided by Taxonomic Expert Networks (TENs). There are currently 47 TENs including over 280 active researchers. The TENs submit data in bulk or use an online editing tool called Rhakhis. The WFO Plant List is not a primary data source. Ideally each assertion made in the list should be supported by a scientific publication. The publications provide two types of evidence; nomenclatural and taxonomic. Nomenclatural publications include the original place of publication but also publications associated with other nomenclatural acts such as lectotypification. Taxonomic publications are used to justify the placement of the name within the consensus taxonomy. There are currently approximately 1.6 million names and four hundred thousand accepted taxa in the list. The number of literature citations required are therefore in the millions. Maintaining bibliographic information on all the associated publications would be a major curatorial burden. Furthermore, presenting the user with only bibliographic information would be of little use if the publication referenced was not widely available. This is particularly the case outside major botanical institutions. It would be preferable for the user to simply click a link and be taken to the actual publication. Using persistent identifiers such as DOIs and those from Plazi and the Biodiversity Heritage Library we have now achieved direct links to the literature for over 50% of the names. Our approach and the challenges we face will be described.