ID: 613 / 120

Category: Symposia

Track: Pending

Proposed Symposium Title: INVENTORYING THE PLANT DIVERSITY OF THE EURO-MEDITERRANEAN AREA: INTEGRATING TAXONOMIC PROGRESS INTO DYNAMIC WEB CHECKLISTS AND ELECTRONIC FLORAS

Abstract: Since the beginning of scientific plant taxonomy in the 18th century, botanists have aimed at complete species inventories of defined areas, from local floras to lists of all known plants on planet earth. Such inventories are now more needed than ever before. Constant loss of biodiversity is one of the most severe problems that we are facing in the 21st century. To assess the magnitude of that loss and to develop tools and measures to protect species from extinction, taxonomic inventories at different scales provide indispensable baseline data. For several reasons, floras and checklists can almost never be complete. Despite the continuing loss of plant diversity, the number of newly described taxa in Europe and the Mediterranean amounts to ca. 200 in one year. The flora there is still incompletely documented at a regional scale and insufficiently known, especially at the level of microspecies and apomicts, which represent a particular challenge for comprehensive checklists. Furthermore, flora and vegetation are changing through the continuous introduction of alien and invasive species. Phylogenetic research is revolutionizing taxonomy in many plant groups, and limits of taxonomic units are constantly redefined, which leads to a vast number of name and concept changes that need to be reflected in modern taxonomic treatments in checklists and floras. For all those reasons, the traditional production of printed floras or electronically available static treatments cannot keep pace with the changes. To overcome this impediment, more and more floristic projects have shifted their mode of publication to dynamic, continuously updated online products, facilitated by the advance of modern tools of biodiversity informatics. Therefore, this symposium brings together new methods and examples of projects with focus in the Euro-Mediterranean region, which are well suited to take up the challenge of providing science and society with reliable, up-to-date plant inventories.

Speaker 1: Dr. Eckhard von Raab-Straube Freie Universität Berlin, Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin, Königin-Luise-Str. 6-8, 14195 Berlin, Germany e.raab-straube@bo.berlin Euro+Med PlantBase - how to integrate taxonomic knowledge and provide plant diversity data at a continental level

Speaker 2: Prof. Dr. Panayotis Dimopoulos UNIVERSITY OF PATRAS School of Natural Sciences Department of Biology Section of Plant Biology, Laboratory of Botany University Campus, 26504 Rio, Greece Tel: +30.2610.996777, +306944297537 E-mail: vrec_resd@upatras.gr; pdimopoulos@upatras.gr Designing a comprehensive online and print flora from scratch – the Flora of Greece project

Speaker 3: Prof. Dr. Lorenzo Peruzzi Orto e Museo Botanico Dipartimento di Biologia VIA DERNA 1 56126 PISA lorenzo.peruzzi@unipi.it Assessing floristic diversity in Italy – bridging local to national levels to achieve rapid and representative updating through the portal of the Flora of Italy.

Topics (Up to three): Floristics

Topic 2: Systematics

Topic 3: Phylogenetics and phylogenomics

Justification: This symposium will present and discuss current projects and achievements to integrate taxonomic knowledge to dynamic checklists and floras and will be of general interest to many attendants of the IBC. The topic of presenting accurate and up-to-date plant inventories which are the basics for many areas of research in plant sciences such as agriculture and forestry, biogeography, conservation, vegetation sciences, ecology and many more is fundamental for a wide user spectrum beyond the field of floristics and taxonomy. The Euro-Mediterranean region where several biodiversity hotspots are located is of particular interest in this context.