Format: ORAL

Alina Freire-Fierro1, 10, 11, 12, Sirli Leython2, Jorge Marcelo Caranqui Aldaz3, Diego Gutirrez del Pozo4, Nora Oleas5, Angel Bentez6, Zhofre Aguirre Mendoza7, Nelson Jaramillo7, Priscilla Muriel8, Rebeca Cortez Zambrano9

1 Curadora Asociada, Herbario UTCEC, Universidad Técnica de Cotopaxi, Facultad CAREN, Campus Salache, Latacunga, Ecuador. Alina.freire@utc.edu.ec 2 Universidad Técnica de Ambato, Facultad de Ciencias Agropecuarias, Herbario Misael Acosta Solís (AMAS). Campus Querochaca, Cantón Cevallos vía a Quero. Teléfono: (+593) 2746171 – 274615. Ambato – Ecuador, sll.leython@uta.edu.ec 3 Herbario Escuela Superior Politécnica del Chimborazo, Facultad de Recursos Naturales, Km 1.5 Panam. Sur, Riobamba- Ecuador. jcaranqui@espoch.edu.ec. 4 Herbario Amazónico del Ecuador ECUAMZ, Universidad Estatal Amazónica, Carretera Tena a Puyo Km. 44, Carlos Julio Arosemena Tola 150950, Napo, Ecuador, dgutierrez@uea.edu.ec 5 Herbario HUTI, Universidad Tecnológica Indoamérica, Machala y Sabanilla, Quito, Ecuador, noraoleas@uti.edu.ec 6 Herbario HUTPL, Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, Campus Loja, Loja, Ecuador, herbarium@utpl.edu.ec 7 Herbario "Reinaldo Espinosa". Universidad Nacional de Loja. Campus La Argelia. Loja, Ecuador, zhofre.aguirre@unl.edu.ec, nelson.jaramillo@unl.edu.ec 8 Herbario QCA, Escuela de Ciencias Biológicas, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador. Av. 12 de Octubre 1076 y Roca, Quito-Ecuador. herbarioQCA@puce.edu.ec 9 Administradora de colecciones QUSF, Universidad de San Francisco de Quito, Quito, Ecuador, rcortez@usfq.edu.ec 10 Research Associate, Botany Department, Natural History Museum, Smithsonian Institution, 1000 Jefferson Dr. SW, Washington, DC 20004, USA/ 11 Research Associate, Missouri Botanical Garden, 4344 Shaw Blvd, St. Louis, MO 63110, USA/12 Research Associate, Universidad Regional Amazónica Ikiam, Tena, Ecuador

Ecuador, despite being a small Neotropical country, includes two of the 36 biodiversity hot-spots: Tropical Andes and the Choc/Darin/Western Ecuador. Per 1000 km2, Ecuador has more than 6 times the diversity of vascular plants occurring in China, Brazil, Europe, and USA-Canada combined. The literature and direct interviews to personnel from the 18 active Ecuadorian herbaria listed in GRSciColl demonstrate an urgent need for increasing/mobilizing botanical collections as well as the need for support for botanical research in Ecuadorian institutions. Also, it is necessary to highlight the very low number of taxonomists in Ecuador. They, being experts in the area, know how to properly identify and handle these specimens. As such, they are the core of the herbarium operativity. Ecuador registers more than 22,000 vascular plant species names including synonyms, Ecuadorian collections house almost 800,000 specimens, more than 4,900 of which are types. In contrast, only one herbarium from the Global North has more than 600,000 Ecuadorian specimens including +6,000 types. Despite the low average number of Ecuadorian botanists working on herbaria (1-2 FT employees/herbarium), big efforts have been made to digitize almost 400,000 of these specimens. Many of these records are available in GBIF and/or global databases such as Tropicos, and Symbiota as well as in local databases. Potential contributions from Ecuadorian herbaria towards areas such as floristics, molecular phylogenetics, metagenomics, identification with artificial intelligence and accelerated taxonomic efforts are immense. With the climatic crisis we are going through, there is an urgent need for increasing collecting and digitization efforts, describing more plant taxa by local taxonomists, updating/studying the conservation status of the more than 5,000 endemics to Ecuador and repatriating duplicates and/or type images from herbaria from the Global North. Similar situation could be foreseen for other herbaria in biodiversity hot-spots countries from the Global South.