ID: 613 / 65

Category: Symposia

Track: Pending

Proposed Symposium Title: WORLD FLORA ONLINE: DEVELOPING TAXONOMIC CONSENSUS FOR LAND PLANTS SUPPORTING SCIENCE, CONSERVATION AND SUSTAINABLE USE

Abstract: The World Flora Online (WFO, http://worldfloraonline.org) has developed over the last decade to represent a comprehensive knowledge base on the world’s plant species. Comprising over 50 botanical institutions and organisations worldwide, the WFO Consortium recognizes the need for the synthesis of botanical knowledge generated through more than 260 years of botanical exploration, taxonomic and, more recently, phylogenetic research worldwide. Endorsed by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, WFO successfully met Target 1 of the 2011-2020 Global Strategy for Plant Conservation: an electronic online Flora of all known plants. WFO has become a first-ever unique and authoritative global source of information on the world’s plant diversity, compiled, curated, moderated, and updated by an expert and specialist-based global community (TENs, Taxonomic Expert Networks covering a taxonomic group such as family or order) and actively managed by those who have compiled and contributed the data. At the heart of the WFO is a consensus classification (taxonomic backbone) which aims to provide the most up-to-date source of scientific plant names and their synonyms, and is used to publish regular editions of the WFO Plant List (https://wfoplantlist.org): an archived, citable checklist of all plants. Full accreditation and acknowledgement is given to original sources, allowing users to refer back to the primary data. A strength of the project is that it is led and endorsed by a global consortium of the leading botanical institutions worldwide. The WFO Consortium is committed to continuing the WFO programme over the coming decade to become an increasingly authoritative source of information on the world’s plant biodiversity. This symposium will include a range of speakers, outlining the technical and taxonomic efforts to achieve the WFO and how WFO is being used support plant conservation worldwide. Speakers will also highlight future priorities and perspectives on further development and use of the WFO.

Speaker 1: Nadja Korotkova and Thomas Borsch Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin, Dahlem Centre of Plant Science (DCPS), Berlin, Germany N.Korotkov@bo.berlin, T.Borsch@bo.berlin Bridging the phylogeny to classification gap at genus and species levels to obtain the best possible taxonomic knowledge in the Caryophyllales TEN

Speaker 2: Marianne Le Roux South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa M.LeRoux@sanbi.org.za Integrating taxonomic and floristic data into a global perspective: The case of the S African checklist

Speaker 3: Alan Elliott Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh a.elliott@rbge.org.uk Electronic tools and social networks: resolving names and integrating newly described taxa in developing a global consensus classification for land plants

Topics (Up to three): Conservation

Topic 2: Bioinformatics

Topic 3: Systematics

Justification: Supported by the international taxonomic community, WFO provides a continuously updated taxonomic synthesis of plants (spermatophytes, pteridophytes, bryophytes). Its reliable, globally consistent consensus classification is fundamental to managing biodiversity data, and is needed to answer big questions in environmental change, conservation biology, restoration, ecology, and floristics. Plant taxonomy and systematics have been revolutionised by evolutionary approaches, digitization, and biodiversity informatics. Building a global consensus classification and bringing these data together for applied users is a multidisciplinary scientific endeavour. The symposium will present and discuss the WFO collaboration, achievements to date, and involve IBC participants in its future.