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World Flora Online: Placing Taxonomists at the Heart of a Definitive and Comprehensive Global Resource on the World's Plants

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World Flora Online: Placing Taxonomists at the Heart of a Definitive and Comprehensive Global Resource on the World's Plants TAXON 69 (6) • December 2020: 1311–1341 Borsch & al. • World Flora Online METHODS AND TECHNIQUES World Flora Online: Placing taxonomists at the heart of a definitive and comprehensive global resource on the world’s plants Thomas Borsch,1 Walter Berendsohn,1 Eduardo Dalcin,2 Maïté Delmas,3 Sebsebe Demissew,4 Alan Elliott,5 Peter Fritsch,6 Anne Fuchs,7 Dmitry Geltman,8 Adil Güner,9 Thomas Haevermans,10 Sandra Knapp,11 M. Marianne le Roux,12,13 Pierre-André Loizeau,14 Chuck Miller,15 James Miller,15 Joseph T. Miller,16 Raoul Palese,14,16 Alan Paton,17 John Parnell,18 Colin Pendry,5 Hai-Ning Qin,19 Victoria Sosa,20 Marc Sosef,21 Eckhard von Raab-Straube,1 Fhatani Ranwashe,22 Lauren Raz,23 Rashad Salimov,24 Erik Smets,25 Barbara Thiers,26 Wayt Thomas,26 Melissa Tulig,26 William Ulate,15,16 Visotheary Ung,10 Mark Watson,5 Peter Wyse Jackson15,16 & Nelson Zamora27 1 Botanischer Garten und Botanisches Museum Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, Königin Luise Str. 6–8, 14165 Berlin, Germany 2 Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro, Rua Pacheco Leão 915, SI 203, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 3 Direction des relations européennes et internationales, Direction des relations avec les Outremer, Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, CP24-57, Rue Cuvier, 75005 Paris, France 4 National Herbarium, Department of Plant Biology and Biodiversity Management, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia 5 Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 20a Inverleith Row, Edinburgh, EH3 5LR, U.K. 6 Botanical Research Institute of Texas, 1700 University Drive, Fort Worth, Texas 76107-3400, U.S.A. 7 Australian Biological Resources Study, Australian Government, Department of Environment and Energy, John Gorton Building, King Edward Terrace, Australia 8 Komarov Botanical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professora Popova str. 2, Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation 197376 9 Nezahat Gökyigit Botanik Bahcesi, Istanbul, Turkey 10 Institut de Systématique, Evolution, Biodiversité ISYEB, Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Sorbonne Université, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Université des Antilles, CP 50, 45 rue Buffon, 75005 Paris, France 11 Department of Life Sciences, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD, U.K. 12 Biosystematics Research and Biodiversity Collections Division, Pretoria National Herbarium, South African National Biodiversity Institute, Private Bag X101, Pretoria 0001, South Africa 13 Department of Botany and Plant Biotechnology, University of Johannesburg, P.O. Box 524, Auckland Park 2006, South Africa 14 Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques de la Ville de Genève, Ch. de l’Impératrice 1/C.P. 71, 1292 Chambésy, Genève, Switzerland 15 Missouri Botanical Garden, 4344 Shaw Blvd., Saint Louis, Missouri 63110-2226, U.S.A. 16 Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark 17 Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 3AB, U.K. 18 Herbarium, Botany Department &Trinity Centre for Biodiversity Research, School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland 19 Beijing Institute of Botany, 20 Nanxincun, Xiangshan, Beijing 100093, China 20 Instituto de Ecología AC, Carretera antigua a Coatepec 351, 91073 Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico 21 Meise Botanic Garden, Nieuwelaan 38, 1860 Meise, Belgium 22 Biodiversity Information and Policy Advice Division, Kirstenbosch Research Centre, South African National Biodiversity Institute, Private Bag X7, Claremont 7735, Cape Town, South Africa 23 Instituto de Ciencias Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, D.C., Colombia 24 Institute of Botany Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences, Badamdar Highway 40, AZ1004, Baku, Azerbaijan 25 Naturalis Biodiversity Center, P.O. Box 9517, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands 26 The New York Botanical Garden, 2900 Southern Blvd., Bronx, New York 10458-5126, U.S.A. 27 Herbario Nacional de Costa Rica, Departamento de Historia Natural, Museo Nacional de Costa Rica, Apdo. 749-1000, San José, Costa Rica Address for correspondence: Thomas Borsch, [email protected] DOI https://doi.org/10.1002/tax.12373 Article history: Received: 19 Nov 2019 | returned for (first) revision: 31 Jan 2020 | (last) revision received: 17 Sep 2020 | accepted: 21 Sep 2020 | published online: 26 Nov 2020 | Associate Editor: Dirk C. Albach | © 2020 The Authors. TAXON published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Association for Plant Taxonomy. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. Version of Record 1311 Borsch & al. • World Flora Online TAXON 69 (6) • December 2020: 1311–1341 Abstract It is time to synthesize the knowledge that has been generated through more than 260 years of botanical exploration, tax- onomic and, more recently, phylogenetic research throughout the world. The adoption of an updated Global Strategy for Plant Con- servation (GSPC) in 2011 provided the essential impetus for the development of the World Flora Online (WFO) project. The project represents an international, coordinated effort by the botanical community to achieve GSPC Target 1, an electronic Flora of all plants. It will be a first-ever unique and authoritative global source of information on the world’s plant diversity, compiled, curated, moder- ated and updated by an expert and specialist-based community (Taxonomic Expert Networks –“TENs”–covering a taxonomic group such as family or order) and actively managed by those who have compiled and contributed the data it includes. Full credit and acknowledgement will be given to the 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 more than 40 leading botanical institutions worldwide. A first milestone for producing the World Flora Online is to be accomplished by the end of 2020, but the WFO Consortium is committed to continuing the WFO programme beyond 2020 when it will develop its full impact as the authoritative source of information on the world’s plant biodiversity. Keywords biodiversity assessment; global species list; Global Strategy for Plant Conservation; science policy; taxonomy; vascular plants ■ INTRODUCTION community and applied users of biodiversity data, the WFO online portal will be the first comprehensive global resource There are an estimated 400,000 species of vascular plants for the discovery of information on plant species, their names, and bryophytes on Earth, with perhaps an additional 10% yet descriptions, distributions and conservation status. to be discovered. The majority are flowering plants (calcula- A globally consistent and reliable architecture for plant tax- tions centre around 352,000 to 370,000 accepted species; Paton onomy is a fundamental requirement for many applications, & al., 2008; Nic Lughadha & al., 2016), whereas gymnosperms amongst which conservation is foremost. Biodiversity monitor- amount to 1090 species (WCSP, 2016), and there are roughly ing and conservation status assessments are based on a con- 13,300 species of ferns and fern allies (Hassler, 2020), 12,800 sensus classification and accurate information on geographic mosses (Crosby & al., 2000), and 7500 hornworts and liver- ranges, often in the form of maps that present the complete worts (Söderström & al., 2016). These plants constitute the range of species occurrence across countries. International col- basis of most terrestrial ecosystems and hold answers to many laborative approaches such as the Global Biodiversity Infor- of the world’s health, social, environmental and economic mation Facility (GBIF, https://www.gbif.org) are increasingly problems. The completion of a full inventory of plant life is facilitating access to specimen and observational data. These vital for protecting threatened species of all kinds of organ- enable broad-scale biodiversity analyses and as such depend isms and realizing their full potential to support human needs on the linkage of these data to an authoritative taxonomic and before many of them become extinct. floristic source of information on all known plant taxa. At pre- The WFO portal is a freely available online source of rig- sent the IUCN Global Red List (IUCN, 2019), complemented orously assembled scientific verified biodiversity data on by the ThreatSearch database (BGCI, 2019), contains over bryophytes, pteridophytes, gymnosperms and angiosperms. 300,000 conservation assessments representing more than Backed by the international taxonomic community, the WFO 180,000 plant taxa, and merely uses the names as published provides two fundamental data resources critical for underpin- in the original assessments, whether accepted or synonyms. ning botanical research, plant conservation and the sustainable Such assessments will therefore benefit greatly from a globally use of plant resources. The first resource is a curated and upda- consistent taxonomic source that links synonyms to curren- table synonymized checklist of all plant species as well as tly accepted names. The need for a globally consistent name other taxon categories (families, genera, subspecies, etc.) – architecture to correctly link other plant-related data (e.g., the Taxonomic Backbone of the WFO. The Taxonomic Back- DNA sequence data, secondary compounds, medicinal and bone aims to provide the most up to date source of scientific nutritional
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