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Story: GBIF Seed Money to Support Two Consortia of Scientists to Develop Global Catalogues of Plants
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The GBIF Secretariat is pleased to announce that two international consortia of scientists have been awarded seed money to carry out work on the Compositae (USD 199500) and the Melastomataceae (USD 67000).
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| Released on: |
06 March 2006 |
| Contributor: |
Not applicable |
| Language: |
English |
Spatial coverage: |
Not applicable |
Keywords: |
Compositae, Melastomataceae |
| Source of information: |
GBIF Secretariat |
| Concerned URL: |
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The 2005-2006 Request for Proposals (RFP) for ECAT Seed Money emphasised several priority areas:
- pollinating taxa, with relevance to the International Pollinators Initiative, and
- plant families with relevance to the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation:
- Asteraceae (Compositae),
- Malvaceae and
- Melastomataceae
These topics were chosen based on an e-conference held in early 2005, to set priorities.
The RFP resulted in 16 pre-proposals; three full proposals were requested from among these following review.
The Review panel recommended to the GBIF Secretariat to support two of the proposed projects. These are:
A Global Working Checklist of the Compositae www.compositae.org
This family comprises approximately 10% of the world’s angiosperm flora, and contains many species of economic importance as well as many invasive species. This project will integrate and make available substantial nomenclatural and taxon concept data for the estimated 25,000 species (with approximately 75,000 synonyms) of Compositae. The funded consortium includes
- Landcare Research in New Zealand (lead institution)
- International Compositae Alliance (TICA),
- South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI),
- Smithsonian Institution,
- Royal Botanic Gardens Kew,
- Missouri Botanical Garden,
- University of Tokyo,
- Berlin Botanic Garden,
- and the Australian National Herbarium.
MelList www.melastomataceae.net
The Melastomataceae occur in all tropical biomes, are abundant, ecologically important, and comprise many horticulturally important species. MelList will be a freely accessible list of the ca. 13,278 names of Melastomataceae (incl. Memecylaceae) with information on recognized species, synonymous names, and literature. Wherever possible, names will be linked to images of specimens to which particular names have been applied (often types). The list will be publicly accessible at Botanische Staatssammlung München’s LIAS platform. LIAS is currently serving Global Species Database data on lichenized and non-lichenized ascomycetes to Species 2000 europa. It is set up for on-line data capture and upload of data to Species 2000 and GBIF. Melastomataceae comprise an estimated 3000 "good" species in the Neotropics, 240 in Africa, 230 on Madagascar, and about 1000 in Asia. Memecylaceae comprise 500 species, most of them in the paleotropics. The participating taxonomists are leading specialists on Melastomataceae, and MelList will be a pilot for collaborative taxonomic revision, done interactively in real-time by multiple users on a single data base. The cooperating institutions involved include
- Botanische Staatssammlung München (lead),
- California Academy of Sciences,
- Missouri Botanical Garden,
- New York Botanical Garden,
- Universidade Federal do Paraná (herbarium UPCB),
- Instituto de Investigación de Recursos Biológicos Alexander von Humboldt.
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Please note that this story expired on 2006/04/20
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