Taxonomic and Community Classification Resources and Standards

Taxonomic and Community Classification Resources and StandardsRobert K. PeetUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Beware of dangerously obsolete standards A.E. Radford, C.R.Bell. H.Ahles. 1968. Manual of the vascular flora of the Carolinas. J.K. Small. 1933. Manual of the southeastern flora.

Resources for plant names

Why we need to use new floras and new resources New names New taxon concepts (lumps & splits) New discoveries Taxa new to science New collections & overlooked collections New data sources (Plots, Heritage lists) New determinations

Our preferred standard! Alan S.Weakley. 2006 (or subsequent eds). Flora of the Carolinas,Virginia, Georgia, and surrounding areas. http://www.herbarium.unc.edu/flora.htm

Resources for plant names

Other modern standards: USDA Plants database http://plants.usda.gov/ Flora of North America http://hua.huh.harvard.edu/FNA/

Resources for plant names

Data integration requires unambiguous identification of organisms.Taxonomic names are ambiguous. Taxonomic concepts should be represented by a name and a reference.Single largest impediment to large-scale synthesis in ecology is the failure to document taxonomic concepts.

Species concepts & data

Abies lasiocarpaAbies bifoliaAbies lasiocarpasec. Littlesec. USDA PLANTSsec. Flora North AmericaThree concepts of subalpine firSplitting one species into two illustrates the ambiguity often associated with scientific names.

USDA Plants & ITISAbies lasiocarpa var. lasiocarpavar. arizonicaWhat are the fir trees of the West?

Flora North AmericaAbies lasiocarpa Abies bifoliaWhat is Abies lasiocarpa?Partnership with USDA plants to provide plant concepts for data integration

High-elevation fir trees of western North America AZ NM CO WY MT AB eBC wBC WA OR Abies lasiocarpa var. arizonicaAbies lasiocarpa var. lasiocarpaDistributionUSDA - ITISFlora North AmericaAbies bifoliaAbies lasiocarpaMinimal conceptsABC

Which species occur with Andropogon glomeratus?Record dataFind dataMerge data

Taxonomic headaches The Andropogon virginicus complex in Carolina has between 1 and 9 taxa, with 17 different concepts variously applied by 8 important authors.

The challenge: Few large-scale compilations of concepts and their relationships are available.The good news: Multiple organizations are developing tools for concept use and integration. The greatest progress has been made here in the Southeast

Toward a new AtlasCarya carolinae-septentrionalis, Radford et al. 1968How to integrate new sources of data??http://herbarium.unc.edu/seflora/firstviewer.htm

Add dynamic access to NCU collectionCarya carolinae-septentrionalisNCURAB

Carya carolinae-septentrionalisNCURABUSDACVSAdd USDA PLANTS records & CVS vegetation plot data

But wait !!There is a concept issueAccording to Radford 1968, USDA PLANTS v 4.0, & Weakley 2006Carya carolinae-septentrionalisCarya ovataAccording to Stone 1997 in Flora of North America.Carya ovata var australisCarya ovata var. ovata

Carya carolinae-septentrionalisSome nominal occurrences might or might not represent the taxon

Community types with the concept

Resources for community compositionCarolina Vegetation Survey website http://cvs.bio.unc.edu/ Mike Schafale & Alan Weakley. 1990. Classification of the natural communities of North Carolina. Third approximation. http://www.ncnhp.org/Images/Other%20Publications/class.pdf U.S. National Vegetation Classification (NVC; see below)

TNatureServe Explorer current home of the NVC

TCommunity descriptions with links to VegBank

www.vegbank.org

LinksCarolina Vegetation Surveyhttp://cvs.unc.edu Weakley florahttp://herbarium.unc.edu/flora.htmNCU Atlas of the SE florahttp://herbarium.unc.edu/seflora/firstviewer.htmThanks EEP, NSF (SEEK, VegBank), NC Bot. Garden