Abstract Detail
Biodiversity Informatics & Herbarium Digitization Pearson, Katelin D. [1]. Rapid enhancement of biodiversity occurrence records using unconventional herbarium specimen data. The ability of herbarium specimens to expand our understanding of biodiversity has not yet reached its full potential. Herbarium specimen labels not only contain data on the collected specimen, but often document the presence of associated species as well. Associated species records can be considered reliable observational occurrence data recorded by experienced professionals: specimen collectors. If harnessed, these records could significantly improve our knowledge of species distributions from the past and into the present. Using the Global Names Recognition and Discovery tool API and the R programming environment, I developed an automated method to aggregate and clean associated species datasets from “habitat” data fields of digitized herbarium specimen records. Pilot studies using full-family datasets of Robert K. Godfrey (FSU) herbarium specimens reveal that my method increases existing occurrence records by 12-27%. I will explore the results of my pilot studies in this talk and show the extent to which my method can improve our knowledge of where and when species occur.
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1 - Florida State University, Biological Sciences, Tallahassee, FL, 32306, USA
Keywords:
Biodiversity
species distributions
digitized herbarium data
associated species.
Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 31, Biodiversity Informatics & Herbarium Digitization I
Location: Fort Worth Ballroom 6/Omni Hotel
Date: Tuesday, June 27th, 2017
Time: 2:15 PM
Number: 31002
Abstract ID:109
Candidate for Awards:None | 
