PAPER #2: EMBARGOED PRESS RELEASE
STRICTLY UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 12:00PM NOON ET (US) ON MONDAY, NOVEMBER 16,
2015
Region(s) of Interest: United Kingdom
Institution(s): University of Oxford; Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
Mistaken identities of tropical plants raise questions on biodiversity data
The primary way that researchers know anything about the
distribution of species in the natural world is via the specimen
collections housed in museums all around the world. As a result,
tremendous effort is being put into uploading data on those
collections into free and accessible databases (for example,
http://www.gbif.org). But researchers reporting in the Cell Press
journal Current Biology on November 16 have uncovered a big
problem: mistaken identities in those collections are incredibly
common, at least among tropical plants.
Since the 1970s, the world's plant collections have more than
doubled, but more than 50 percent of tropical specimens, on average, are likely to be incorrectly named, the
study suggests.
"Part of the reason for such rampant misidentification is the huge increase in the number of specimens which
have been collected in the last 50 years," says Robert Scotland of the University of Oxford. "The other reason is
the lack of expertise in many tropical plant groups. This produces a situation where huge numbers of incoming
specimens can overwhelm any efforts to identify them by the few people with the necessary skill."
This discovery has serious implications for the use of specimen data coming out of those natural history
collections. That might sound discouraging, but it's a problem that can be tackled.
"We estimate it takes £500 ($750) to revise a species, which means for the cost of one world-class footballer-[such as Barcelona megastar] Lionel Messi--it would be possible to monograph the entire flora of tropical
plants," Scotland says.
He and his colleagues say that they are now doing their part by actively exploring new integrated approaches to
taxonomy. They've brought their techniques together into something they call "foundation monographs," getting
their start with two plant groups (see http://www.springer.com/-/2/AU_yD0s52brxj7RSZdi1 and
http://phytokeys.pensoft.net/articles.php?id=5459).
The findings come as yet another timely reminder of how much there is to learn about biodiversity. "We know
so little about the natural world, but we still have a chance to document it properly!" Scotland says.
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This research was funded by the Systematics Association and Linnean Society, the BBSRC & NERC.
Current Biology, Goodwin et al.: "Widespread mistaken identity in tropical plant collections"
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.10.002
Related Files

This Dropbox contains a PDF of the paper proof, the supplemental info, and many photos from the
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (caption and credit info in
filename): https://www.dropbox.com/sh/igkd8t5qik8c8c5/AACkG1i9BUUEQtbWXnA_gMTia?dl=0
Author Contact:
Dr. Robert Scotland
Office: +44 01865 275059
Mobile: +44 07923 018981
robert.scotland@plants.ox.ac.uk
Media Contact:
Stuart Gillespie
Tel: +44 01865 283877
stuart.gillespie@admin.ox.ac.uk