1 “Flora Brasiliensis Revisited” Workshop in Campinas, 24-25 October 2002 2 Data repatriation for Brazilian floristics projects – a European perspective and a view from Kew D.J.N. Hind, S.J. Mayo, D.C. Zappi, & E. Nic Lughadha [PPT Slide 1] The Problem Martius’s Flora Brasiliensis, citing nearly 23,000 species of vascular plants for Brazil, remains a key source of information for Brazil’s biodiversity. Although one of the great monuments of botanical science, there is a huge drawback for Brazilian botanists. Unfortunately, only a tiny proportion of the specimens, on which it is based, are housed in Brazilian herbaria. On the other hand, all these specimens, barring those since lost or destroyed by war or accident, are almost certainly located in European herbaria, since that is where the work was prepared. This is a significant handicap for Brazilian botany, because it prevents easy checking of the original sources, and makes critical identification of about 30% of Brazil’s plant species much more difficult. The Present Maintenance and Physical Access What is being done about this and what more can be done? Most of the herbaria where these specimens are held are public institutions whose ethic is to make their collections available for study by visiting botanists. In addition, these institutes undertake to carefully maintain the specimens in good condition, ensure that visitors properly handle the material, and usually provide a cost-free loan service to other institutes around the world wherever there is no evident risk to the material being sent. These services remain as fundamental commitments by these institutions, although in Europe we have seen a steady and alarming decline in levels of funding for herbaria, because national science policies have prioritized other areas. Electronic Access The Internet has created the possibility for an entirely new and additional way of providing access to herbarium collections. It is possible to imagine that the text and type specimens cited in Flora Brasiliensis could be available as images on web sites and the text searchable alongside a database of the cited specimens. It is even possible to imagine that all the specimens cited in Flora Brasiliensis could one day be viewed at the click of a mouse in the smallest local herbarium anywhere in Brazil. This is now technically feasible, but to actually carry it out in practice requires a large-scale operation. It is unavoidable that the majority of this exercise has to be carried out in Europe: this is where the bulk of the archives and herbarium collections are located alongside a considerable expertise, amongst the staff and researchers, on these historical collections. However, large historical (and modern) collections do exist in North America, for example in New York Botanical Garden (NY) [with significant duplicate sets of Blanchet, Burchell, Gardner, Glaziou, Sellow, Spruce, Ule], in Missouri (MO) and in the Smithsonian Institution (US). These institutions have their own databasing projects underway or proposals for creating or extending existing projects. Secondly, we cannot be absolutely sure where most of the specimens are located because the Flora itself involved the collaboration of many botanists working in many different European herbaria, and specimen location was 3 rarely cited in the early volumes. This has been further complicated by results of war and other unforeseeable events - the only certain way to find out where particular specimens are located is to go and look in likely herbaria. Thirdly, type specimens are not always clearly marked. There are many types that have not yet been clearly labelled as such and which are not separated into the characteristic red ‘type’ covers. The history of the ‘type’ covers has meant that there are many specimens in the covers that are not types. Many large herbaria do not keep types in a separate herbarium collection. To ensure that an image on a web site is really a type, a botanist must carry out a prior verification. Fourthly there is the scale of the task and the fact that it is additional to current workloads (and funding). Most herbaria in Europe have seen their staff dwindle in size and their capacity to meet traditional commitments impaired. Repatriation and electronic access need new resources. A quick search of major European institutes shows how disheartening the situation is. Paris (P) appears to have no obvious databases (or an obvious website – as it isn’t listed in IH). However, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (as Gallica – la bibliothèque numérique) has a poor PDF version of their copy of Flora Brasiliensis. However, apart from scanning a relatively dirty (foxed) copy, page wrinkles and all, the indexing and hyperlinks are very strange. There is the potential of a useful tool but it fails to live up to any expectations I have of it. The original scanning resolution was poor and the top copy was not the best copy to scan. In the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle the only obvious database is of material for the Flore de France; no other historical collections are mentioned. Berlin (B) appears to have nothing available. Vienna (W) is similarly void of databases. In Geneva the situation is much the same. In Munich (M) the situation is slightly better with INFOCOMP proposing to database and image Compositae types. No other phanerogams are proposed at the moment. In Copenhagen there is a limited type database, but apparently without images at present. In Stockholm (S) the situation is slightly better with a number of important collections databased: Botanical type collection (21469 records) Gymnosperm collection (7785 records) Linnean herbarium (3267 records) The ‘Nationaal Herbarium Nederland’ (AMD, L. U, and WAG) have united images of their types into one database available through the web. The situation in BR is also regrettable as, together with M and K it has failed twice to secure funding through the EU for databasing the collections in the three collections. Linnean collections, in the run-up to the tercentenary, are gaining prestige and many are now databased and several collections are online. They include BM, S, Moscow State University etc. Unfortunately these are of limited relevance to Brazil, but have to be considered in dealing with the nomenclature of several taxa. In Kew (K) we are making slow but steady progress. An example: Kew Herbarium In the absence of a grand concerted action plan, it has been a matter for individual herbaria to take action within their capabilities to ease this situation. 1. Improve possibilities for visiting Europe At Kew, the first approach to tackling the problem was to provide funding to make it easier for Brazilian botanists to visit Europe and study the collections there. This began with the Margaret Mee Fellowships which, since 1989, have provided 4 grants to visiting botanists and botanical artists from Brazil; this funding has been raised almost entirely by Kew. In 1999, Kew launched another grant programme (Kew Latin American Research Fellowships) funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, which has provided support to Brazilian and other Latin American botanists for visiting European institutes. This kind of funding is important because it is not necessarily linked to obtaining a qualification, but focuses on providing access to institutes in Europe. Unfortunately there are few other such programmes currently available, and the continuance of the Kew programmes requires that we regularly go looking for finance, normally from private sources. Without major endowment capital, the onward funding situation is inherently unstable; we normally seek new funding every three years, but without any guarantee that we will actually find the necessary funds. [PPT Slide 2] 2. Physical repatriation of data and images More recently, we have launched a herbarium data repatriation project in connection with the Plantas do Nordeste Programme for Northeast Brazil. A one-year pilot project (1999-2000) funded by the Darwin Initiative successfully surveyed all Kew specimens in eight plant families and developed a practical methodology. The outputs were: Access databases of all Kew specimens of these families revised for the project by specialists; a set of high quality, hard copy photographs (Cibachrome prints) of all the types from NE Brazil of these families together with a photocopy of the protologue of each, also verified by specialists, and; a year’s training and experience at Kew for a Brazilian botanist from NE Brazil. Complete sets of the photographs, protologues and databases were deposited at three herbaria in NE Brazil (IPA, CEPEC and HUEFS). [PPT Slide 3] 3. Enhancing repatriation with digital technology In 2001 we obtained further funding, from BAT Inc. (British American Tobacco Inc.), to extend this project for another three years to survey up to at least 45% of all Kew’s specimens from NE Brazil. At least three Brazilian botanists will be trained for up to a year each at Kew. A PDF version of Flora Brasiliensis Compositae has already been used, in the recent phase of the BAT sponsored Northeast Brazil Herbarium data repatriation project, to provide the protologues of species whose types are in Kew. The protologues are one part of the product of this project and are attached to the images of the types held at Kew. The same is true of de Candolles Prodromus. Using the PDF technology available within Adobe Acrobat (not the simple free Acrobat Reader) it is possible to overlay (underneath) a searchable text whilst still seeing the original. This phase of the project has moving into digital imaging and the construction of web pages, so that, in addition to the hard copy images which are still being deposited physically in Brazil, there will also be electronic access via the Internet. This is pioneer work, for which there are no readymade standards, and therefore we view the digital phase to be a pilot project rather 5 than a routine operation. At Kew, the NE Brazil Repatriation project has piloted digital imaging of herbarium specimens for the institute as a whole; it is in fact Kew’s first large scale attempt to catalogue and image a significant part of its Herbarium in digital form. [PPT Slide 4] [PPT Slide 5] The first year of BAT funding allowed data repatriation for the Compositae and Polygolaceae of NE Brazil. In the Compositae the database contains 4238 records, of which 439 are of types (including 107 phototypes); 328 digital images were captured and these are now available in two formats on our test web site (thumbnail 150 x 250 pixels at 32 Kb each (total = 65 Mb), and full screen images at 1000 x 1600 pixels at 200 Kb each (total = 10 Mb), totalling 75 Mb). The original 600 dpi images averaged 170 Mb each (total 560 Gb)! The third phase of this BAT funding is now well underway with the Leguminosae. Some 5500 specimens, including 381 types and 58 photoypes, have been databased so far this year (since April). This serves to show how variable the rate of progress is; the inclusion of a scanning and printing element will slow down all future stages. [PPT Slides 6–11] [PPT Slides 12–14] Training, quality control and data enhancement A key element in the protocols of the Kew repatriation project is the collaboration of a specialist taxonomist for each family tackled. Without this, the provision of web access would lead to too much confusion and become a mechanical task of huge proportions yielding no real scientific or training rewards for the participants. Our protocol means that the quality upgrade that the herbarium data undergoes is very significant during the project cycle. And, crucially, Brazilian botanists are intimately involved at every stage, acquiring expertise and experience, not only of such standard issues as nomenclature and historical literature, but also of the peculiarities of the collections found in Europe. Knowledge transfer from Europe to Brazil One important result of this experience is that ‘mining’ the European herbaria by Brazilian scientists will not only repatriate data and images that are essential for botanical science in Brazil, but it will also provide a new level of expertise in Brazil on those archives. A great deal of historical research by Brazilian scientists in Europe can be envisaged as a result. The huge botanical archive of K.F.P. von Martius, for example, has yet to receive the attention it needs and there are probably several PhD dissertations waiting to be carried out on him alone. In summary, the experts on Brazil’s historical archives in Europe should, in the end, be Brazilians rather than Europeans. The Future Kew aims to continue with the NE data repatriation project until all Kew specimens from NE Brazil have been surveyed. We estimate that this will require another round of funding and should be accomplished within 6 years from now. We are also seeking funding to continue our Fellowship programmes for Brazilian and 6 Latin American botanists. We are confident of obtaining these resources and maintaining the infrastructure to carry out the plans. On a larger scale of the Flora Brasiliensis, however, broader and more ambitious planning is required and to make this possible, political rather than technical initiatives are probably required at this stage. The linking of institutional databases whilst technically possible and desirable, may require further discussions. The example of linking the Gray Herbarium Index, Index Kewensis and the Australian Plant Names Index, into IPNI, has been a great success, so there would appear to be no real barrier to linking collections’ databases. It is an unfortunate fact that most national scientific policies, in Europe as elsewhere, do not apparently value museum and herbarium collections very highly when it comes to prioritizing funding. Science funding, itself under pressure overall, goes mostly elsewhere. Despite the obvious need for these reference collections to be mobilized for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, real funding increases are not generally being made. On the contrary, the institutes find themselves increasingly diverting their efforts away from basic botanical research and curation in order to find effective ways of justifying the continuance of their existing funding. In these conditions, the actions of individual institutes are less effective than concerted planning. It seems to us that there is here the basis for a major international project, with the Flora Brasiliensis as its focus, which will have a sufficient critical mass to attract the necessary funding from a wide variety of sources. We believe, however, that for this to get started, there has to be a clear political lead from Brazil itself, to validate any joint effort on the part of European institutes. Without this, such a project would probably not attract sufficient attention from European governments.