From Plant Press, Vol. 13, No. 4 from October 2010.
On 2 August, the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) published 853 new taxon pages for cyanolichens, lichens whose phycobiont is a cyanobacterium. This is the latest milestone in a project begun two years ago with support from the Drouet Fund, a bequest of the late Francis Drouet which supports care and maintenance of cyanobacterium collections.
The lichen collections of the United States National Herbarium constitute one of the finest and most complete research resources of its kind. Specialists worldwide take advantage of these specimens and their related data to support studies in systematics, ecology, biogeography, and other species-based research. Over the last 50 years there have only been two lichen curators caring for these collections, Mason Hale and Paula Depriest, the latter departing almost ten years ago. Even during their respective curatorial tenures, the backlog of unprocessed specimens was considerable and, despite a steady flow of foreign students under Depriest, a great deal of curation and specimen identification was needed. And, except for the single family Parmeliaceae (a Hale specialty), no non-type specimens had been databased or imaged.
The Cyanolichen Index was a project conceived by Rusty Russell to improve the state of the lichen collections by processing and conserving backlog collections, improving specimen level identifications, and databasing specimens. Because the Drouet bequest specifies support of cyanobacteria, those lichen taxa containing blue-green phycobionts (mainly Nostoc) were project priorities. Finally, in concert with lichen specialists around the world, the plan included the creation of an EOL page for each species.
The first task was to continue an existing contract with Patty Groome who had been processing backlog lichens under an earlier Collections Conservation Grant. The majority of the backlog lichens have been housed at the Museum Support Center and, under the guidance of Greg McKee, collections coordinator for ferns, lichens and bryophytes, specimens were prioritized, selected and returned to the Mall for processing. Including the work conducted under the earlier grant, a total of 12,300 specimens have been processed, conserved and added to the collection. This is the critical step, making these important specimens available to scientific study.
Next we addressed the need to electronically deliver specimen data, a process that we pioneered in 1970 with the Type Register. In the early 1990s, the lichen family Parmeliaceae was completely databased resulting in over 40,000 specimen records. Contractor Jackie Carroll began the task of entering cyanolichen data into EMu, the electronic museum specimen catalog. She was followed by Zuvayda Abdurahimova, a lichenlogist and former Fulbright Scholar from Turkmenistan, who has also improved the curatorial state of the collection by resolving nomenclatural problems and identifying new collections. Since the project’s inception, almost 7,000 specimen records have been created.
Finally, Kerry Carfagno, a student at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, was hired to begin the tedious task of assembling species information from published sources and organizing it for eventual posting to the Encyclopedia of Life. An online workspace http://cyanolichens.lifedesks.org was set up to manage the mountain of data being acquired. Information (when available) is provided on life habit, morphology, habitat, distribution, toxicity, and conservation status. In addition, protolog citations, synonyms, and a reference list of data sources are also included. Eight lichen scholars have signed up to review and approve content.
Compared to the majority of EOL pages, this project represents a unique methodology for acquiring and delivering data. This is the only EOL effort encompassing this many taxa that draws its information solely from the published literature. With each bit of data properly referenced against a bibliographic resource that numbers almost 400 titles, the species information is both well-cited and easily revisited, and it results from the published efforts of the entire community rather than a single researcher or research team. Hundreds of high quality images were graciously provided through a Creative Commons license by Stephen Sharnoff who produced all of the photographs for the landmark publication Lichens of North America, Yale University Press, 2001. And, at the urging of Carfagno, hundreds more were provided by a site devoted to tropical lichens http://www.tropicallichens.net which is now a content partner in EOL.
The task of improving collections in an enterprise as large as the U.S. National Herbarium is daunting and never-ending. But a multi-year push to make positive changes in this particular part of our collection has been very successful due to the graciousness of our partners and the competence of our staff, students and contractors.
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