Expanded and tidied up: German researchers have created an updated catalog of the known plant species. The database includes 351,180 vascular plants and 6160 natural hybrids, adding 70,000 plants to the previous inventory. In addition, the scientists have cleared up 181,000 confusing species names. In international plant research, scientists can now better ensure that they also mean the same plant when they use a species name.
From meadow herbs to forest trees to cacti: the numerous representatives of vascular plants (angiosperms) shape the face of our world and form the basis of terrestrial ecosystems. For centuries, botanists have been concerned with the task of systematically recording the diversity of the plant kingdom: They describe species and give them scientific names that provide a common basis for the various common names. For example, the daisy, which is also known as Tausendschön or Monthly Rose in German-speaking countries, bears the scientific name Bellis perennis. Not all plant species in the world have been systematically recorded yet: more and more species are constantly being discovered, described and named.
An update was necessary
The catalog “The Plant List” of the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew in London has been the most important reference source for knowledge about the world’s plant species and their names. However, it has not been updated since 2013 and includes a lot of unclear information that has crept into botany in the course of recording plant diversity, report the researchers working with Martin Freiberg from the University of Leipzig. For example, it often happens that there are several scientific names for a species. This may be due to the fact that researchers from different countries and at different times described these plants independently of one another, because they each considered them a new discovery.
“In my daily work in the Botanical Garden, I regularly come across species names that are ambiguous and the previous reference lists have gaps,” reports Freiberg. “That means every time research work that keeps you from the actual work, and above all, a limited reliability of the research results. I wanted to get rid of this huge construction site as well as possible, ”says the researcher. In the last ten years Freiberg has therefore compiled information from many databases, compared it and standardized the names listed there according to the best possible criteria. In addition, it recorded existing inequalities such as different spellings and synonyms on the basis of 4,500 studies. In addition, he added thousands of new species to the existing lists, which have been identified in recent years, primarily through modern molecular genetic analysis.
New reference work for botanists
This is how the now published “Leipzig Catalog of Vascular Plants” was created. As Freiberg and his colleagues explain, he is updating and expanding the existing knowledge about the naming of plant species enormously. The new list includes 351,180 vascular plant species and 6160 natural hybrids within 13,460 genera, 564 families, and 84 orders. In addition, the Leipzig Catalog of Vascular Plants lists all names used synonymously and provides further taxonomic details. This means that it contains over 70,000 more species and subspecies than the most important reference work to date, The Plant List, say the scientists. “The catalog can now help researchers across the globe mean the same species when they use a name,” says Freiberg.
Co-author Marten Winter from the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig adds: “Almost every direction in plant research depends on the reliable naming of species. Modern science often means combining data sets from different sources. It just has to be clear which species are meant, so as not to compare apples with pears or to represent different species as one species. The new reference now enables a much lower likelihood of confusion. And of course that increases the reliability of the research results, ”said Winter.
The scientists also hope that the new catalog can help make Leipzig one of the world’s most important centers for plant research. “This work was a real mammoth task, and with the Leipzig catalog of vascular plants Freiberg has rendered an invaluable service to the entire plant research world”, says the director of the Leipzig university herbarium Alexandra Müllner-Riehl in conclusion.
Source: German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv)
Halle-Jena-Leipzig. Articles: Scientific Data, doi: 10.1038 / s41597-020-00702-z