Today’s alarmingly high rate of plant extinction necessitates an increased understanding of the world’s biodiversity. An estimated 15 to 30 percent of the world’s flowering plants have yet to be discovered, making efficiency an integral function of future botanical research—but how is this best accomplished? Botanist Dr. Gerrit Davidse, John S. Lehmann of the Missouri Botanical Garden, and eight British botanists collaborated to quantify the role of plant collectors in the discovery of plant diversity.

Their study looked at four datasets from some of the world’s major plant collections, and in all instances found a huge difference in the distribution of types of specimens discovered by plant collectors. Roughly two percent of plant collectors were responsible for half of all types of specimens discovered, while approximately half of all plant collectors had each contributed only a single type of specimen.

Closer examination of prolific plant collectors outlines a number of significant traits possessed by the group. The number of plant species discovered increases with the years of collection experience; however, the rate of species discovery for these prolific plant collectors decreases over the duration of collection activity as they discover more in a shorter amount of time.

Geography also plays a part in explaining the success of prolific plant collectors. Although these experienced researchers tend to visit more countries, the vast majority of their plant species discoveries come from a single country.

Prolific collectors also show a significant increase in their discoveries towards the end of their careers. Most specialize on a particular country, which leads to an increased knowledge of the flora in a particular area. The more years they collect plants, the better and faster they become at collecting new species. This observation highlights the critical role of the expertise gained from many years in the field. Experienced collectors many not collect as large a quantity of plants as novice collectors, but their accumulated botanical knowledge provides them with the skill to be selective, thus increasing the number of new species found.

Plant collecting is a specific part of the three-step process of plant species discovery (collection, recognition and publication), and as the numbers of professional taxonomists who classify plants decline, there has been a massive increase in the utilization of non-professionals to aid in this work. This study suggests that as science pushes for more rapid documentation of the world’s flora, we must examine how best to develop the experience and skills of selected individuals to catalog undiscovered plants more efficiently.

Source: Missouri Botanical Garden. For the full article, please click here.