The digitising efforts of herbaria aim to increase access to and impact of scientific collections, by making the data digitally accessible to the global community. Digitising the NHMUK’s botanical collection of around 5.1 million specimens is an ongoing process, but the majority of the type collections have already been imaged. The Chinese type collection has also been transcribed; however, during the recent georeferencing process, we realised that much of the data had been transcribed incorrectly, particularly the locality information in which 80% of the collection contained errors. We discovered 154 specimens that were mistakenly filed in China. We corrected the mistakes from the previous transcription and georeferenced the collection which consists of 3,736 records. In this paper, we discuss the problems and errors we encountered during the georeferencing process, detailing why there were mistakes, what made the transcription harder than expected and what could have led to errors. We also give a short description about the Chinese language and its difference from European languages, leading to complex problems for georeferencing. We provide a brief guide on how to georeference a Chinese collection, avoiding errors and making the georeferencing process easier and faster.

This study examines changing spatial patterns of botanical collections over a 400 year time frame, focussing on the collections at the Natural History Museum (BM) in comparison with global patterns. The Plant Collector Resource Database, which contains 68,000 collector records was used to generate 250,667 unique collector × country × date records. We observe an exponential increase in the number of collectors over time. The activities of collectors were investigated in 50-year time-slices from 1650–2000. We specifically considered the geographic scope of collections (i.e., countries in which collections were made), the depth of collections (i.e., the number of collectors per country) and the uniqueness of collections (i.e., the proportion not duplicated in other herbaria). Uniqueness was highest for the earliest time-slice. Collector activity is shown to be strongly influenced by extrinsic factors such as the development of trade and empire, which allowed for collections to expand in scope and depth, and conflicts, which reduced collecting activity. A striking finding concerns the uniqueness of collections through time. The considerable unique element of the collections in herbaria highlighted by this study provides a strong motivation for digitization efforts to ensure that collections are accessible to address key questions in systematics, biogeography, and ecology.

The Natural History Museum, London (NHMUK) has embarked on an ambitious programme to digitise its collections. The first phase of this programme was to undertake a series of pilot projects to develop the workflows and infrastructure needed to support mass digitisation of very large scientific collections. This paper presents the results of one of the pilot projects – iCollections. This project digitised all the lepidopteran specimens usually considered as butterflies, 181,545 specimens representing 89 species from the British Isles and Ireland. The data digitised includes, species name, georeferenced location, collector and collection date - the what, where, who and when of specimen data. In addition, a digital image of each specimen was taken. A previous paper explained the way the data were obtained and the background to the collections that made up the project. The present paper describes the technical, logistical, and economic aspects of managing the project.

BACKGROUND:The Natural History Museum, London (NHMUK) has embarked on an ambitious programme to digitise its collections . The first phase of this programme has been to undertake a series of pilot projects that will develop the necessary workflows and infrastructure development needed to support mass digitisation of very large scientific collections. This paper presents the results of one of the pilot projects - iCollections. This project digitised all the lepidopteran specimens usually considered as butterflies, 181,545 specimens representing 89 species from the British Isles and Ireland. The data digitised includes, species name, georeferenced location, collector and collection date - the what, where, who and when of specimen data. In addition, a digital image of each specimen was taken. This paper explains the way the data were obtained and the background to the collections which made up the project.NEW INFORMATION:Specimen-level data associated with British and Irish butterfly specimens have not been available before and the iCollections project has released this valuable resource through the NHM data portal.

Many species of plants and animals have advanced their phenology in response to climate warming in recent decades. Most of the evidence available for these shifts is based on data from the last few decades, a period coinciding with rapid climate warming. Baseline data is required to put these recent phenological changes in a long‐term context. We analysed the phenological response of 51 resident British butterfly species using data from 83 500 specimens in the collections of the Natural History Museum, London, covering the period 1880–1970. Our analysis shows that only three species significantly advanced their phenology between 1880 and 1970, probably reflecting the relatively small increase in spring temperature over this period. However, the phenology of all but one of the species we analysed showed phenological sensitivity to inter‐annual climate variability and a significant advancement in phenology in years in which spring or summer temperatures were warm and dry. The phenologies of butterfly species were more sensitive to weather if the butterfly species was early flying, southerly distributed, and a generalist in terms of larval diet. This observation is consistent with the hypothesis that species with greater niche breadth may be more phenologically sensitive than species with important niche constraints. Comparison of our results with post‐1976 data from the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme show that species flying early in the year had a greater rate of phenological advancement prior to the mid‐1970s. Additionally, prior to the mid‐1970s, phenology was influenced by temperatures in March or April, whereas since 1976, February temperature had a stronger influence on the phenology. These results suggest that early flying species may be approaching the limits of phenological advancement in response to recent climate warming.

Discovering biological diversity is a fundamental goal—made urgent by the alarmingly high rate of extinction. We have compiled information from more than 100 000 type specimens to quantify the role of collectors in the discovery of plant diversity. Our results show that more than half of all type specimens were collected by less than 2 per cent of collectors. This highly skewed pattern has persisted through time. We demonstrate that a number of attributes are associated with prolific plant collectors: a long career with increasing productivity and experience in several countries and plant families. These results imply that funding a small number of expert plant collectors in the right geographical locations should be an important element in any effective strategy to find undiscovered plant species and complete the inventory of the world flora.

Testing coevolutionary scenarios over extended geological timescales is fraught with difficulties. Most tests rely on comparisons of temporal variations in taxonomic diversity for the groups of interest: however, this approach typically excludes spatiotemporal data. Here, we apply a quantitative method that incorporates the spatiotemporal distributions of the proposed coevolving groups using a Geographical Information System. Distributional data for Cretaceous dinosaur and plant groups were mapped onto palaeogeographical reconstructions in a series of time-slices. Within each time-slice, palaeocontinental surfaces were divided into a series of grids, each of which was scored as present, absent or inapplicable (unsampled) for each group. Distributions were compared statistically to determine whether the putative coevolving groups co-occurred within grid squares more or less frequently than expected by chance. Pairwise comparisons were made between herbivorous dinosaur clades and major plant groups (e.g. cycads, angiosperms) on a global scale. Only three nonrepeated associations of marginal significance were recovered, demonstrating that, in general, current knowledge of the spatiotemporal distributions of these groups provides little support for coevolutionary hypotheses. The Geographical Information System methods used are readily applicable to many other questions whose answers are reliant on a detailed knowledge of organismal distributions in time and space. (C) 2010 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2010, 100, 1-15.

Este proyecto fue financiado durante un período de tres años, desde septiembre de 2006 a través de la Iniciativa Darwin del gobierno Británico. El objetivo de este trabajo es el estudio de los insectos acuáticos del Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi (PNNHP), Patagonia, Argentina. El parque incluye una gran variedad de hábitats que comprenden arroyos, ríos y lagos los cuales se distribuyen desde el bosque siempreverde frío, hasta la zona árida de estepa. Todo el material será identificado y depositado en las colecciones del Museo La Plata y el Museo de Historia Natural de Londres. Los fondos de la Iniciativa Darwin han sido utilizados para equipar un laboratorio de biodiversidad en las oficinas del PNNHP en Bariloche y la estación de investigación en Puerto Blest. Toda la información de los insectos acuáticos y las distintas formaciones vegetales donde éstos se han encontrado, se incluirá en una base de datos (la primera de su tipo en Patagonia) que utilizará la metodología GIS para analizar patrones de distribución de las especies en el parque. En estos momentos se están produciendo varias guías de campo para identificar los insectos acuáticos del PNNHP. Es nuestro deseo que los resultados obtenidos en este proyecto, contribuyan a la conservación de los sistemas acuáticos en Argentina y América del Sur

Palaeobiologists frequently attempt to identify examples of co-evolutionary interactions over extended geological timescales. These hypotheses are often intuitively appealing, as co-evolution is so prevalent in extant ecosystems, and are easy to formulate; however, they are much more difficult to test than their modern analogues. Among the more intriguing deep time co-evolutionary scenarios are those that relate changes in Cretaceous dinosaur faunas to the primary radiation of flowering plants. Demonstration of temporal congruence between the diversifications of co-evolving groups is necessary to establish whether co-evolution could have occurred in such cases, but is insufficient to prove whether it actually did take place. Diversity patterns do, however, provide a means for falsifying such hypotheses. We have compiled a new database of Cretaceous dinosaur and plant distributions from information in the primary literature. This is used as the basis for plotting taxonomic diversity and occurrence curves for herbivorous dinosaurs (Sauropodomorpha, Stegosauria, Ankylosauria, Ornithopoda, Ceratopsia, Pachycephalosauria and herbivorous theropods) and major groups of plants (angiosperms, Bennettitales, cycads, cycadophytes, conifers, Filicales and Ginkgoales) that co-occur in dinosaur-bearing formations. Pairwise statistical comparisons were made between various floral and faunal groups to test for any significant similarities in the shapes of their diversity curves through time. We show that, with one possible exception, diversity patterns for major groups of herbivorous dinosaurs are not positively correlated with angiosperm diversity. In other words, at the level of major clades, there is no support for any diffuse co-evolutionary relationship between herbivorous dinosaurs and flowering plants. The diversification of Late Cretaceous pachycephalosaurs (excluding the problematic taxon Stenopelix) shows a positive correlation, but this might be spuriously related to poor sampling in the Turonian-Santonian interval. Stegosauria shows a significant negative correlation with flowering plants and a significant positive correlation with the nonflowering cycadophytes (cycads, Bennettitales). This interesting pattern is worthy of further investigation, and it reflects the decline of both stegosaurs and cycadophytes during the Early Cretaceous.

Abstract The purpose of this investigation was to model the distribution of the fishtail xate palm (´Chamaedorea ernesti‐augusti) and to investigate the effectiveness of using geostatistical techniques to map its distribution. The leaves of the Central American xate palm C. ernesti‐augusti are now extensively cut for the flori‐cultural industry; across its range, populations are being over‐harvested. In Central America, the Greater Maya Mountains (GMM), Belize are widely believed to be an abundance ‘hotspot’ for this species. In total, 220 sample sites were systematically located throughout the GMM, based on a fixed distance interval using the accessible track/road network. Species counts and environmental data were collected from each 20 m × 20 m plot. Statistical analyses were carried out using GenStat and Arc‐GIS. We used several semivariogram models, within bespoke GenStat procedures, to map the log‐transformed xate abundance data. Validation of models used the official GenStat Kcross‐validation procedure. Of the six models investigated in detail, the ‘Bounded Linear’ model outperformed all others and most effectively represented the spatial distribution of C. ernesti‐augusti. Environmental factors were found to have low statistical significance for the distribution of the xate palm. The predicted map shows that the geographic abundance was dominated by low xate counts; xat´ abundance values for this region appear to have been consistently overestimated in the literature. Our study showed the effectiveness of using local modelling techniques to map xate abundances and reveal local abundance hotspots. It highlighted areas needing further survey work and the need for collecting more environmental data to improve the prediction of plant distribution in this region using niche and/or co‐kriging modelling approaches. Our study suggested that the xate resource in Belize needs a careful conservation approach.