Science Enabled by Specimen Data

Garmier, M., L. Gentzbittel, J. Wen, K. S. Mysore, and P. Ratet. 2017. Medicago truncatula: Genetic and Genomic Resources. Current Protocols in Plant Biology 2: 318–349. https://doi.org/10.1002/cppb.20058

Medicago truncatula was chosen by the legume community, along with Lotus japonicus, as a model plant to study legume biology. Since then, numerous resources and tools have been developed for M. truncatula. These include, for example, its genome sequence, core ecotype collections, transformation/rege…

Jurd, D., and M. Pole. 2017. Miocene “fin-winged” fruits and Pliocene drift fruits – the first record of Combretaceae (Terminalia) from New Zealand. Geobios 50: 423–429. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geobios.2017.10.002

Two types of fossil Terminalia (Combretaceae) fruits are described from warmer periods in New Zealand’s past. One is represented by large ‘fin-winged’ fruit (samara) from the Early Miocene Manuherikia Group sediments of Bannockburn and the Nevis Valley. The form and size of the fruits are entirely u…

Caudullo, G., E. Welk, and J. San-Miguel-Ayanz. 2017. Chorological maps for the main European woody species. Data in Brief 12: 662–666. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2017.05.007

A novel chorological data compilation for the main European tree and shrub species is presented. This dataset was produced by combining numerous and heterogeneous data collected from 20th century atlas monographs providing complete species distribution maps, and from more recent national to regional…

Uludag, A., N. Aksoy, A. Yazlık, Z. F. Arslan, E. Yazmış, I. Uremis, T. A. Cossu, et al. 2017. Alien flora of Turkey: checklist, taxonomic composition and ecological attributes. NeoBiota 35: 61–85. https://doi.org/10.3897/neobiota.35.12460

The paper provides an updated checklist of the alien flora of Turkey with information on its structure. The alien flora of Turkey comprises 340 taxa, among which there are 321 angiosperms, 17 gymnosperms and two ferns. Of the total number of taxa, 228 (68%) are naturalized and 112 (32%) are casual. …

Ashraf, U., A. T. Peterson, M. N. Chaudhry, I. Ashraf, Z. Saqib, S. Rashid Ahmad, and H. Ali. 2017. Ecological niche model comparison under different climate scenarios: a case study ofOleaspp. in Asia. Ecosphere 8: e01825. https://doi.org/10.1002/ECS2.1825

Ecological niche modeling (and the related species distribution modeling) has been used as a tool with which to assess potential impacts of climate change processes on geographic distributions of species. However, the factors introducing variation into niche modeling outcomes are not well understood…

Grossenbacher, D. L., Y. Brandvain, J. R. Auld, M. Burd, P. Cheptou, J. K. Conner, A. G. Grant, et al. 2017. Self‐compatibility is over‐represented on islands. New Phytologist 215: 469–478. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.14534

Because establishing a new population often depends critically on finding mates, individuals capable of uniparental reproduction may have a colonization advantage. Accordingly, there should be an over-representation of colonizing species in which individuals can reproduce without a mate, particularl…

Antonelli, A., H. Hettling, F. L. Condamine, K. Vos, R. H. Nilsson, M. J. Sanderson, H. Sauquet, et al. 2016. Toward a Self-Updating Platform for Estimating Rates of Speciation and Migration, Ages, and Relationships of Taxa. Systematic Biology: syw066. https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/syw066

Rapidly growing biological data –including molecular sequences and fossils– hold an unprecedented potential to reveal how evolutionary processes generate and maintain biodiversity. However, researchers often have to develop their own idiosyncratic workflows to integrate and analyse these data for re…