@article{cb86fe1a5796472194d3e9d7b19db3f9,
title = "Small herbaria contribute unique biogeographic records to county, locality, and temporal scales",
abstract = "Premise: With digitization and data sharing initiatives underway over the last 15 years, an important need has been prioritizing specimens to digitize. Because duplicate specimens are shared among herbaria in exchange and gift programs, we investigated the extent to which unique biogeographic data are held in small herbaria vs. these data being redundant with those held by larger institutions. We evaluated the unique specimen contributions that small herbaria make to biogeographic understanding at county, locality, and temporal scales. Methods: We sampled herbarium specimens of 40 plant taxa from each of eight states of the United States of America in four broad status categories: extremely rare, very rare, common native, and introduced. We gathered geographic information from specimens held by large (≥100,000 specimens) and small (<100,000 specimens) herbaria. We built generalized linear mixed models to assess which features of the collections may best predict unique contributions of herbaria and used an Akaike information criterion-based information-theoretic approach for our model selection to choose the best model for each scale. Results: Small herbaria contributed unique specimens at all scales in proportion with their contribution of specimens to our data set. The best models for all scales were the full models that included the factors of species status and herbarium size when accounting for state as a random variable. Conclusions: We demonstrated that small herbaria contribute unique information for research. It is clear that unique contributions cannot be predicted based on herbarium size alone. We must prioritize digitization and data sharing from herbaria of all sizes.",
keywords = "Index Herbariorum, North American Network of Small Herbaria, Small Collections Network, biodiversity collection, biogeography, herbarium, natural history collection, rare plant, specimen, voucher",
author = "Marsico, {Travis D.} and Krimmel, {Erica R.} and Carter, {J. Richard} and Gillespie, {Emily L.} and Lowe, {Phillip D.} and Ross McCauley and Morris, {Ashley B.} and Gil Nelson and Michelle Smith and Soteropoulos, {Diana L.} and Monfils, {Anna K.}",
note = "Funding Information: We dedicate our work to the late Dr. George Pryor Johnson (APCR) who was a founding member of the North American Network of Small Herbaria and who hoped this work would be published in support of small collections. We thank all the herbaria (large and small) that contributed data to our project. Details of herbaria that contributed can be found in Appendix S2 . We thank Hazel K. Berr{\'i}os for her assistance in working on early versions of data analyses. A previous version of this manuscript was improved by analytical advice and edits from Virginie Rolland. We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers who provided suggestions that strengthened the manuscript. Financial support for this project came from NSF grants EF‐1410098, DUE‐1564954, and DBI‐1561743 to T.D.M. and the Department of Biological Sciences and Environmental Science Program at Arkansas State University, NSF grants DBI‐1054366 and DBI‐1458264 to J.R.C. at Valdosta State University, NSF grant DBI‐1410143 to E.L.G. at Marshall University, and NSF grant DBI‐1410087 to A.B.M. at Middle Tennessee State University. Funding Information: We dedicate our work to the late Dr. George Pryor Johnson (APCR) who was a founding member of the North American Network of Small Herbaria and who hoped this work would be published in support of small collections. We thank all the herbaria (large and small) that contributed data to our project. Details of herbaria that contributed can be found in Appendix S2. We thank Hazel K. Berr?os for her assistance in working on early versions of data analyses. A previous version of this manuscript was improved by analytical advice and edits from Virginie Rolland. We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers who provided suggestions that strengthened the manuscript. Financial support for this project came from NSF grants EF-1410098, DUE-1564954, and DBI-1561743 to T.D.M. and the Department of Biological Sciences and Environmental Science Program at Arkansas State University, NSF grants DBI-1054366 and DBI-1458264 to J.R.C. at Valdosta State University, NSF grant DBI-1410143 to E.L.G. at Marshall University, and NSF grant DBI-1410087 to A.B.M. at Middle Tennessee State University. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2020 The Authors. American Journal of Botany published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Botanical Society of America",
year = "2020",
month = nov,
doi = "10.1002/ajb2.1563",
language = "English",
volume = "107",
pages = "1577--1587",
journal = "American Journal of Botany",
issn = "0002-9122",
number = "11",
}