Ecogeographic Surveys

The scope of all ecogeographic investigations will be limited by the availability of time, facilities and materials. The herbaria of the world contain millions of specimens and the number of specimens of any one target taxon can be vast. Since it is not possible to include all specimens of a target taxon in a survey, representative specimens of the target taxon must be selected. Each of these specimens will require identification and a proportion will be selected according to the integrity of the passport data. During the course of a study, Maxted (1995) found that data from about a third of the specimens seen during the study were finally included in the ecogeographic database.

The different stages can be summarised as follows:

Select representative specimens

Confirm identification of each specimen

Check integrity of passport data for each specimen

Record passport data in ecogeographic database