Digitizing the world’s plant specimens could unveil vital biodiversity insights, McGill researchers find. Their study suggests that herbarium digitization is key to conservation success amid climate change.
In a new study published in Nature Communications, researchers from McGill University emphasize the transformative potential of digitizing herbarium specimens to boost biodiversity conservation efforts. The team underscores how digitizing these collections, housed in museums globally, can offer invaluable insights to preserve species amid escalating climate change.
Herbarium digitization entails cataloging a specimen’s species name and original location and uploading this information into a publicly accessible digital repository. Through the study, the researchers projected potential benefits from digitizing Canada’s 7.3 million undigitized plant specimens, distributed across 88 herbaria.
“Our findings show digitizing our remaining specimens is likely an efficient and feasible method of gathering the critical biodiversity data we need to inform policy and action,” lead author Isaac Eckert, a doctoral candidate in McGill’s Department of Biology, said in a news release.
Eckert’s research suggests that these georeferenced biodiversity observations are essential for conservation, providing detailed information on the geographic distribution of species. This could be instrumental in framing effective conservation policies, particularly as nations worldwide aim to meet their ambitious 2030 and 2050 conservation targets.
The study advocates for increased funding to support herbaria, noting the recent closure of Duke University’s herbarium due to financial constraints as an alarming example.
“We show that investing in herbaria, their collections, and the experts that curate them, is potentially one of the most effective ways to generate new biodiversity data,” added Eckert.
The findings also suggest that, while community science observations via platforms like iNaturalist are valuable, herbarium specimens are critical as they tend to capture a less biased and more comprehensive representation of plant diversity and distribution.
The pressing need for comprehensive biodiversity data has never been clearer, with the quality and availability of such data being integral to conservation successes worldwide. As underscored by the study, leveraging the vast yet untapped potential of digitized herbarium collections could hold the key to informed, effective conservation strategies in an era of climate uncertainty.