Vol. 42 (supplement l)

x, lEtiffi*10- 11* September 2018Novi Sad, Serbiawww.7bbc20 i B .corn

@ eo r tan i ca SERBICA vo l . 42 ( supp lemen t 1 ) TBBCBooko fabs t rac t s

DIGITISING HISTORICAL BOTANICALCOLLECTIONS FROM A

PHYTODIVERSITY HOT SPOTResina Karousour', Effie Hanlidour, Spyros Gkelisr,

Dimitris Koureas3 & Stella Kokkini'

lLab of Systematic Botany and Phytogeography, Department of Bota-ny, School of Biology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki @Ufh), GR-54124 Thessaloniki, Greece,2Department of Botany, School of Biology,Ar i st o tle Univ er sity of Th e s s al o niki ( AU Th ), G R- 5 4 I 2 4 7h e s s al o n iki,Greece, 3Naturalis Biodiversity Center, 2300 RA, Leiden, Netherlands

*Corresponding author: karousou@bio.auth.gr

Taxonomy provides the foundation to understand biodiver-sity and such derived biological disciplines as biogeography,ecology and evolution. Specimens are the faithful custodiansof taxon identity, contributing the fundamental proofs forsolving systematic issues. The preservation of scientific col-Iections and their availability for study over time has been aneverlasting concern of scientists. The Thessaloniki AristotleUniversity (TAU) Herbarium currently holds about 50,000plant specimens collected mainly from Greece from the be-ginning of l9th century. It comprises historical specimens col-lected up to the first half of the 20'r'century (before World WarII) by important botanists such as Th. von Heldreich, who de-scribed seven new plant genera and over 700 species, V. Tun-tas, Ch. Leonis, and D. Zaganiaris. The latter, in his "Herbari-um Macedonicum", recorded 4,000 plant taxa, collected fromthe northern part of the country. Our effort is to digitise theTAU Herbarium, facing the challenges and getting ahead thelimitations related to the effective mobilization and sharing ofcollections information from small herbaria and with limitedresources. Digitisation will serve not only taxonomic, biodi-versity conservation, and educational purposes, but also willreveal the historical and socio-political aspects, under whichthe immense plant diversity of Greece was assessed. We haveset up a pre-digitisation process which includes nomenclaturechecking and annotation (where needed), imaging, data tran-scription, and incorporation of all the information linked tothe specimens in a database confronting with modern bio-diversity information management requirements, such as theDarwin Core biodiversity metadata Standard, in order to bemade publicly accessible and interoperable. Priority will begiven to the historical collections, since the evaluation anddigitisation of the old specimens may provide valuable infor-mation about the past species distribution and habitats. Thiswork aims to trigger a discussion around the challenges of thedigitization and the importance of small Herbaria.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The TAU equipment was funded bythe Greek Ministry of Education, Research and Religious affairsthrough the Rectorate and the Deanship of the Faculty of SciencesofAUTh for the educational purposes ofthe Postgraduate StudiesProgram "Conservation of Biodiversity and Sustainable Exploita-tion of Native Plants'l School of Biology

KEYWORDS: Greece, TAU Herbarium, historical collec-tions, digitalisation

Oral presentation 04 08 14

ORCHID DIVERSITY WITHIN HERBARIUMCROATICUM SENSU STR/CTO AND

HERBARIUM IVO AND MARIIA HORUATCOLLECTIONS

Vedran Segotar*, Tihana Vilovi6'& Ivana Zovko2

IDepartment of Botany, Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb,Marulifuv trg 20/Il, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia,'zSeliite bb,72B0 Zepie,

Bosnia and Herzegovina

*Corresponding author: vedran.segota@biol.pmf.hr

Following the recent trend in herbaria, digitisation of col-lections within Herbarium Croaticum (ZA\ and HerbariumIvo and Marija Horvat (ZAHO) has initiated in 2015. Withover 200.000 herbarium specimens, ZA Collection is the old-est and the largest herbarium collection in Croatia, while theZAHO Collection stores as many as 78.000 specimens. Dig-itised collections allow public access to such information viaherbarium-based databases (virtual herbaria), which makesthem more broadly useful and improves scientific research.In our study, a large collection of orchids was chosen for dig-itisation. Our aims were to digitise the collection of orchidsand analyse the related herbarium sheets to provide the tax-onomical, spatial and temporal data and, finally, estimate theaverage time required to digitise one herbarium sheet. Priorto digitising, we verified the taxonomy of our specimens, re-vealed synoyms and specified the hybrids. Plant material wascleaned, dusted, translocated and mounted with pH neutraladhesive tape to new format of herbarium sheets adequatefor scanning, on which the herbarium labels were also glued.Herbarium sheets were scanned using the inversed Epson Ex-pression 11000XL Pro A3 scanner, to produce image files with.tiff extension, with resolution of 300 dpi. Finally, high resolu-tion images, together with the metadata of digital herbarium,were uploaded and published in Flora Croatica Database, aswell as in ZA & ZAHO Virtual Herbarium. Analysis revealedthat the collection of orchids within Herbarium Croaticumsensu stricto contains 1373 herbarium sheets, belonging to92 taxa, including 15 subspecies and 4 hybrids. Two orchidholotypes and two isotypes have been found. WithinZAHOCollection 553 sheets were found, belonging to 47 taxa. Themajority of both collections originates from Croatia and ne-ighboring countries (Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzego-vina, Italy, FYROM, Montenegro, Poland, Switzerland andUkraine). The oldest sheet in ZL dates back to 1833, and inZAHO back to 1918, while the average age of the ZA Colle-ction is I l3 years and of the ZAHO is 81. The main collectorsinZAare Ljudevit Rossi, Dragutin Hirc and Ambroz Haraii6,while in ZAHO predominates Ivo Horvat.

KEYWORDS: Croatia, digitisation, herbarium, orchids