The PteridoPortal: A publicly accessible collection of over three million records of extant and extinct pteridophytes

Abstract

Premise: Pteridophytes-vascular land plants that disperse by spores-are a powerful system for studying plant evolution, particularly with respect to the impact of abiotic factors on evolutionary trajectories through deep time. However, our ability to use pteridophytes to investigate such questions-or to capitalize on the ecological and conservation-related applications of the group-has been impaired by the relative isolation of the neo- and paleobotanical research communities and by the absence of large-scale biodiversity data sources.

Methods: Here we present the Pteridophyte Collections Consortium (PCC), an interdisciplinary community uniting neo- and paleobotanists, and the associated PteridoPortal, a publicly accessible online portal that serves over three million pteridophyte records, including herbarium specimens, paleontological museum specimens, and iNaturalist observations. We demonstrate the utility of the PteridoPortal through discussion of three example PteridoPortal-enabled research projects.

Results: The data within the PteridoPortal are global in scope and are queryable in a flexible manner. The PteridoPortal contains a taxonomic thesaurus (a digital version of a Linnaean classification) that includes both extant and extinct pteridophytes in a common phylogenetic framework. The PteridoPortal allows applications such as greatly accelerated classic floristics, entirely new "next-generation" floristic approaches, and the study of environmentally mediated evolution of functional morphology across deep time.

Discussion: The PCC and PteridoPortal provide a comprehensive resource enabling novel research into plant evolution, ecology, and conservation across deep time, facilitating rapid floristic analyses and other biodiversity-related investigations, and providing new opportunities for education and community engagement.

Keywords: Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections (ADBC) program; Equisetum; Symbiota; ferns; flora of Colombia; flora of Venezuela; fossil classification; iNaturalist; lycophytes; tubers.

Figure 1

Global representation of PteridoPortal records. Circles are proportional to the number of records from each county, and countries are colored by the proportion of their records that are specimen‐based (i.e., from herbarium or paleontological museums) versus observation‐based (i.e., from iNaturalist). Countries with smaller proportions of records derived from specimens (those in light green) tend to be those with very active iNaturalist communities, such as Canada, South Africa, and Australia. Countries in gray lack iNaturalist records.

Figure 2

Structure of the taxonomic thesaurus. (A) The nested classification for a portion of the Athyriaceae. Taxa treated as synonyms are within square brackets and map automatically to the accepted taxon that they are nested beneath. (B) Nested classification of a portion of Lycopodiopsida showing the application of the incertae sedis placeholder taxa to accommodate unknown higher classifications of lower‐rank taxa. Extinct taxa are indicated with a “†”.