Abstract
The vascular flora of Britain and Ireland is a historically well-documented and clearly delimited study system that offers itself to large-scale analyses of ecology and species assemblages. However, such analyses require clean, curated, and taxonomically resolved data, which are often unavailable. In this chapter, we describe how to access and use a key data resource that combines a taxonomically stable species list with genetic data (genome size, chromosome counts, and DNA barcode information), ecological information (such as life-form, realized niche description, and geographic origin) and distribution records. The data resource enables and encourages the study of natural ecological and evolutionary patterns and processes within the vascular flora of Britain and Ireland.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ray J (1690) Synopsis methodica stirpium Britannicarum, in qua tum notae generum characteristicae traduntur, tum species singulae breviter describuntur. S Smith (Londini)
Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (2022). https://bsbi.org/. Accessed 14 Feb 2022
Stace C (2019) New Flora of the British Isles – Fourth Edition. C&M Floristics
Hill MO, Preston CD, Roy DB (2004) PLANTATT-attributes of British and Irish plants: status, size, life history, geography and habitats. Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
Fitter AH, Peat HJ (1994) The ecological flora database. J Ecol 82(2):415–425. https://www.ecoflora.org.uk. Accessed 14 Feb 2022
British Ecological Society (2022) Database for the Biological Flora of the British Isles. https://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/publications/journals/journal-of-ecology/biological-flora-database/. Accessed 14 Feb 2022
Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland (2022) BSBI database search facility (taxon, literature and cytology database). https://websites.rbge.org.uk/BSBI/intro.php. Accessed 14 Feb 2022
Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland (2022) BSBI Distribution Database. https://database.bsbi.org/. Accessed 14 Feb 2022
Henniges MC, Powell RF, Mian S et al (2021) A taxonomic, genetic and ecological data resource for the vascular plants of Britain and Ireland. NERC Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/9f097d82-7560-4ed2-af13-604a9110cf6d. Accessed 14 Feb 2022
Henniges MC, Powell RF, Mian S et al (2022). BIFloraExplorer: a taxonomic, genetic and ecological data resource for the vascular plants of Britain and Ireland. R package version 0.1.0. https://github.com/RBGKew/BIFloraExplorer. Accessed 14 Feb 2022
Henniges MC, Powell RF, Mian S et al (2022) A taxonomic, genetic and ecological data resource for the vascular plants of Britain and Ireland. Sci Data 9:1. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-021-01104-5
POWO (2022) World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 2.0 (2020) Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. http://wcvp.science.kew.org/. Accessed 14 Feb 2022
Grime JP (1974) Vegetation classification by reference to strategies. Nature 250(5461):26–31
Raunkiær C (1934) The life forms of plants and statistical plant geography being the collected papers of C. Raunkiær. Oxford at the Clarendon Press
Whitney KD et al (2010) Patterns of hybridization in plants. Perspect Plant Ecol Evol Syst 12:175–182. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ppees.2010.02.002
Wickham H, Hester J, Chang W, Bryan J (2021). Devtools: tools to make developing R packages easier. R package version 2.4.3. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=devtools. Accessed 14 Feb 2022
Wickham H, François R, Henry L, Müller K (2021) dplyr: a grammar of data manipulation. R package version 1.0.7. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=dplyr. Accessed 14 Feb 2022
Wickham H (2016) ggplot2: elegant graphics for data analysis. Springer-Verlag New York. R package version 3.3.5. https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/ggplot2/index.html. Accessed 14 Feb 2022
Tennekes M (2021) Treemap: Treemap visualization. R package version 2.4-3. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=treemap. Accessed 14 Feb 2022
Becker RA, Wilks AR. Original S code. Brownrigg R. R version. Minka TP, Deckmyn A. Enhancements (2021) Maps: Draw geographical maps. R package version 3.4.0. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=maps. Accessed 14 Feb 2022
Acknowledgments
Marie C Henniges is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, grant no. NE/L002485/1.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature
About this protocol
Cite this protocol
Henniges, M.C., Leitch, A.R., Leitch, I.J. (2023). “BIFloraExplorer”: A Taxonomic, Genetic, and Ecological Data Resource for the Vascular Plants of Britain and Ireland. In: Garcia, S., Nualart, N. (eds) Plant Genomic and Cytogenetic Databases. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2703. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-3389-2_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-3389-2_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Humana, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-0716-3388-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-0716-3389-2
eBook Packages: Springer Protocols