Abstract Detail

Systematics

Webb, Campbell O. [1], Heitz, Brian [2], Ickert-Bond, Stefanie [3].

Recording and sharing phenotypes for the new Flora of Alaska.

A new Flora of Alaska is under development by the community of Alaskan botanists. As well as traditional, written flora resources, the new Flora will be underlain by a comprehensive and interoperable informatics layer, integrating names, taxon concepts, specimen data, and photographs. Plant identification will be facilitated by multi-access, digital keys which will be based on the phenotypes of all taxa in the Flora. We have preliminary decided on a suite of 12 characters (including habit, caulescence, leaf insertion, leaf form, margin, primary venation, inflorescence or solitary flowers, pedicel presence, flower symmetry and color, ovary position, and fruit fleshiness), with 40 character states. To optimize data entry, we developed a web application that feeds an SQL database. The phenotype for each Taxon × Character is stored along with metadata, including citations of sources publications. Character states determined to be consistent for all species in a genus need only be entered once. Up until March 27 we have recorded 2,704 phenotype statements (with metadata) from sources that include Hulton's Flora of Alaska, previous Floras by Welsh and Anderson, Cody's Flora of the Yukon, and the Flora of North America. In order to share these data easily, we have defined the phenotypes explicitly in the form of Entity-Quality statements, and mapped them to existing botanical phenotype references, the most comprehensive and useful being the Flora Phenotype Ontology (FLOPO). Our phenotype statements are published in an online, hierarchical ontology, using RDF, RDFS and OWL. Eventually the Taxon × Character information will be shared via structured data in the form of schema-constrained XML (e.g., TDWG's SSD) and Linked Open Data (in RDF).

Related Links:
ALA website
Project website

1 - University Of Alaska Fairbanks, Herbarium (ALA) And Dept. Of Biology A, 1962 Yukon Dr., Fairbanks, AK, 99775, USA
2 - Herbarium (ALA), University of Alaska Museum of the North, University , 1962 Yukon Drive, Fairbanks, AK, 99775, USA
3 - University Of Alaska Fairbanks, Herbarium (ALA) And Dept. Of Biology And Wildlife, University Of Alaska Fairbanks, 1962 Yukon Dr., Fairbanks, AK, 99775, United States

Keywords:
Flora of Alaska
phenotypes
RDF
RDFS
OWL
TDWG’s SSD.

Presentation Type: Poster
Session: P, Systematics Posters
Location: Arizona Ballroom/Starr Pass
Date: Monday, July 29th, 2019
Time: 5:30 PM This poster will be presented at 6:15 pm. The Poster Session runs from 5:30 pm to 7:00 pm. Posters with odd poster numbers are presented at 5:30 pm, and posters with even poster numbers are presented at 6:15 pm.
Number: PSY010
Abstract ID:335
Candidate for Awards:None