The MGC Herbarium: Information source of plant diversity in the Mediterranean

To understand the world's biological diversity, the information included in scientific collections is essential. For this reason, many projects have been focused on computerizing the data from these collections and making them openly available to researchers on biodiversity and conservation.

The MGC Herbarium of the University of Malaga (Spain) includes 76000 sheets of vascular plants or cormophyta, 73156 of which have been computerized. The data sheets are accessible through the GBIF data portal in the web page http://data.gbif.org/datasets/resource/8105/. The basic information about the MGC Herbarium has been also published in a recent data paper available through the open access journal PhytoKeys.

The sheets have been mainly collected in Andalusia (Southern Spain) and they include specimens of several Biosphere Reserves, National Parks, Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) and RAMSAR wetlands. These harvested areas are among the richest biodiversity hotspots of the Mediterranean area, in particular the Baetic-Rifan complex (which is one of the areas with the highest number of endemisms in the Mediterranean region). In addition, the collection also includes sheets from other locations of the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco.

All sheets in the collection have been identified taxonomically (97% at species level) and a high fraction have been georeferenced (63%). Each sheet includes the scientific name, location, ecology, date of collection, collector and determiner of each plant. This collection is very active and in continual growth, with an annual intake of about 1.500 specimens.

Scientific supervision of the MGC Herbarium is carried out by the Plant Biology Department (Botany), University of Málaga (UMA), and its maintenance and management are correspond to the Central Research Services (SCAI) of the UMA.

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