Description
The “checklist of alien seed plants of D.R. Congo, based on evidence from herbarium collections” is a species checklist dataset published by the Botanic Garden Meise. It contains information on 436 alien plant species occurring in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, based on evidence from herbarium collections (Bordar & Meerts 2022). The plant species were registered between 1869 and 2017. Here it is published as a standardized Darwin Core Archive and includes for each species: the scientific name, kingdom, family and stable taxon identifier (in the taxon core), the year of first introduction and last assessment in Congo and the degree of establishment (in the distribution extension) and the native range and life form (in the description extension). Issues with the dataset can be reported at https://github.com/alien-csi/alien-flora-congo-checklist/issues.
We have released this dataset to the public domain under a Creative Commons Zero waiver. We would appreciate it if you follow the INBO norms for data use (https://www.inbo.be/en/norms-data-use) when using the data. If you have any questions regarding this dataset, don't hesitate to contact us via the contact information provided in the metadata or via opendata@inbo.be.
Data Records
The data in this checklist resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 436 records.
2 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.
This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.
Versions
The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.
How to cite
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
Meerts P, Bordbar F, Reyserhove L (2022): The checklist of alien seed plants of D.R. Congo, based on evidence from herbarium collections. v1.1. Meise Botanic Garden. Dataset/Checklist. https://ipt.biodiversity.be/resource?r=alien-flora-congo-checklist&v=1.1
Rights
Researchers should respect the following rights statement:
The publisher and rights holder of this work is Meise Botanic Garden. To the extent possible under law, the publisher has waived all rights to these data and has dedicated them to the Public Domain (CC0 1.0). Users may copy, modify, distribute and use the work, including for commercial purposes, without restriction.
GBIF Registration
This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: f1b442bd-a9b8-4763-a178-95195aa349e7. Meise Botanic Garden publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Belgian Biodiversity Platform.
Keywords
Checklist; Inventorythematic; Checklist; alien species; Congo; casual; naturalised; invasive; herbarium; tropical forest
Contacts
- Metadata Provider ●
- Originator ●
- Point Of Contact
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4215-027X
- Originator
- Originator
Geographic Coverage
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (D.R. Congo), see (Bordar & Meerts 2022) for more details.
| Bounding Coordinates | South West [-13.411, 12.129], North East [5.178, 31.113] |
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Taxonomic Coverage
The checklist comprises 436 alien species i.e., 189 (43%) casuals, 247 (57%) naturalised of which 80 (18% of aliens) are invasive. See (Bordar & Meerts 2022) for more details.
| Kingdom | Plantae (plants) |
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Temporal Coverage
| Start Date / End Date | 1869-01-01 / 2017-12-31 |
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Sampling Methods
A first list has been compiled from extensive literature search, and other databases. All entries in this list have been checked for presence in herbarium collections, and all identifications have been checked on herbarium specimens. Species collected only in cultivation (based on herbarium specimen labels) have been filtered out. For further details on methodology, see Bordbar & Meerts (2022).
| Study Extent | Alien seed plant species occurring outside of cultivation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with at least one record in scientific collections (1869--2019). |
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| Quality Control | The data is based on material evidence in herbarium collections. |
Method step description:
- The source data for this standardized sampling event dataset is published as supplementary materials to Bordar & Meerts (2022) and is uploaded to the Github repository of this dataset: https://github.com/alien-csi/alien-flora-congo-checklist/tree/main/data/raw
- An Rmarkdown script was developed to transform the data to a Darwin Core dataset. This mapping script was uploaded to the Github repository https://github.com/alien-csi/alien-flora-congo-checklist/tree/main/src and includes the following steps:
- Perform some basic cleaning of the raw data.
- Generate stable and unique identifiers for each taxon (taxonID).
- Create a taxon core file (https://rs.gbif.org/core/dwc_taxon_2022-02-02.xml).
- Create a distribution extension (https://rs.gbif.org/extension/gbif/1.0/distribution_2022-02-02.xml).
- Create a description extension (https://rs.gbif.org/extension/gbif/1.0/description.xml).
Bibliographic Citations
- Bordbar F. & Meerts P. (2022) in Biological Invasions 24(4): 939-954. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-021-02691-5
Additional Metadata
| Alternative Identifiers | https://ipt.biodiversity.be/resource?r=alien-flora-congo-checklist |
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