Manual of the Alien Plants of Belgium

Filip Verloove1, Quentin Groom1, Dimitri Brosens2, Peter Desmet2, Lien Reyserhove2

1 Botanic Garden Meise, , Belgium; 2 Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO), , Belgium

Corresponding author(s): Filip Verloove (filip.verloove@plantentuinmeise.be)Quentin Groom (quentin.groom@plantentuinmeise.be)Dimitri Brosens (dimitri.brosens@inbo.be)Peter Desmet (peter.desmet@inbo.be)Lien Reyserhove (lien.reyserhove@inbo.be)

Received {date}; Revised {date}; Accepted {date}; Published {date}

Citation: Combination of authors, year of data paper publication (in parentheses), Title, Journal Name, Volume, Issue number (in parentheses), and doi of the data paper.

Resource Citation

Verloove F, Groom Q, Brosens D, Desmet P, Reyserhove L (2020): Manual of the Alien Plants of Belgium. v1.10. Botanic Garden Meise. Dataset/Checklist. https://doi.org/10.15468/wtda1m https://doi.org/10.15468/wtda1m

Abstract

The Manual of the Alien Plants of Belgium is a species checklist dataset published by the Botanic Garden Meise. It contains information on all (over 2.500) non-native vascular plants occurring in the wild in Belgium since 1800. The checklist is almost entirely based on a thorough herbarium revision of the main public Belgian herbaria (Verloove 2006), actively maintained, and updated regularly at Verloove (2018, http://alienplantsbelgium.be). Here it is published as a standardized Darwin Core Archive and includes for each species: the scientific name, kingdom, family, stable taxon identifier, and IPNI (2018) scientific name ID where available (in the taxon core), the presence in Flanders, Wallonia and the Brussels Capital Region, as well as the year of the first introduction (first collection) and last assessment/observation in Belgium (given as a year range in the event date in the distribution extension), coarse habitat information (in the species profile extension), and the pathway(s) of introduction, native range(s) and invasion stage in Belgium (in the description extension). The dataset can be used for researching and managing alien plants or compiling regional and national registries of alien species. Issues with the dataset can be reported at https://github.com/trias-project/alien-plants-belgium
We have released this dataset to the public domain under a Creative Commons Zero waiver. We would appreciate it if you follow the GBIF citation guidelines (https://www.gbif.org/citation-guidelines) 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 https://twitter.com/trias_project.
This dataset was published as open data for the TrIAS project (Tracking Invasive Alien Species http://trias-project.be, Vanderhoeven et al. 2017), with technical support provided by the Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO). It is selected as one of the authoritative sources for the compilation of a unified and reproducible checklist of alien species in Belgium.

Keywords: Checklist, Inventorythematic, checklist, inventory, alien species, plants, neophytes, Flanders, Wallonia, Brussels Capital Region, Belgium, TrIAS

Project details

Project title: Tracking Invasive Alien Species (TrIAS)
Personnel: Tim Adriaens, Peter Desmet, Quentin Groom, Diederik Strubbe, Sonia Vanderhoeven
Funding: TrIAS is funded by the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO) call for Belgian Research Action through Interdisciplinary Networks (BRAIN).
Study area descriptions/descriptor: Belgium.
Design description: The project builds on two components: 1) The establishment of a data mobilization framework for alien species data from diverse data sources and 2) the development of data-driven procedures for risk evaluation based on risk modelling, risk mapping and risk assessment. TrIAS uses facilities from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF, http://www.gbif.org), standards from the Biodiversity Information Standards organization (TDWG, http://www.tdwg.org) and expertise from LifeWatch INBO (http://lifewatch.inbo.be) to create and facilitate a systematic workflow. Alien species data are gathered from a large set of regional, national and international initiatives, including citizen science data, with a wide taxonomic scope from marine, terrestrial and freshwater environments. Observation data are funnelled in repeatable ways to GBIF. In parallel, a Belgian checklist of alien species is established, benefiting from various taxonomic and project-based checklists foreseen for GBIF publication.

Data published through GBIF: https://ipt.biodiversity.be/resource?r=alien-plants-belgium

Taxonomic coverage

General taxonomic coverage description: In total, this dataset includes over 2.500 alien plant species, covering 139 families. Although some plant families contain many alien species, most recorded families count for only (very) few taxa. The four largest plant families worldwide embrace most of the recorded taxa: Poaceae (16%), Asteraceae (12%), Fabaceae (8%) and Brassicaceae (5%). Many families are exclusively represented by alien species (36% of all families). Inversely, the larger native families only have a few non-native species. Only taxa at specific or subspecific level are included in the list. Taxa of lower taxonomic rank (varieties and forms) are usually withheld, but in some rare cases they are nevertheless accepted and included in this list.
Taxonomic ranks
Kingdom: Plantae
Subkingdom: Tracheophytes
Common names: plants, vascular plants

Spatial coverage

General spatial coverage: This checklist covers all plant species that occur as an alien species in Belgium. The dataset also includes information on the presence of a species in Flanders, Wallonia and/or the Brussels Capital Region (the three main political regions in Belgium).
Coordinates: 49°29'24''N and 51°30'36''N Latitude; 2°31'48''E and 6°24'36''E Longitude 

Temporal coverage: January 1, 1800 - February 28, 2018

Natural collections description

Collection name: Botanic Garden Meise
Collection identifier: BR
Specimen preservation method: Dried and pressed

Methods

Method step description: 
- . 	The source data for this standardized checklist is an Excel spreadsheet, maintained by the Filip Verloove and re-uploaded regularly at http://alienplantsbelgium.be/sites/alienplantsbelgium.be/files/Checklist2.xlsx.
- . 	This raw data file was reformatted to make it more machine-readable and uploaded to a GitHub repository (https://github.com/trias-project/alien-plants-belgium). See https://trias-project.github.io/alien-plants-belgium for an introduction to this repository and the mapping of this dataset.
- . 	We developed a RMarkdown script to document and perform the transformation of the data to Darwin Core, which includes the following steps:
- . 	Perform some basic data cleaning of the raw data.
- . 	Generate stable and unique identifiers for each taxon (taxonID).
- . 	Create a taxon core file (http://rs.gbif.org/core/dwc_taxon.xml).
- . 	Create a distribution extension file (http://rs.gbif.org/extension/gbif/1.0/distribution.xml), including standardization of the distribution date range. For species occurring exclusively in one of the 3 regions (Flanders, Wallonia or the Brussels Capital Region), national distribution date range is added for that region as well.
- . 	Create a species profile extension file (http://rs.gbif.org/extension/gbif/1.0/speciesprofile.xml), with coarse habitat information.
- . 	Create a description extension file (http://rs.gbif.org/extension/gbif/1.0/description.xml), with standardized pathway of introduction (using the pathway vocabulary from the Convention on Biological Diversity (2014)), native range (using the WGSRPD vocabulary from Brummitt (2001) where applicable), and invasion stage (based on Blackburn et al. (2011)).
- . 	The resulting Darwin Core data files are uploaded to the INBO IPT and documented with metadata.
- . 	The dataset is is published and registered with GBIF.
Study extent description: See Verloove (2006).
Sampling description: See Verloove (2006).
Quality control description: See Verloove (2006).

Datasets

Dataset description
Object name: Darwin Core Archive Manual of the Alien Plants of Belgium
Character encoding: UTF-8
Format name: Darwin Core Archive format
Format version: 1.0
Distribution: https://ipt.biodiversity.be/archive.do?r=alien-plants-belgium
Publication date of data: 2020-10-15
Language: English
Licences of use: Public Domain (CC0 1.0)

Metadata language: English
Date of metadata creation: 2017-09-08
Hierarchy level: Dataset

References
Blackburn TM, Pysek P, Bacher S, Carlton JT, Duncan RP, Jarosik V, Wilson JRU & Richardson DM (2011) A proposed unified framework for biological invasions. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 26: 333-339. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2011.03.023
Brummitt RK (2001) World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (Ed. 2). Published for the International Working Group on Taxonomic Databases for Plant Sciences (TDWG) by the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. http://grassworld.myspecies.info/sites/grassworld.myspecies.info/files/tdwg_geo2.pdf
Convention on Biological Diversity (2014) Pathways of introduction of invasive species, their prioritization and management. UNEP/CBD/SBSTTA/18/9/Add.1. Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Montreal. https://www.cbd.int/doc/meetings/sbstta/sbstta-18/official/sbstta-18-09-add1-en.pdf
The International Plant Names Index (IPNI) (2012). Published on the Internet http://www.ipni.org [accessed 19 January 2018]
Vanderhoeven S, Adriaens T, Desmet P, Strubbe D, Backeljau T, Barbier Y, Brosens D, Cigar J, Coupremanne M, De Troch R, Eggermont H, Heughebaert A, Hostens K, Huybrechts P, Jacquemart A, Lens L, Monty A, Paquet J, Prévot C, Robertson T, Termonia P, Van De Kerchove R, Van Hoey G, Van Schaeybroeck B, Vercayie D, Verleye T, Welby S, Groom Q (2017) Tracking Invasive Alien Species (TrIAS): Building a data-driven framework to inform policy. Research Ideas and Outcomes 3: e13414. https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.3.e13414
Verloove F (2006) Catalogue of Neophytes Belgium (1800-2005). Scripta Botanica Belgica 39:1:89. http://alienplantsbelgium.be/sites/alienplantsbelgium.be/files/tabel_2.pdf
Verloove F (2018) Manual of Alien Plants of Belgium. Botanic Garden of Meise, Belgium. At: http://alienplantsbelgium.be.