I think we may have mentioned in a recent Brainfood a “foundation monograph” of the genus Ipomoea in Bolivia, 1 without actually explaining what that is. Well, I’ll let one of the authors do that:
‘We wondered if we might be able to combine some of the speed of a Flora approach with some of the rigour of a Monograph,’ explains Dr Scotland. ‘And we’ve ended up with what we call “foundation monographs”.’ The new approach combines the time-limited approach and short descriptions of the Flora approach with the genetic analyses and fieldwork of Monographs, enabling species to be uncovered quickly, but accurately. Crucially, it borrows content like drawings and genetic analyses, where they exist, from existing studies, in order to avoid duplicating work.
Such work — whether floras or monographs — is largely based on existing herbarium specimens, of course, and a complementary study led by Zoë Goodwin, on which Dr Scotland is also a co-author, has just come out which sets out some of the problems associated with that.
…the team…scoured the records of Ipomoea — a large and diverse genus which includes the sweet potato — on the Global Biodiversity Information Facility database. Examining the names found on 49,500 specimens from the Americas, they found that 40% of these were outdated synonyms rather than the current name, and 16% of the names were unrecognisable or invalid. In addition, 11% of the specimens weren’t identified, being given only the name of the genus. 2
The work of the crop wild relatives mapper is never done.