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iPlants

home page of the iPlants project © iPlants & Kew

The iPlants project aims to accelerate the production of an accessible and authoritative synonymised checklist of all the world’s plants together with their global distribution and, where possible, an image. The project also explores ways of accelerating the production of Preliminary Conservation Assessments (www.iplants.org).

The iPlants project represents a major advance in collaboration in the botanical community: developing methods and synergies to maximise the impact of data on key concerns in conservation and science. iPlants has derived a more precise view of the particular demands of a broad spectrum of users working in health, the pharmaceutical industry, sustainable development and publishing as well as conservation. iPlants measured the impact of the name index on these particular industries and the costs of continuing without such a list. For example:  85% of possible outcomes when searching GenBank using plant names would be more accurate, more complete or both if the iPlants index were included.  In species lists used by other initiatives, typically between 25% and 40% of their names are in error thus preventing users from accessing existing information and, for example, distorting conservation initiatives locally, regionally and globally.

Procedures and tools have been, tested, modified and documented both for building the name index and for production of Preliminary Conservation Assessments. This documentation has been used by others. It influenced IUCN in formulating a strategy to complete Target 2 of the GSPC (Preliminary Conservation Assessments of all vascular plants and bryophytes), and the Sampled Red List Index. Some of the software developed is being used by other parties to compile checklists (see GSPC Target 1 project).

The project to date has involved collaboration between RBG Kew, Missouri Botanical Garden and New York Botanical Garden. It began with initial discussions in 2002 and a grant for an eight month pilot phase was awarded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in April 2004. This was followed by an extension grant and this pilot phase will be completed in March 2006. The three institutions have signed a memorandum of collaboration to work towards the goals of this project, which broadly coincide with Targets 1 and 2 of the GSPC and further funding for these goals will be sought.

The current phase of the project has several aspects: completing checklists of Bignoniaceae, Lecythidaceae and Iridaceae begun in the first phase and in developing and documenting procedures for the peer review of these data; linking checklist data to other sources such as GenBank; and gathering quantitative data on the impact of authoritative checklists on other information sources. One of the major barriers to efficient collaborative checklist building is that name data from diverse sources is not standardised. Improving standardisation of baseline name data is being investigated by linking IPNI and TROPICOS and exploring methodology for bulk standardisation.

Future plans include greater engagement with the user community (particularly those providing electronic plant information services that would be enhanced by embedding an authoritative synonymised checklist). One major grant proposal (to NERC) to this end was unsuccessful and we are alert to alternative openings for funding the development of a network of users. Those currently in contact include the World Health Organization (WHO), World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC), The World Conservation Union (IUCN), Department for International Development (DfID), and Defra as well as GenBank.

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