Designing a state-of-the-art taxonomic research workstation integrating digital and physical resources

The science of naming, classifying and identifying species, known as taxonomy, is absolutely fundamental to building scientific research programmes on biodiversity. Without knowing what an organism is and being able to refer to it unambiguously, scientists would be unable to make the scientific progress required in food security, medical research and resilience to climate change. However, as we develop more knowledge the science of taxonomy becomes increasingly complex. Between 1753 and 2016, the number of known plant species has risen from 6,000 to 390,000, an average increase of nearly 1,500 species each year. Over 2,000 new species were discovered in 2015. The number of specimens held globally in herbaria has also increased. There are now over 3,000 herbaria around the world holding nearly 400 million specimens. Any taxonomist working now therefore has an immense and expensive task of gathering information about the species that they are studying, involving travel to various herbaria or the risk of damage or loss to specimens if they are sent on loan. With about 10-20% of flowering plant species still to be described, it is estimated that about half of these have already been collected and are held in herbaria around the world.

Herbarium collections are vital to taxonomy and biodiversity research so we need to find solutions to making the information more widely accessible in order to speed up the research process given the scale of the challenges we are facing. In many cases, a high resolution digital image of the specimen with electronic collection data attached will enable researchers to carry out much of the basic work. By digitising the herbarium collections we can provide these resources to taxonomists in every part of the world. However, digitisation is only one step of the process. We also need to create an environment where taxonomic researchers can bring all the digital resources together with the physical specimens, using tools and equipment to make working with massive amounts of complex information easy and intuitive. This kind of workstation is most famously seen in television programmes such as CSI, but we need to be implementing the technology and data management in our institutes if we are going to have a chance to produce the taxonomic basis for global biodiversity in time to help its survival.