IndExs – Index of Exsiccatae is an online

biological database Biological databases are libraries of biological sciences, collected from scientific experiments, published literature, high-throughput experiment technology, and computational analysis. They contain information from research areas including geno ...

that plays a pivotal role in documenting more than 2,400 historical and ongoing series of

exsiccata Exsiccata (Latin, ''gen.'' -ae, ''plur.'' -ae) is a work with "published, uniform, numbered set of preserved specimens distributed with printed labels". Typically, exsiccatae are numbered collections of dried herbarium Biological specimen, spe ...

e and exsiccata-like works. Managed by the Botanische Staatssammlung München in

München Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

, IndExs serves as a comprehensive data repository for these series, acting as directory providing detailed titles with information on the more than 1,300 editors, bibliographic information, exsiccatal numbers, publication timespans, ranges, information on preceding and superseding series and publishers. Exsiccatae, organised series of

biological specimen A biological specimen (also called a biospecimen) is a biological laboratory specimen held by a biorepository for research. Such a specimen would be taken by sampling so as to be representative of any other specimen taken from the source of t ...

s distributed among biological

collections Collection or Collections may refer to: Computing * Collection (abstract data type), the abstract concept of collections in computer science * Collection (linking), the act of linkage editing in computing * Garbage collection (computing), autom ...

, are essential resources found in major

herbaria A herbarium (plural: herbaria) is a collection of preserved plant specimens and associated data used for scientific study. The specimens may be whole plants or plant parts; these will usually be in dried form mounted on a sheet of paper (called ...

worldwide. Open access to the general information on exsiccatae facilitates global scientific engagement and research.Triebel, D. & Scholz, P. 2001–2025 ''IndExs – Index of Exsiccatae''. – Botanische Staatssammlung München: http://indexs.botanischestaatssammlung.de. – München, Germany. re3data.org: ''IndExs – Index of Exsiccatae''; editing status 2023-10-25; re3data.org - Registry of Research Data Repositories. http://doi.org/10.17616/R38K85 last accessed: 2024-03-31.FAIRsharing.org: ''IndExs''; ''Index of Exsiccatae''; FAIRsharing.org. http://doi.org/10.25504/FAIRsharing.naAm6C last accessed: 2024-04-02. The database tells surprising stories on the common cultural history of taxonomic collections worldwide as well as on the persons and organisations involved in plant specimen exchange and trade projects.

History and purpose

Launched in 2001, IndExs has become indispensable to herbaria, fungaria, and digitisation initiatives, catering to their evolving scientific content needs.Global Plants Initiative:''Index of Exsiccatae''; editing status 2012-04-19; Global Plants Initiative (GPI). https://gpi.myspecies.info/content/index-exsiccatae. last accessed: 2024-04-02. Holstein, N., Carine, M., Cesar, E., Ellis, L. & al. 2022. ''Bound Volumes and Exsiccatae in the Botanical Collections at the Natural History Museum, London'' ata set Natural History Museum. https://doi.org/10.5519/swp7oysf last accessed: 2024-04-02. The database categorises exsiccatae (including exsiccata-like series) and the specimens they distribute, focusing on major organismic groups within

botany Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...

and

mycology Mycology is the branch of biology concerned with the study of fungus, fungi, including their Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy, genetics, biochemistry, biochemical properties, and ethnomycology, use by humans. Fungi can be a source of tinder, Edible ...

. This categorisation is enhanced by images of exemplary specimen labels from more than 110 herbaria citing their

Index Herbariorum The ''Index Herbariorum'' provides a global directory of herbaria (singular, herbarium; plural, herbaria) and their associated staff. This searchable online index allows scientists rapid access to data related to 3,400 locations where a total of ...

´s acronyms. Triebel, D. & Scholz, P. 2001–2025b ''IndExs – Index of Exsiccatae. About''. – Botanische Staatssammlung München: http://www.botanischestaatssammlung.de/DatabaseClients/IndExs/About.jsp. – München, Germany. IndExs standardizes the naming conventions for exsiccata series. IndExs leverages the DiversityExsiccatae module of the Diversity Workbench framework as database management system.bio.tools.org: ''DiversityExsiccatae''; bio.tools.org. https://bio.tools/DiversityExsiccatae last accessed: 2024-04-04. Recently, efforts of the

biodiversity informatics Biodiversity informatics is the application of informatics (academic field), informatics techniques to biodiversity information, such as Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy, biogeography or ecology. It is defined as the application of information technolog ...

department of the Bavarian State Collections of Natural History to align its technical infrastructure with

Wikidata Wikidata is a collaboratively edited multilingual knowledge graph hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is a common source of open data that Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, and anyone else, are able to use under the CC0 public domain ...

concepts have begun, indicating a move towards more integrated and

semantic web The Semantic Web, sometimes known as Web 3.0, is an extension of the World Wide Web through standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The goal of the Semantic Web is to make Internet data machine-readable. To enable the encoding o ...

-based data management practices. The main focus is on the

disambiguation Word-sense disambiguation is the process of identifying which sense of a word is meant in a sentence or other segment of context. In human language processing and cognition, it is usually subconscious. Given that natural language requires ref ...

of names of more than 1,300 editors and the integration of information for 2,400 exsiccata series into the semantic web. This move involves adopting Wikidata

identifier An identifier is a name that identifies (that is, labels the identity of) either a unique object or a unique ''class'' of objects, where the "object" or class may be an idea, person, physical countable object (or class thereof), or physical mass ...

s for the precise identification of editors, contributing additional details to existing Wikidata entries about their scientific work, and creating new entries where necessary. A proposed new property, the "IndExs Exsiccata ID," aims to link directly to IndExs, allowing for the incorporation of exsiccata series information into Wikidata. This integration facilitates a linked data environment, ensuring that the significant contributions of botanical and mycological editors and their work are more accessible and accurately represented in global data repositories.

Applications

The practical application of IndExs is highlighted by its use in the cataloguing and analysis of the

bryophyte Bryophytes () are a group of embryophyte, land plants (embryophytes), sometimes treated as a taxonomic Division (taxonomy), division referred to as Bryophyta ''Sensu#Common qualifiers, sensu lato'', that contains three groups of non-vascular pla ...

collection at the National Herbarium in Pretoria (PRE), South Africa. In this project, IndExs was used to compile the first catalogue of exsiccatae for the PRE collection and provided the necessary framework and reference material to identify and classify the 66 exsiccatae series represented in the collection. Through IndExs, the project team was able to identify and document significant exsiccatae within the PRE collection, including rare sets like

Anton Rehmann Antoni Rehman aka Anton Rehman (13 May 1840 Kraków – 13 January 1917 Lwow, Galicia) was a Polish geographer, geomorphologist, botanist and explorer. He published mostly in German journals in Austria and is regarded as an Austrian botanist, as ...

's ''Musci Austro-Africani'' and ''Bryophyta Antarctica exsiccata'' edited by Ryszard Ochyra. This case shows how IndExs facilitates the documentation and study of botanical specimens, enabling the first comprehensive catalog of exsiccatae within a major herbarium collection. IndExs with its standardised titles is used in a similar way to create the dataset ''Bound Volumes and Exsiccatae in the Botanical Collections at the Natural History Museum, London''. Holstein, N., Carine, M., Cesar, E., Ellis, L. & al. 2022. ''Bound Volumes and Exsiccatae in the Botanical Collections at the Natural History Museum, London'' ata set Natural History Museum. https://doi.org/10.5519/swp7oysf last accessed: 2024-04-02. Through IndExs, researchers can access information on exsiccatae, contributing to botanical research, taxonomy, and the history of botanical exploration and exchange. Similarly, the IndExs has been proposed for use as a reference list in the digitisation of German herbaria specimens and related

projects. IndExs example images of exsiccata labels with reference to Index Herbariorum acronym, exsiccatal serial number and published taxon name give a first hint in which herbaria the series in question can be found today. IndExs is acknowledged as useful resource to explain abbreviations and references as found on handwritten and printed herbarium labels (schedae) and is cited as information resource in reviews on historical herbaria and plant collectors like .

References

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