Examining the spectra of herbarium uses and users

Figures & data

Figure 3. Herbarium sheet of Ophrys sphegodes collected by F. J. Hanbury in May 1878 and used in the study by Robbirt et al. (2011) to investigate decadal changes in flowering times.

Figure 4. Cyanobacterial collection made during the 1902 Discovery expedition to the Antarctic led by R. F. Scott. The specimen was used by Jungblut and Hawes (2017) to investigate changes in Antarctic cyanobacterial communities.

Figure 5. Specimen of Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam collected by Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander in Tahiti in 1769 and used by Roullier et al. (2013) to investigate the source of sweet potato in the Pacific islands.

Figure 1. Number of publications retrieved from a Web of Science search designed to establish the number of publications dealing with herbaria and each use category defined in the methods for the years 2013–2016.

Figure 2. Categories of visitors to the BM herbarium between September 2016 and August 2017. For an explanation of the categories used, see methods.

Robbirt, K. M., A. J. Davy, M. J. Hutchings, and D. L. Roberts. 2011. “Validation of Biological Collections as A Source of Phenological Data for Use in Climate Change Studies: A Case Study with the Orchid Ophrys Sphegodes.” Journal of Ecology 99: 235–241. doi:10.1111/jec.2010.99.issue-1.

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Jungblut, A. D., and I. Hawes. 2017. “Using Captain Scott’s Discovery Specimens to Unlock the Past: Has Antarctic Cyanobacterial Diversity Changed over the Last 100 Years?” Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B 284: 20170833.

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Roullier, C., L. Benoit, D. B. McKey, and V. Lebot. 2013. “Historical Collections Reveal Patterns of Diffusion of Sweet Potato in Oceania Obscured by Modern Plant Movements and Recombination.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110: 2205–2210. doi:10.1073/pnas.1211049110.

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