Caribbean and Pacific coast field observations

The Arizona State University Vascular Plant Herbarium (ASU) is among the most important in the greater Sonoran Desert region with over 315,000 specimens. We are particularly proud of our holdings of Cactaceae which include over 1,100 chromosome counts.

An herbarium is a collection of pressed, dried, and archived plants that are systematically arranged - each specimen a physical record of a plant growing at a particular place and at a particular time. Like most herbaria, we seek to document the geographical and ecological distribution of the regional flora, facilitate research, support teaching, and promote conservation. Vouchers from floristic studies have resulted in comprehensive collections of many important geographic regions in Arizona.

ASU Type Specimens: http://swbiodiversity.org/seinet/checklists/checklist.php?cl=2638

The collection of Ascidiacea has approximately 3000 samples identified and preserved in formaldehyde. There are approximately equal number of samples still under study and without complete identification. Also constitute the collection approximately 1000 permanent slides of zooids and larvae of colonial species. The types in the collection are mostly paratypes, and most of the samples are reference material. The material comes mainly from the Brazilian coast, but there are also samples from Panama, Ecuador, Chile, Angola, France, and Sweden, among other countries.

The Department of Ichthyology houses one of the largest and most important research collections of its kind in the world. There are nearly 200,000 cataloged lots (jars) containing roughly 1.2 million specimens, with many thousands of backlogged specimens still to be processed. There are representatives of over11,000 nominal species of fishes in the collection, representing nearly a third of those known to science. The strengths of our holdings lie principally in marine fishes of the western and central Pacific, California, and freshwater fishes from South America and southeastern Asia. Our older historic collections from North America and the large number of type specimens are of particular importance to the ichthyological community.

The herbarium of the California Academy of Sciences is the largest collection of vascular plants in the western U.S. It is the sixth largest collection in the United States. The Academy collection includes approximately 2 million plant specimens. More than 95% of the specimens are vascular seed plants; the remainder are ferns and a growing collection of bryophytes. There are almost 12,000 types (holotypes, isotypes, syntypes, lectotypes, and neotypes) housed separately from the general collection.

These are results from a network of 186 tree census plots and inventories in Panama. At plots, every individual stem in a rectangular area of specified size is given a unique number and identified to species. Available here are counts of the number of individual trees of each species in each plot, in two categories: all individuals 10 mm in stem diameter or larger, and all individuals 100 mm in stem diameter or larger. In inventories, all species present are tallied, but no individuals are counted, so data provided here is simply a list of species observed at each location. Precise location of every site, elevation, and estimated rainfall (for many sites) are also included. Data from these numerous plots and inventories are collected following the same methods as, and species identity harmonized with, the 50-ha long-term tree census at Barro Colorado Island.

These data were gathered over many years, starting in 1994 and continuing to the present, by scientists working within the Center for Tropical Forest Science at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). The principal scientists are R. Condit, R. Pérez, S. Lao, and S. Aguilar. Funding has been provided by many organizations, including STRI.

eMammal is a system for collecting, storing, and sharing camera trap data. The system is designed for scientists and citizen scientists, and anyone who wants to join in the fun and discovery of camera trapping. Professional and volunteer camera trappers use our software to look at pictures, identify animals, and upload them to the Smithsonian Data Repository for review and storage. These data are useful for addressing important scientific and conservation questions, and the pictures provide a unique view into the hidden world of wildlife. For a fun animal ID game using eMammal favorites, click on eMammal Lite for more!

Additional electronic access to F database is available at: http://emuweb.fieldmuseum.org/botany/Query.php. Specialty: Phanerogams worldwide with emphasis on tropical and North America, especially rich in collections from Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Peru; pteridophytes worldwide with emphasis on Guatemala, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Peru; bryophytes worldwide; mosses of North America, Central America, Andean South America, and Australasia; hepatics of north temperate, South America, and south temperate; all groups of fungi, especially basidiomycetes with emphasis on New World and lichenized fungi of north temperate and Central America; algae worldwide, especially Cyanobacteria; economic botany.

This dataset contains digitized specimen records collected within Panama stewarded by the Harvard University Herbaria. The Harvard University Herbaria, with over 5 million specimens, is the world’s largest University Herbaria. Included in the Herbaria are six herbarium collections: * Herbarium of the Arnold Arboretum (A) * Economic Herbarium of Oakes Ames (ECON) * Oakes Ames Orchid Herbarium (AMES) * Farlow Herbarium (FH) * Gray Herbarium (GH) * New England Botanical Club Herbarium (NEBC). DarwinCore data follows the AppleCore guidance https://code.google.com/p/applecore/.

The Museum of Comparative Zoology was founded in 1859 on the concept that collections are an integral and fundamental component of zoological research and teaching. This more than 150-year-old commitment remains a strong and proud tradition for the MCZ. The present-day MCZ contains over 21-million specimens in ten research collections which comprise one of the world's richest and most varied resources for studying the diversity of life. The museum serves as the primary repository for zoological specimens collected by past and present Harvard faculty-curators, staff and associates conducting research around the world. As a premier university museum and research institution, the specimens and their related data are available to researchers of the scientific and museum community

iNaturalist research grade fungal observations made within Costa Rica.

iNaturalist research grade fungal observations made within the country of Panama.

iNaturalist research grade plant observations made within Costa Rica.

iNaturalist research grade plant observations made within the country of Panama.

iNaturalist research grade animal observations made within the country of Costa Rica.

iNaturalist research grade animal observations made within Panama. These include observations from two marine projects called Biodiversity of Bocas del Toro and Marine Life in the Bay of Panama and Gulf of Chiriqui

The goal of the NSF funded Macroalgal Digitization Project is to image, database and georeference the macroalgal specimens in 49 herbaria from New England to Florida, to Hawaii and Guam. Data provided through this project portal will allow researchers to determine how macroalgal biodiversity and our aquatic ecosystems have changed over the past 150 years as a result of climate change, bioinvasions, and a wide range of human activity.

The Missouri Botanical Garden’s Herbarium is one of the world’s outstanding research resources for specimens and information on bryophytes and vascular plants. The collection is limited to these two major groups of plants. As of 31 December 2015 the collection had 6.66 million specimens (6.1 million vascular plants and 563,000 bryophytes). This specimen dataset includes over 4.4 million records (4.0 million vascular plants and 300,000 bryophytes).

Specialty: Costa Rica, Mesoamerica, and neotropics; tropical ferns; tropical fungi.
Date Founded: 1887.

This database contains specimen records from the former herbarium of the Leiden University within the botanical collection of the Naturalis Biodiversity Center (Leiden, Netherlands). The Department of Botany houses the National Herbarium of the Netherlands (NHN) which consists of herbarium collections of the universities of Leiden, Wageningen and Utrecht. In 2010 the collection of the University of Amsterdam also moved to Naturalis.The focal areas of the collection are Southeast Asia, tropical America, tropical Africa and the Netherlands. The former herbarium of the Leiden University (acronym: L) contains about 4 million specimens and has extensive collections from Southeast Asia, especially from Indonesia and New Guinea, but it also holds a large collection of palearctic plants, and is the principle herbarium for Dutch plants. As the oldest Dutch herbarium, it also contains several historic collections.

The William and Lynda Steere Herbarium of The New York Botanical Garden holds a collection of more than seven million preserved specimens. All plant groups–flowering plants, conifers, ferns, mosses, liverworts, and algae, as well as fungi and lichens --are represented in the Herbarium collection, which is particularly strong in New World specimens. Digitization of all groups is underway, with more than 3.5 million specimens barcoded and 2.5 million specimens imaged.

The William and Lynda Steere Herbarium of The New York Botanical Garden holds a collection of more than seven million preserved specimens. All plant groups–flowering plants, conifers, ferns, mosses, liverworts, and algae, as well as fungi and lichens --are represented in the Herbarium collection, which is particularly strong in New World specimens. Digitization of all groups is underway, with more than 3.5 million specimens barcoded and 2.5 million specimens imaged.

KU herpetology houses one of largest herpetology collections in the world (340,000 specimens representing more than 5000 species from 156 countries). The KU collections include the world’s largest collection of neotropical amphibian and reptile specimens (200,000+) as well as substantial numbers of Nearctic (80,000+) and Asian (20,000+) specimens. KU holdings are particularly strong for the U.S., Ecuador, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Costa, Rica, Haiti, the Philippines, Peru and Panama. The collection from Kansas is the state’s largest (20,000+). The type collection includes nearly 400 primary types, mostly amphibians. KU Herpetology also maintains 5000 cleared-and-stained osteological preparations, nearly 5000 dried skeletons, and one of the world’s largest collections of amphibian larvae (6000+ lots). The KU digital archive includes more than 12,000 digital images and more than 1500 acoustic recordings.

Annette Aiello reared Lepidoptera as well as some other orders, occupies 75 Cornell drawers. The collection includes mounted head capsules, pupal exuviae, cocoons and other abandoned parts.

Henk Wolda light trapped insects from various stations in Panama, especially Barro Colorado Island (BCI), are estimated at 2500 Homoptera (Auchenorrhyncha only), 1000 Cerambycidae, 300 Blattodea, and unspecified, but smaller, numbers of Scarabaeidae, Elateridae, Chrysomelidae, and various other coleopteran families.

Henry P. Stockwell beetle collection occupies some 200 drawers, including about 80 drawers of Curculionidae (weevils). More than 70% of the material is from Panama. The collection includes about 100 paratypes representing about 15 species.

STRI Synoptic Insect Collection was begun on Barro Colorado Island in 1977 by Robert Silberglied and Annette Aiello as a general collection to give researchers an overview of the BCI insect fauna and to permit preliminary identifications for research vouchers. Years, later the collection was moved to the Tupper site where it now occupies 150 Cornell drawers and includes voucher material from STRI visitors and staff. The collection is strongest in Asilidae (robber flies), Pentatomidae (stink bugs), Reduviidae (assassin bugs), and Passalidae (betsy beetles) groups that were targeted by visiting specialists.

Bird field observation submitted by the user community

Fish field observation submitted by the user community

General field observation submitted by the user community

Reptile and amphibian field observation submitted by the user community

Insect and arthropod field observation submitted by the user community

Plant field observation submitted by the user community