Figueroa-Ruíz, Maricelys

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    Assessing plant collection effort in the Guánica Forest Reserve
    (2015) Figueroa-Ruíz, Maricelys; Chinea-Rivera, Jesús D.; College of Arts and Sciences - Sciences; Kolterman, Duane A.; Vélez - Gavilán, Jeanine; Department of Biology; Almodóvar, Jorge L.
    Museum data provide information on the distribution of species documented as presences. These data are vital in the development of herbaria through the world promoting scientific research in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, by its acronym in English) disciplines and requires high reliability. However, the data collection effort could be biased by taxon, site, time or environment, which could prevent researchers from answering questions correctly, or what is worse, give false answers. In this project we assessed the representativeness of the plant collection effort in the Guánica Forest Reserve (GFR), Puerto Rico. We measured the significance of the species, spatial, temporal and environmental bias in a database for this area through the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and statistical analysis. Analyzing a total of 1,807 records georeferenced in ArcMap 10, we identified the presence of each bias in the collection, with the taxonomical and temporal bias resulting as the most significant. We suggest some strategies for collecting during the first months of the year in less visited areas in order to improve the quality of the collection. We hope that this study can be executed in other regions of importance for the Island’s species and resources conservation. This analysis can serve as a guide for future explorations and as the basis for the use of this plant collection in studies based on GIS.