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Harnessing herbarium collections to monitor genetic change in Earth's flora
Isaac Eckert, Lucas Eckert, Olivia Rahn, Cameron So, Laura J. Pollock
Among the numerous shortfalls that beset our understanding of biodiversity, our knowledge of within-species genetic variation and its change over time is particularly sparse. For flora, one potential solution is to leverage the genetic material housed in Earth’s ~396 million herbarium specimens. Yet, the extent to which these collections can be used to reconstruct populations and estimate genetic variation remains unclear. Here, we assess the extent to which digitally available herbarium specimens can be used to measure genetic variation and change in vascular plants. We find that digitized herbarium specimens could be harnessed to quantify genetic biodiversity indicators for >162K historical plant populations across >41K species. The digitization of Earth’s remaining specimens is a crucial step in understanding the breadth of these collections and we estimate that mass digitization could enable population-level estimates of genetic diversity for nearly two thirds (64%) of plant species. Ultimately, our pressed and stored plant collections offer an invaluable source of historical genetic data, the mobilization of which would transform our understanding of the state of plant diversity on Earth.
