Abstract
Herbarium collections shape our understanding of Earth’s flora and are crucial for addressing global change issues. Their formation, however, is not free from sociopolitical issues of immediate relevance. Despite increasing efforts addressing issues of representation and colonialism in natural history collections, herbaria have received comparatively less attention. While it has been noted that the majority of plant specimens are housed in the Global North, the extent and magnitude of this disparity have not been quantified. Here we examine the colonial legacy of botanical collections, analysing 85,621,930 specimen records and assessing survey responses from 92 herbarium collections across 39 countries. We find an inverse relationship between where plant diversity exists in nature and where it is housed in herbaria. Such disparities persist across physical and digital realms despite overt colonialism ending over half a century ago. We emphasize the need for acknowledging the colonial history of herbarium collections and implementing a more equitable global paradigm for their collection, curation and use.
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Data availability
The data discussed in the paper are either publicly available through GBIF (https://www.gbif.org/; https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.nt5wkx) or Index Herbariorum (https://sweetgum.nybg.org/science/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/The_World_Herbaria_2020_7_Jan_2021.pdf) or are in the Supplementary Information.
Code availability
The code used for data analysis is available at https://github.com/shandongfx/paper_specimen_2023.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the past and continuing contributions of colonized peoples to botanical science and knowledge. This work was largely conducted in institutions on the traditional territory of the Wampanoag, Massachusetts, Miami and Apalachee peoples. We thank the herbaria that contributed data to this work: AAU, AD, ASSAM, ASU, B, BISH, BM, BO, BP, BR, BRI, BRNU, BSA, BSHC, BSID, C, CANB, CAS, CHR, CL, CM, COL, CORD, DAO, DUKE, EA, F, FI, FLAS, FR, G, GB, GH, A, ECON, AMES, FH, NEBC, GJO, GOET, GZU, H, HAL, HIRO, IBSC, SI, K, KH, KW, L, LBL, LE, LIL, LY, M, MA, MEL, MEXU, MICH, MIN, MO, MT, MW, NCU, KB/NIBR, NICH, NSW, NY, O, OULU, P/PC, PAD, PE, PERTH, PRC, PRE/NBG/NH, QFA, RM/USFS, RO, S, SI, SING, SP, STR, TAIF, TASH, TENN, TEX/LL, TNS, TUR, UC, JEPS, UPS, US, USM, VEN, W, WTU and ZT. This work was supported by the Czech Academy of Sciences (grant no. RVO 67985939 to J.D.) and the Komarov Botanical Institute, RAS (grant no. AAAA-A19-119031290052-1 to D. Melnikov). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.
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D.S.P. and C.C.D. conceived the initial idea, which was refined through discussions with X.F. D.S.P and X.F. analysed the specimen data and designed the questionnaire with C.C.D. D.S.P. supervised the study and wrote the original draft with input from X.F. All other authors provided data from their respective institutions. All authors contributed to further revising the manuscript.
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Park, D.S., Feng, X., Akiyama, S. et al. The colonial legacy of herbaria. Nat Hum Behav 7, 1059–1068 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01616-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01616-7
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