Moscow University Herbarium (MW)

Citation

Description

Moscow University Herbarium (MW) is the second largest herbarium in Russia after the Komarov Institute. Being available at https://plant.depo.msu.ru/, it is almost completely imaged either at 300 dpi for regular collections or at 600 dpi for type specimens. The herbarium is focused on the flora of temperate Eurasia with an emphasis on the flora of Russia. As of 1 November 2018, physical collections of MW Herbarium include 1,044,571 specimens (incl. 4.8K type specimens) representing 37,200 species and subspecies of vascular plants and 2,223 species and subspecies of bryophytes. Currently, MW holds the 63rd place in the world's ranking (Thiers, 2019). Moscow University Herbarium preserve some important historical collections by G.F. Hoffmann, J.F. Ehrhart, C.B. Trinius, J.R. and J.G.A. Forsters, and their correspondents.

The Moscow University Herbarium added a millionth specimen to the collections in June 2016. An average annual growth of the collections is ca. 15,000 specimens, with an exceptional 22,013 specimens added to the herbarium in 2016. In 2017, we added 19,416 new accessions. Since 2005, major accessions originated from Eastern Europe, Siberia and Russian Far East, the Caucasus, and South Asia (vascular plants); Taimyr, Russian Far East, and North Caucasus (bryophytes).

The Moscow University Herbarium has gained budget for the digitisation of the collections within the Program of the National Depository Bank of Live Systems (Moscow Digital Herbarium Initiative), and ca. 970,000 specimens were scanned since May 2015. All records are published at https://plant.depo.msu.ru/, including JPG images and metadata required for indexing.

The number of georeferenced specimens with fully captured labels is constantly growing. Brief metadata (collector's name and collection date) were added for 83% specimens in July 2018 to enable easy grouping of specimens prior to label capturing and georeferencing. As of September 2019, labels of 325,635 specimens are fully captured and 425,618 specimens are precisely georeferenced.

4,939 occurrences from Yakutia were georeferenced in March 2019 by the support of RFBR project 'Sravnitel'nyj analiz zakonomernostej raznoobraziya drevesnyh i travyanistyh vidov kontinental'noj Azii' (# 19-54-53014).

5,140 occurrences from Mongolia were georeferenced in December 2020 by the support of RFBR project 'Sravnitel'nyj analiz zakonomernostej raznoobraziya drevesnyh i travyanistyh vidov kontinental'noj Azii' (# 19-54-53014).

68,166 occurrences were georeferenced from March, 1 2019 to September, 24 2019 by the support of FinBIF project 'Supporting the regular georeferencing of European Russia holdings in the Moscow Digital Herbarium' (Russia2019_14, see details at https://www.gbif.org/project/2dfnq4VJQxHVSoPZWykiCb/supporting-the-regular-georeferencing-of-european-russia-holdings-in-the-moscow-digital-herbarium). They include newly georeferenced records from Eastern European plain, western slope of the Urals and Northern Caucasus.

Moscow Digital Herbarium (MW and MHA herbaria online) is the largest Russian biodiversity database. It is fully available in GBIF. It is the primary source for the "Distribution Atlas of the Russian Flora" to be outworked in the Moscow University in due time. Moscow Digital Herbarium holds several regional portals like "Flora of Moscow" (https://moscow.depo.msu.ru/) for further stimulation of the digitisation efforts across Russian herbaria.

Purpose

Imaging of specimens is the modern trend in the herbarium management. Today, at least 64 herbaria have 1M+ specimens and at least eight herbaria have estimated their collections as 1M. Even in the larger herbaria mass digitisation is still not a common practice. In late 2014, the Moscow University Herbarium (MW) had received direct investment for digitisation within the grant #14-50-00029 from the Russian Science Foundation as part of the National Depository Bank of Live Systems Initiative launched by the Moscow State University. We employed new technical staff to facilitate further growth of the collections, intensified the collection management and 22,013 specimens were added in 2016 as a result. Having the stable budget for the next four years, we scanned 900K specimens at 300 dpi (TIFF + JPG) in 2015–2018, digitised 4.8K type specimens at 600 dpi, imaged 78K labels from bryophyte envelopes, and finally databased and georeferenced label data from as much specimens as possible until exhaustion of the budget. At the moment, we operate the eighth largest imaged digital herbarium in the world. The Moscow Digital Herbarium is the largest Russian biodiversity database. The Moscow Digital Herbarium publishes its data on the web portal of the National Depository Bank of Live Systems, a collaborative network of the Moscow University biological collections. Since October 2016, a fast public version of the botany portal with some functional limitations is available at http://plant.depo.msu.ru/open/.

Sampling Description

Additional info

Taxonomic Coverages

Geographic Coverages

Bibliographic Citations

1. Seregin A.P. Making the Russian flora visible: Fast digitisation of the Moscow University Herbarium (MW) in 2015 // Taxon. – 2016. – Vol. 65, № 1. – P. 205–207. – http://dx.doi.org/10.12705/651.29. - http://dx.doi.org/10.12705/651.29
2. Серегин А.П. Цифровой гербарий МГУ – крупнейшая российская база данных по биоразнообразию // Изв. РАН. Сер. биол. – 2017. – № 6. – С. 610–616. – https://doi.org/10.7868/S0002332917060042. - https://doi.org/10.7868/S0002332917060042
3. Серегин А.П. Гербарий Московского университета (MW) сегодня: фонды, онлайн доступ и научная работа // Бот. журн. – 2017. – Т. 102, № 3. – С. 281–308. (Рез. англ.). - https://istina.msu.ru/download/57848528/1ezepD:Zu7LoJhWgKt60Piz7r1CFTnUkno/
4. Seregin A.P. Digital herbarium of Moscow State University: The largest Russian biodiversity database // Biology Bulletin. – 2017. – Vol. 44, № 6. – P. 584–590. – https://doi.org/10.1134/S1062359017060103 - https://doi.org/10.1134/S1062359017060103
5. Seregin A.P. The largest digital herbarium in Russia is now available online! // Taxon. – 2018. – Vol. 67 (2). – P. 463–467. - http://dx.doi.org/10.12705/672.34. - http://dx.doi.org/10.12705/672.34