The checklist of alien seed plants of D.R. Congo, based on evidence from herbarium collections

Study Extent

Alien seed plant species occurring outside of cultivation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with at least one record in scientific collections (1869--2019).

Sampling

A first list has been compiled from extensive literature search, and other databases. All entries in this list have been checked for presence in herbarium collections, and all identifications have been checked on herbarium specimens. Species collected only in cultivation (based on herbarium specimen labels) have been filtered out. For further details on methodology, see Bordbar & Meerts (2022).

Quality Control

The data is based on material evidence in herbarium collections.

Method steps

1. The source data for this standardized sampling event dataset is published as supplementary materials to Bordar & Meerts (2022) and is uploaded to the Github repository of this dataset: https://github.com/alien-csi/alien-flora-congo-checklist/tree/main/data/raw
2. An Rmarkdown script was developed to transform the data to a Darwin Core dataset. This mapping script was uploaded to the Github repository https://github.com/alien-csi/alien-flora-congo-checklist/tree/main/src and includes the following steps:
3. Perform some basic cleaning of the raw data.
4. Generate stable and unique identifiers for each taxon (taxonID).
5. Create a taxon core file (https://rs.gbif.org/core/dwc_taxon_2022-02-02.xml).
6. Create a distribution extension (https://rs.gbif.org/extension/gbif/1.0/distribution_2022-02-02.xml).
7. Create a description extension (https://rs.gbif.org/extension/gbif/1.0/description.xml).

The checklist comprises 436 alien species i.e., 189 (43%) casuals, 247 (57%) naturalised of which 80 (18% of aliens) are invasive. See (Bordar & Meerts 2022) for more details.

1. Plantae
   common name: plants rank: kingdom

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (D.R. Congo), see (Bordar & Meerts 2022) for more details.