Taxonomic, geographical and temporal coverage of Rubiaceae specimens at DSM herbarium, University of Dar es Salaam

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Description

Tanzania is one of the mega-biodiversity rich countries globally. The country located in the tropical region of African and favourable climatic condition supports high biodiversity. It has extensive species diversity with at least 14,500 known species (7,714 plants) and is among 15 countries globally with the highest number of endemic and threatened species. University of Dar es salaam Herbarium (DSM) is in the Dar es Salaam region, Tanzania, and it holds collections of preserved plants and Chromista specimens collected since February 1928. The Herbarium continues with the collection of samples of biota for research and teaching.

This dataset comprises 3500 occurrence records of specimens of the Rubiaceae family preserved at the University of Dar es Salaam Herbarium. The family Rubiaceae consists of about 13,500 species in about 620 genera of terrestrial trees, shrubs, lianas, or herbs, making it the fourth-largest angiosperm globally. The dataset covers essential biodiversity information, including taxonomic, geographic, temporal coverage of 352 species in 39 genera collected from different parts of Tanzania from February 1928 to November 2020. Coffea is one of the genera included in this dataset. The genus is valuable for its commercial value products traded commodity used in food, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical industries due to its caffeine and high polyphenol content. The dataset provides IUCN red list information of the assessed species for research and conservation management. The dataset consists of fifty threatened, three hundred thirty-four near threatened, 85 least concern and 33 species have Data Deficiency.

Information in this dataset was drawn from the herbarium sheet labels and transformed into Darwin Core Standard. Darwin Core quick reference guide aided the development of an Excel sheet of 63 columns and 3004 rows for data digitisation. Each row contains information on a particular Rubiaceae preserved specimen. The information about the data publisher, institution code, herbarium code and Catalogue number used in developing the occurrence. The GEOLocate Web-Based Clients used to translate textual locality into geographic coordinates. GBIF species matching, GBIF validator and Darwin Core Archive Assistant tools aided the mapping and validation of the dataset. Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) enabled open access of the dataset on preserved specimens occurrence records in the Department of Botany, the University of Dar Es Salaam, formerly locked.

Taxonomic Coverages

Geographic Coverages

Bibliographic Citations