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Database for a fungi herbarium

 

An electronic database can vastly improve access to the data about specimens, and it can be used for producing herbarium packet labels. Data such as their scientific names can be easily updated. All information from field sheets can be inputted, and any subsequent data can be added to the database at any time. Photographs of fruit bodies can be scanned into the database. The data can be networked locally or more widely. Ideally, the fields in a database should correspond with entries on the data sheets used when recording data about the fresh fungi.

 

Fields of data for database in fungi herbarium may include:

  1. CODE NUMBER 
  2. GENUS 
  3. SPECIES
  4. FIELD IDENTIFICATION / COMMON NAME 
  5. COLLECTOR 
  6. DATE OF COLLECTION 
  7. LOCATION 
  8. STATE 
  9. HABIT 
  10. VEGETATION TYPE 
  11. ASSOCIATED PLANTS 
  12. SOIL TYPE 
  13. AUTHOR OF SPECIES 
  14. FAMILY 
  15. IDENTITY OF PERSON WHO IDENTIFIED THE FUNGUS 
  16. LATITUDE & LONGITUDE 
  17. MAP REFERENCE 
  18. DESCRIPTION OF SPECIMENS
  19. SPORE PRINT COLOUR 
  20. OTHER CODE (e.g. original field collector’s code) 
  21. PHOTOGRAPH

 

TIPS:

Establish your fungi herbarium in a small way to start with, in order to become more familiar with the fungal species and with recording their characteristics. In surveys keep only selected representatives of different species, rather than trying to keep all fungi. 

 

If you want to establish a uniform coding system for your herbarium e.g. “Corrigin197” for specimen 197 at a herbarium in Corrigin, make sure that the original reference number used by the field collector is always indicated in the specimen packet and on the database.

 

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