The Palm Family
Background: The palms (Arecaceae or Palmae) are a large family of monocotyledonous flowering plants comprising some 2400 species and over 180 genera. Palms are conspicuous in tropical and subtropical vegetation worldwide, occurring in many of the most threatened habitats. In addition, palms compete only with the legume and grass families in terms of economic importance. The family includes some major crops of international trade, such as oil palm, date palm and coconut, and numerous species that are exploited for landscape horticulture. However, they stand out from other families because of their great importance at the subsistence level, providing food, drink, fuel, materials for construction, tool-making and handicrafts, among other resources. Thus, easy access to palm taxonomic information not only has inherent value to the systematics community, but also meets broader societal demands from a broad range of audiences, including biologists, conservationists, agronomists, horticulturists and the general public.
Context: Palm taxonomic expertise is sparsely distributed around the world with active research ongoing in Australia, Europe, South America, South-East Asia and the USA. Numerous collaborative ties between countries have ensured that the global palm community is relatively well integrated. In Europe, however, the high concentration of palm scientists has resulted in the development of a more formal network, the European Network of Palm Scientists, or EUNOPS for short. The network appeals to a broad range of researchers working in whole organism biology of palms, but is formed around a common interest in palm systematics. Although the network remains in communication throughout the year, the main activities of EUNOPS revolve around regular meetings that have taken place annually since 2001.
EDIT WP6 Palm Exemplar Group: Through EDIT, a palm eTaxonomy initiative has been established that will result in a web-based information source and collaborative focus for palm research. EUNOPS lies at the heart of this initiative with network counterparts participating in the preparation of a concept document at the start of the project, upon which a formal requirements document and the model for the preliminary web interface have been based. The Palm Exemplar Group is led from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew by Bill Baker and Soraya Villalba. Although networking activities have initially focused on the EUNOPS community, palm experts from outside Europe have already been invited to participate and it is hoped that EDIT activities will provide important infrastructural foundations to forthcoming international taxonomic initiatives on palms.
Documents:
- Palm Portal concept v1.1 (March 2006)
- Palmweb description and requirements (March 2007)
