Early Land Plants Today in the Catalogue of Life

The Early Land Plants Today (ELPT) project aims to combine existing data on nomenclature, taxonomy and distribution for liverworts and hornworts. The project is jointly coordinated by Prof. Lars Söderström (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway) and Anders Hagborg and Dr. Matt von Konrat (The Field Museum, Chicago, USA). This is an internationally coordinated effort involving over 40 bryologists from more than 16 countries. The data presented here is based on the first-ever worldwide checklist for liverworts (Marchantiophyta) and hornworts (Anthocerotophyta) published in 2016 and some recent updates after that. The checklist and the CoL data are derived from a working database centralizing nomenclature, taxonomy and geography on a global scale. As of January 2019 the database includes about 39,000 names of about 8,600 ‘accepted’ taxa, a bibliography of more than 25,000 references and more than 700,000 distribution records. The data includes all extant taxa for liverworts and hornworts and macrofossils closely related to them. Prior to this effort a lack of centralization was a major impediment for the study and analysis of species richness, conservation and systematic research at both regional and global scales. The checklist as well as a list of contributors can be accessed at: https://doi.org/10.3897/phytokeys.59.6261. The data maintained in the database is constantly growing and has been used for several regional checklists and nomenclature summaries of individual families. The data is made available for other international databasing and conservation initiatives. This effort has been partially funded over the past several years by a variety of institutions and agencies including the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, The Field Museum, GBIF and the National Science Foundation.