HERBase: A collection of understorey herb vegetation plots from Amazonia

ABSTRACT Understorey herbs form a diverse and understudied plant assemblage in tropical forests. Although several studies and research teams have long been dedicated to the study of this conspicuous vegetation component in Amazonia, no effort to unify the data has been undertaken to date. In contrast to trees and other life forms for which major data compilations already exist, a unified database dedicated to herbs is still lacking. Part of the problem is in defining what is a herb and how to effectively sample herb assemblages. In this article, we describe the database HERBase, an exhaustive compilation of published and unpublished data on herb inventories in Amazonia. We also describe the structure, functioning, and guidelines for data curation and integration in HERBase. We were able to compile information from 1381 plots from all six Amazonian geographic regions. Based on this dataset, we describe and discuss sampling and knowledge gaps, priority areas for new collections, and recommend sampling protocols to facilitate data integration in the future. This novel database provides a unique biodiversity data repository on understorey herbs that will enable new studies on community ecology and biogeography.摘要 林下草本植物是热带森林中物种多样却鲜有研究的植物类群。尽管多个研究团队长期致力于亚马孙地区这一显著植被组分的研究，但迄今为止尚未有统一整合相关数据的工作。与已有大型数据汇编的树木及其他生物类群不同，目前仍缺乏专门针对草本植物的统一数据库。部分难题在于如何界定草本植物的范畴，以及如何高效采样草本植物群落。本文将介绍HERBase数据库——一套涵盖亚马孙地区草本植物调查已发表与未发表数据的全面汇编，同时阐述该数据库的架构、运行机制，以及数据整理与整合的相关规范。我们已从亚马孙地区全部6个地理区域的1381个样地中收集到相关信息。基于该数据集，我们梳理并讨论了当前采样与认知层面的空白、未来采集工作的优先区域，并提出便于未来数据整合的采样规程建议。这款全新的数据库为林下草本植物提供了独一无二的生物多样性数据资源库，将为群落生态学与生物地理学领域的全新研究提供支撑。