The primary purpose of publishing these specimens is to secure the future of the LWS Herbarium, which remains at risk of damage due to hostilities and to make the mobilised data freely and remotely accessible through GBIF. This also aims to improve the implementation of Ukrainian biodiversity data and their integrative use in international research projects.

Digitisation of natural history collections damaged as a result of hostilities and related factors: development of protocols and implementation on the basis of the State Museum of Natural History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Nr 2022.01/0013)

Project PI: Andriy Novikov (Dr., Senior Research Scientist, SMNH, Department of Biosystematics and Evolution, ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0112-5070).

Core Team: Habriel Hushtan (Dr., Research Scientist, SMNH, Department of Biosystematics and Evolution, ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6999-6043), Kateryna Hushtan (Dr., Research Scientist, SMNH, Department of Museum Informative Systems, ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5235-3233), Oleksandr Kuzyarin (Dr., Research Scientist, SMNH, Department of Museum Informative Systems, ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7728-3665), Bohdan Prots (Dr., Head of Department, SMNH, Department of Landscape and Biotic Diversity, ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0605-9527), Volodymyr Rizun (Dr., Head of Department, SMNH, Department of Museum Informative Systems, ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1675-032X), Anastasiia Savytska (Dr., Research Scientist, SMNH, Department of Applied Museology, ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6255-8590), Andrij Susulovsky (Dr., Head of Department, SMNH, Department of Biosystematics and Evolution, ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4233-9825).

Assistants: Viktor Nachychko (Dr., Associate Professor, Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Faculty of Biology, Department of Botany, ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6756-2823), Solomia Susulovska (Dr., Collection Keeper, Junior Research Scientist, Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Faculty of Biology, Zoological Museum, ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7585-7584), Dmytro Leleka (PhD Student, Institute of Ecology of the Carpathians of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Department of Ecosystemology, ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0112-5070).

The study is mainly focused on the western part of Ukraine, but also includes specimens collected from other regions of the country.

The project aims to: (a) develop digitisation protocols for the most valuable and vulnerable natural history collections; (b) mobilise and publish the data about such collections deposited at SMNH; and (c) digitise prioritised specimens deposited at SMNH, including those belonging to the herbarium collection and the collection of invertebrates. The digitisation workflow will include seven stages. During the Preparatory stage, the working taxonomic lists are prepared, lists of available materials are synchronised and updated following recent taxonomy, staff roles are ascertained and inventory of the technical equipment is conducted. The Data Mobilisation stage includes extraction of the data from the herbarium labels, filling the initial datasets and georeferencing. The Image Capturing stage involves preparation of specimens for photography (re-mounting, reparation, label mounting, cleaning etc.), image capturing using the photocameras and image post-processing. The next stage includes the Synchronisation of data and images (i.e. renaming the files following the catalogue numbers, ordering images in folders following the applied taxonomy and creating the file by synchronising the links between the images and occurrence records). Quality Control is realised continuously during all stages and also involves a final cross-check of the data and digital images. Archiving the data and images is realised using internal and external facilities. In particular, the master files and initial datasets are archived on Verbatim MABL BluRay discs and institutional servers. At the same time, the images are archived using Sigma2 AS (2023) and Open Herbarium (2023) platforms. The Publication of the data and images is realised using the GBIF (2023), Open Herbarium (2023) and Biodiversity of Ukraine (State Museum of Natural History of the NAS of Ukraine 2023) facilities.

The grant programme “Science for the Recovery of Ukraine in the War and Post-War Periods” (Nr 2022.01) of the National Research Foundation of Ukraine (NRFU).

Three priority groups were defined within the LWS Herbarium for digitisation and data mobilisation purposes. The first, red, group comprises type material, authentic collections, specimens of endemic and rare taxa and specimens collected from the 'locus classicus' localities. The second, yellow, group includes specimens of the taxa characteristic for the regional flora and specimens collected from hardly-accessible or currently inaccessible territories (e.g. border territories with limited access and occupied territories). The third, green, group includes specimens of regular species and specimens from supporting (e.g. loan and educational) collections. For the selected taxa, a rough capture of the labels has been conducted. The data from these labels were transferred to the draft tables corresponding to GBIF’s requirements for Occurrence datasets (GBIF 2023). After that, the localities were identified using the OpenStreetMap service and georeferenced. The taxonomy of vascular plants was validated using the GBIF taxonomic backbone (GBIF Secretariat 2023) and cross-checked with POWO (2023). The taxonomy of non-vascular plants was verified using GBIF (2023) taxonomic backbone and also cross-checked with Hodgetts et al. (2020).

The quality of the final datasets was first manually checked. After that, the datasets were processed using OpenRefine 3.7.7 software (OpenRefine 2023) and saved as a tsv file encoded in UTF-8. To test datasets for spatial outliers, QGIS 3.10 software (QGIS Association 2023) has been applied.

1. Taking photos of herbarium labels; 2. Re-identification of taxa following recent taxonomy; 3. Extracting the locality, collector, date and other relevant information (e.g. identification history) from the labels; 4. Translation of the primary label information from Slavic languages (i.e. Ukrainian and Russian) to English; 5. Georeferencing of localities using printed maps and OpenStreetMap web service (OpenStreetMap contributors 2023); 6. Quality check applying OpenRefine (OpenRefine 2023) and QGIS (QGIS Association 2023) for detecting outlier and coordinate issues.

The data mobilisation in the LWS Herbarium at the moment is focused on Ukrainian flora. Two described datasets containing the data mobilised in 2023 mainly cover the western part of Ukraine, but only occasionally include occurrences from other regions of Ukraine (Fig. 1).

44.492 and 51.565 Latitude; 22.395 and 37.541 Longitude.

All processed specimens (except two unidentified specimens of Bryales) were identified to the level of species or infraspecies. The dataset of vascular plants contains 59 species, representing 36 genera, 17 families and 11 orders of the class Magnoliopsida (Table 1). Vascular plants' specimens belong mainly to the orders Ericales (28% of total number of processed specimens), Apiales (23%) and Saxifragales (13%). The most abundant families are Apiaceae (23%), Primulaceae (18%) and Ericaceae (10%). The most abundant genera of vascular plants amongst processed specimens are Primula (18%) and Astarntia (10%). The dataset of non-vascular plants contains 190 species representing 99 genera, 39 families and 11 orders of the class Bryopsida (Table 1). Three of the most represented orders amongst processed specimens of non-vascular plants are Hypnales (57%), Bryales (17%) and Orthotrichales (9%). The most abundant families of non-vascular plants are Brachytheciaceae (15%), Mniaceae (10%), Amblystegiaceae (9%), Orthotrichaceae (9%) and Bryaceae (7%). The genera of non-vascular plants in the processed material are distributed more or less symmetrically.

The dataset of vascular plants covers specimens collected in 1852–2014 (Fig. 2). The dataset of non-vascular plants covers specimens collected in 1946–1969 (Fig. 3).

Herbarium of the State Museum of Natural History of the NAS of Ukraine.

LWS, https://scientific-collections.gbif.org/collection/dd92057d-4fe5-4656-bc5a-90f97456604e

Dried and pressed.

LWS-vascular and LWS-non-vascular units.

Other

Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0)

LWS Herbarium data mobilisation

2

The State Natural History Museum of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine was established as a private collection of the Polish noble family Dzieduszycki (Sas). In 1868, Count Włodzimierz Dzieduszycki bought the current building of the Museum and established the Natural History Museum in Lviv, where he placed his collections. This Museum became gradually open to the public since 1870 and, in 1880, Count Dzieduszycki gifted it to the Polish nation (Petryk 2011, Taborski 2013).

The Herbarium became a valuable part of the Museum’s collections, because it was intensively collected far before its opening, since 1832. Initially, the Herbarium hosted specimens collected personally by Count Dzieduszycki and such famous botanists as Franz Herbich, Ernst Schauer, Antoni Rehmann and Hiacynt Łobarzewski. Later, it was completed by Museum employees Tadeusz Wilczyński, Genadiy Kozij, Jeremi Iwanicki and Fedir Fotyniuk. In the beginning, the Herbarium was entitled “Zielnik Muzeum im. Dzieduszyckich we Lwowie” and registered with the acronym LWD. Later, many collectors complemented it. In particular, in 1940, the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Lviv was liquidated and its collections transferred to the Museum. As a result, the Museum Herbarium has been supplied with specimens collected by Eustach Wołoszczak, Bolesław Kotula, Vinczé von Borbás, Bronisław Błocki, József Barth, Żegota Król, Florian Porcius, Józef Mądalski and many other botanists. Since then, the acronym LWS has been used. In 1950–2000, the Herbarium was intensively supplied with materials collected by Kupava Ulychna, Mykhaylo Slobodian, Kost’ Malynovsiy, Vasyl’ Kolischuk, Anastasiya Lazebna, Ivan Vaynagiy, Vasyl’ Tkachyk, Lydia Tasenkevich, Oleksandr Kuzyarin and other Ukrainian botanists. In general, there are ca. 500 collectors who contributed to the LWS Herbarium. The oldest specimens deposited in the LWS Herbarium were collected by Ernst Wittmann between 1807 and 1811 (Tasenkevich et al. 2009, Tasenkevich and Danyliuk 2011).

The LWS Herbarium currently hosts ca. 120,000 specimens of vascular plants and over 26,000 specimens of non-vascular plants. Amongst them, ca. 200 specimens represent type material, but this number is approximate since the typification is still unfinished. Additionally, it includes ca. 4,000 specimens deposited in supporting (loan and educational) collections.

Most of the deposited specimens are collected from the local flora, with emphasis on the western part of Ukraine (i.e. Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil, Chernivtsi, Zakarpattia and Volhynia oblasts). However, LWS also hosts many specimens collected from the countries of the Carpathian region, i.e. Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Romania and Hungary.

Digitisation of the LWS Herbarium began in 2012–2013 when type specimens of vascular plants were digitised in the context of a Mellon Foundation grant. In particular, the data and images of 286 specimens, including 252 type specimens of vascular plants, were deposited at JACQ (JACQ consortium 2023) and JSTOR Global Plants (ITHAKA 2023). In 2007–2020, the data on the genus Aconitum were mobilised and 420 records from the LWS Herbarium were added to this dataset (Novikov and Prylutskyi 2023). In 2021–2022, funded by an IAPT Small Collections grant, the data about 1,873 specimens of vascular plants deposited in the LWS Herbarium were mobilised. These records supplemented the investigations of endemism in the flora of the Ukrainian Carpathians and were published within the respective dataset (Novikov and Sup-Novikova 2022). In 2023, this dataset has been updated with additional georeferenced data and supported by images. In 2022–2023, 11,437 more occurrence records were mobilised from LWS and published through GBIF. This dataset comprised rare, relict, range-limited and problematic taxa of vascular plants in the Ukrainian Carpathians and adjacent territories (Novikov 2023). In 2023, 1,219 specimens of vascular plants were digitised within an NRFU grant and respective data were published to GBIF (Novikov et al. 2023) and Open Herbarium (SMNH-NASU-LWS 2023) platforms. Hence, at the moment, the data regarding 15,235 LWS’s specimens of vascular plants (12.7% of the total number of deposited specimens) have been mobilised and published online. In particular, 3092 specimens of vascular plants (2.6%) have been digitised, and their images appeared online in JACQ (JACQ consortium 2023), GBIF (2023) and Open Herbarium (2023) platforms. The digitisation of the Herbarium of non-vascular plants started only in 2023 and, at the moment, only 1200 specimens (4.6%) have been digitised. Their images are available through the Biodiversity of Ukraine (State Museum of Natural History of the NAS of Ukraine 2023) database. In 2024, with NRFU support, we are going to digitise ca. 5,000 specimens of vascular plants (+4.2%) and ca. 2,000 specimens of non-vascular plants (+7.7%). The data mobilised during this work will be published as updates to the datasets described here. High-resolution (80 Mp) specimens' images from the herbarium of vascular plants and middle-resolution (20 Mp) specimen images from the herbarium of non-vascular plants will be made available online through GBIF (2023) and Open Herbarium (2023) platforms and other online resources.

The current digitisation in the LWS Herbarium is focused on the red priority group, limited by the flora of Ukraine. From this group, the specimens of the type material have already been digitised and are available online through the JACQ (JACQ consortium 2023) and JSTOR Global Plants (ITHAKA 2023) portals. The digitisation of specimens of endemic and rare taxa and authentic collections is currently in progress. The next digitisation round (2025–2030) will involve the specimens belonging to the yellow priority group (i.e. taxa characterising the regional flora and hardly-accessible or currently inaccessible territories). The specimens of the green priority group, belonging to the trivial flora, will be digitised after that.

Specimens collected from other countries are not part of current digitisation plans and will be digitised later or on request. This geographic scope, limited by the Ukrainian borders, has been ascertained due to several reasons: (a) limited financial and technical facilities available for digitisation ; (b) floras of other countries are rather in response of respective herbaria and can be covered by such herbaria, while they cannot successfully cover the flora of Ukraine; (c) absence of expertise in other floras limits the success of resolving taxonomic issues that could arise during the digitisation of materials collected out of Ukraine; (d) limited expertise in toponymy of other countries can result in multiple incorrect data extraction and/or georeferencing and significantly inhibits the digitisation process.

We will gladly consider requests for prioritised digitisation from scientists worldwide. We believe that it is most important to digitise those materials that are urgently needed for research purposes. Therefore, please direct your requests, including the list of taxa and brief explanation for your request, to the herbarium curators, Andriy Novikov (novikoffav@gmail.com) and Anastasiia Savytska (asavitska@gmail.com).