Texas Endemics: Distribution of all endemics

This 'diversity map' from a Flora of Texas Consortium pilot project at:

http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/FLORA/endemics/endemic1.htm

allows the user to visualize relative diversity across Texas among 326 vascular plant taxa (species and infraspecific elements) that were listed in a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department document as being endemic to the state.  A user interested in a given Texas county can click on that county to examine a listing of Texas endemics known to occur there.  The system provides similar diversity maps for vascular plant families and genera.  It creates these color coded maps by overlaying distributions of all 326 taxa (or those of a given family or genus) and summing overlapping distributions by county.  While the base distribution data are, in many cases, rough estimates, this total summary points to the eastern Edwards Plateau as a center of Texas endemism, a result that is probably accurate.  In an effort to improve the quality of base distribution data for this system, an 'annotation' feature was added to allow FTC herbaria to add or delete county records using information available from their collections.

When specimen data available from  Flora of Texas Project becomes more complete, mapped visualization systems such as this will be generated from the combined specimen database.  As the full database develops to include a better sample of available specimen data from Texas herbaria, the picture provided by this and other visualization tools under development will move toward higher levels of resolution.  Since diversity maps offer a quick view of summed data, they also provide a clear indication of Texas counties that are lacking floristic documentation, i.e., county records.  Thus, as we move toward fuller expression of available specimen data we also have an efficient indicator for those Texas counties that are not well represented.  Since those with an interest in the state flora will be inclined to produce new information by obtaining county records, and the need for these will be immediately evident to all with Internet access, these types of data expression systems could expedite our effort to fully document the state flora.