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There is a concerted global effort to digitize biodiversity occurrence data from herbarium and museum collections that together offer an unparalleled archive of life on Earth over the past few centuries. The Global Biodiversity Information Facility provides the largest single gateway to these data. Since 2004 it has provided a single point of access to specimen data from databases of biological surveys and collections. Biologists now have rapid access to more than 120 million observations, for use in many biological analyses. We investigate the quality and coverage of data digitally available, from the perspective of a biologist seeking distribution data for spatial analysis on a global scale. We present an example of automatic verification of geographic data using distributions from the International Legume Database and Information Service to test empirically, issues of geographic coverage and accuracy. There are over 1/2 million records covering 31% of all Legume species, and 84% of these records pass geographic validation. These data are not yet a global biodiversity resource for all species, or all countries. A user will encounter many biases and gaps in these data which should be understood before data are used or analyzed. The data are notably deficient in many of the world's biodiversity hotspots. The deficiencies in data coverage can be resolved by an increased application of resources to digitize and publish data throughout these most diverse regions. But in the push to provide ever more data online, we should not forget that consistent data quality is of paramount importance if the data are to be useful in capturing a meaningful picture of life on Earth.

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Summary Compton, J. A., Culham, A. & Jury, S. L.: Reclassification of Actaea to include Cimicifuga and Souliea (Ranunculaceae): phytogeny inferred from morphology, nrDNA ITS, and cpDNA trnL‐F sequence variation. – Taxon 47: 593‐634. 1998. – ISSN 0040‐0262 Phylogenetic analyses using parsimony were performed on three independent data sets to test generic relationships between Actaea, Cimicifuga, and Souliea. Analyses of morphology and nuclear ribosomal DNA ITS were performed on 23 species of Cimicifuga, 4 species of Actaea, and the single species of Souliea. Analysis of chloroplast DNA trnL‐F was applied to the same species, less two of Cimicifuga. The outgroup taxa Eranthis and Anemonopsis both resolved outside the ingroup in all parsimony analyses, whereas Souliea resolved within it. Jukes‐Cantor pairwise sequence distances confirm Eranthis and Anemonopsis to be most distant. Souliea distances are comparable with those of taxa within the Actaea‐Cimicifuga assemblage. A strongly supported monophyletic clade including all studied species of Actaea, Cimicifuga, and Souliea was found in all analyses. Evidence presented here allows a broader concept of Actaea to be adopted, reverting to the circumscription of Linnaeus in 1753. Seven sections, based on clades found in the total analysis, could be defined by morphological characters: A. sect. Actaea, sect. Podocarpae, sect. Cimicifuga, sect. Dichanthera, sect. Oligocarpae, sect. Pityrosperma, and sect. Souliea. One species, A. taiwanensis, is newly described and 23 new combinations are made in the ranks of section, species, and variety. Keys are provided to identify taxa at all ranks within the revised circumscription of Actaea. Maps showing the distributions of all seven sections and their constituent species are presented. Phytogeographic patterns suggest a Tertiary origin for the newly redefined genus, with species surviving in refugia during the glacial periods of the Pleistocene.

We investigate the impact of past climates on plant diversification by tracking the "footprint" of climate change on a phylogenetic tree. Diversity within the cosmopolitan carnivorous plant genus Drosera (Droseraceae) is focused within Mediterranean climate regions. We explore whether this diversity is temporally linked to Mediterranean-type climatic shifts of the mid-Miocene and whether climate preferences are conservative over phylogenetic timescales. Phyloclimatic modeling combines environmental niche (bioclimatic) modeling with phylogenetics in order to study evolutionary patterns in relation to climate change. We present the largest and most complete such example to date using Drosera. The bioclimatic models of extant species demonstrate clear phylogenetic patterns; this is particularly evident for the tuberous sundews from southwestern Australia (subgenus Ergaleium). We employ a method for establishing confidence intervals of node ages on a phylogeny using replicates from a Bayesian phylogenetic analysis. This chronogram shows that many clades, including subgenus Ergaleium and section Bryastrum, diversified during the establishment of the Mediterranean-type climate. Ancestral reconstructions of bioclimatic models demonstrate a pattern of preference for this climate type within these groups. Ancestral bioclimatic models are projected into palaeo-climate reconstructions for the time periods indicated by the chronogram. We present two such examples that each generate plausible estimates of ancestral lineage distribution, which are similar to their current distributions. This is the first study to attempt bioclimatic projections on evolutionary time scales. The sundews appear to have diversified in response to local climate development. Some groups are specialized for Mediterranean climates, others show wide-ranging generalism. This demonstrates that Phyloclimatic modeling could be repeated for other plant groups and is fundamental to the understanding of evolutionary responses to climate change.