Hybridization between crops and their wild relatives has the potential to introduce novel variation into wild populations. Camelina ( Camelina sativa ) is a promising oilseed and cultivars with modified seed characteristics and herbicide resistance are in development, prompting a need to evaluate the potential for novel trait introgression into weedy relatives. Little‐podded false flax (littlepod ; Camelina microcarpa ) is a naturalized weed in Canada and the USA. Here we evaluated the hybridization rate between the three cytotypes of littlepod (♀) and camelina (♂), assessed characteristics of hybrids, and evaluated the fitness of hexaploid littlepod and camelina hybrids in the glasshouse and field. In total we conducted, 1,005 manual crosses with diploid littlepod, 1, 172 crosses with tetraploid littlepod, and 896 crosses with hexaploid littlepod. Hybrids were not produced by the diploids, but were produced by the tetraploids and hexaploids at rates of one hybrid for 2,000 ovules pollinated and 24 hybrids for 25 ovules pollinated, respectively. Hybrids between tetraploid littlepod and camelina showed low pollen fertility and produced a small number of seeds. In the glasshouse, hybrids between hexaploid littlepod and camelina also showed significantly lower pollen fertility and seed production than parental lines, but their seeds showed high viability. A similar pattern was observed in field trials, with hybrids showing earlier flowering, reduced biomass, seed production and seed weight. However, seed produced by the hybrids showed greater viability than that produced by hexaploid littlepod and is potentially the result of a shortened lifecycle. The introgression of lifecycle traits into littlepod populations may facilitate range expansion and contribute to crop gene persistence. Consequently, future work should evaluate the hybridization rate in the field, the fitness of advanced generation backcrosses, and the role of time to maturity in limiting hexaploid littlepod's distribution.

Here we present a revised species checklist for the Brassicaceae, updated from Warwick SI, Francis, A, Al-Shehbaz IA (2006), Brassicaceae: Species checklist and database on CD-ROM, Plant Systematics and Evolution 259: 249─25. This update of the checklist was initiated, based on recent taxonomic and molecular studies on the Brassicaceae that have resulted in new species names, combinations and associated synonyms. New data have been added indicating tribal affiliations within the family and where type specimens have been designated. In addition, information from many early publications has been checked and added to the database. The database now includes information on 14983 taxa, 4636 of which are currently accepted and divided into 340 genera and 52 tribes. A selected bibliography of recent publications on the Brassicaceae is included.

Knowledge graphs have the potential to unite disconnected digitized biodiversity data, and there are a number of efforts underway to build biodiversity knowledge graphs. More generally, the recent popularity of knowledge graphs, driven in part by the advent and success of the Google Knowledge Graph, has breathed life into the ongoing development of semantic web infrastructure and prototypes in the biodiversity informatics community. We describe a one week training event and hackathon that focused on applying three specific knowledge graph technologies – the Neptune graph database; Metaphactory; and Wikidata - to a diverse set of biodiversity use cases.We give an overview of the training, the projects that were advanced throughout the week, and the critical discussions that emerged. We believe that the main barriers towards adoption of biodiversity knowledge graphs are the lack of understanding of knowledge graphs and the lack of adoption of shared unique identifiers. Furthermore, we believe an important advancement in the outlook of knowledge graph development is the emergence of Wikidata as an identifier broker and as a scoping tool. To remedy the current barriers towards biodiversity knowledge graph development, we recommend continued discussions at workshops and at conferences, which we expect to increase awareness and adoption of knowledge graph technologies.

The existing web representation of the Flora of North America (FNA) project needs improvement. Despite being electronically available, it has little more functionality than its printed counterpart. Over the past few years, our team has been working diligently to build a new more effective online presence for the FNA. The main objective is to capitalize on modern Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools built for biodiversity data (Explorer of Taxon Concepts or ETC; Cui et al. 2016), and present the FNA online in both machine and human readable formats. With machine-comprehensible data, the mobilization and usability of flora treatments is enhanced and capabilities for data linkage to a Biodiversity Knowledge Graph (Page 2016) are enabled. For example, usability of treatments increases when morphological statements are parsed into finely grained pieces of data using ETC, because these data can be easily traversed across taxonomic groups to reveal trends. Additionally, the development of new features in our online FNA is facilitated by FNA data parsing and processing in ETC, including a feature to enable users to explore all treatments and illustrations generated by an author of interest. The current status of the ongoing project to develop a Semantic MediaWiki (SMW) platform for the FNA is presented here. New features recently implemented are introduced, challenges in assembling the Semantic MediaWiki are discussed, and future opportunities, which include the integration of additional floras and data sources, are explored. Furthermore, implications of standardization of taxonomic treatments, which work such as this entails, will be discussed.

We are using Wikidata and Metaphactory to build an Integrated Flora of Canada (IFC). IFC will be integrated in two senses: First, it will draw on multiple existing flora (e.g. Flora of North America, Flora of Manitoba, etc.) for content. Second, it will be a portal to related resources such as annotations, specimens, literature, and sequence data. Background We had success using Semantic Media Wiki (SMW) as the platform for an on-line representation of the Flora of North America (FNA). We used Charaparser (Cui 2012) to extract plant structures (e.g. “stem”), characters (e.g. “external texture”), and character values (e.g. “glabrous”) from the semi-structured FNA treatments. We then loaded this data into SMW, which allows us to query for taxa based on their character traits, and enables a broad range of exploratory analysis, both for purposes of hypothesis generation, and also to provide support for or against specific scientific hypotheses. Migrating to Wikidata/Wikibase We decided to explore a migration from SMW to Wikibase for three main reasons: simplified workflow; triple level provenance; and sustainability. Simplified workflow: Our workflow for our FNA-based portal includes Natural Language Processing (NLP) of coarse-grained XML to get the fine-grained XML, transforming this XML for input into SMW, and a custom SMW skin for displaying the data. We consider the coarse-grained XML to be canonical. When it changes (because we find an error, or we improve our NLP), we have to re-run the transformation, and re-load the data, which is time-consuming. Ideally, our presentation would be based on API calls to the data itself, eliminating the need to transform and re-load after every change. Provenance: Wikidata's provenance model supports having multiple, conflicting assertions for the same character trait, which is something that inevitably happens when floristic data is integrated. Sustainability: Wikidata has strong support from the Wikimedia Foundation, while SMW is increasingly seen as a legacy system. Wikibase vs. Wikidata Wikidata, however, is not a suitable home for the Integrated Flora of Canada. It is built upon a relatively small number of community curated properties, while we have ~4500 properties for the Asteraceae family alone. The model we want to pursue is to use Wikidata for a small group of core properties (e.g. accepted name, parent taxon, etc.), and to use our own instance of Wikibase for the much larger number of specialized morphological properties (e.g. adaxial leaf colour, leaf external texture, etc.) Essentially, we will be running our own Wikidata, over which we would exercise full control. Miller (2018) decribes deploying this curation model in another domain. Metaphactory Metaphactory is a suite of middleware and front-end interfaces for authoring, managing, and querying knowledge graphs, including mechanisms for faceted search and geospatial visualizations. It is also the software (together with Blazegraph) behind the Wikidata Query Service. Metaphactory provides us with a SPARQL endpoint; a templating mechanism that allows each taxonomic treatment to be rendered via a collection of SPARQL queries; reasoning capabilities (via an underlying graph database) that permit the organization of over 42,000 morphological properties; and a variety of search and discovery tools. There are a number of ways in which Wikidata and Metaphactory can work together, and we are still exploring questions such as: Will provenance be managed via named graphs, or via the Wikidata snak model?; How will data flow between the two platforms? Etc. We will report on our findings to date, and invite collaboration with related Wikimedia-based projects.