2. FLORA OF AUSTRALIA ELECTRONIC PLATFORM OVERVIEW
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In this Section:
2.1 Specification & Bugs
2.2 Glossary & Abbreviations
2.3 Taxon Profiles
Continue to the Next Section: 3. Flora of Australia Content.
2.1 Specifications & Bugs
The Flora of Australia platform is best browsed and edited using the latest Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox internet browsers. Internet Explorer is not well supported, and some functionality may be lost.
For any bugs or potential enhancements of the platform, please notify the ABRS (abrs@environment.gov.au) with a detailed description of the problem and any possible solutions. ABRS will notify the Atlas of Living Australia of any priority bugs and enhancements.
2.2 Glossary & Abbreviations
ABRS – Australian Biological Resources Study, Department of Environment and Energy. Administrators of the online Flora of Australia. Contact us at: abrs@environment.gov.au
ALA – Atlas of Living Australia.
APC – Australian Plant Census, a working group of CHAH that decides national taxonomy by consensus. APC accepted names are provided in the NSL. For more information about the APC process see the CHAH website.
APII – Australian Plant Image Index.
APNI – Australian Plant Names Index, part of the NSL.
Attribute – Each sub-heading on a profile page. Denoted when editing a profile by a faint box. See image below.
AVH – Australasian Virtual Herbarium is a digital repository powered by the ALA of herbarium records from participating Australian and New Zealand Herbaria. To browse the AVH collections visit the website.
CHAH – Council Heads of Australasian Herbaria.
Data field – A fillable component of an attribute.
FoA – Flora of Australia
NSL – National Species List, national taxonomic database infrastructure. Currently housing the APNI and APC names databases.
2.3 Taxon profiles
The digital Flora of Australia is managed as a collection of taxon profiles, which can be for any taxonomic rank (Currently only Family, Genus, Species and intra-specific taxa). Each profile contains a textual description (treatment) of that taxon (Figure 2.1E), and automatically linked data. Within profiles, the information in a treatment is broken up into different attributes, or subheadings (e.g. Description, Habitat, and Distribution, Figure 2.1E). For more information on how to fill these see Section 5 and Section 6.
Each profile brings in linked data through the user-input Profile Name (Figure 2.1A), which is then matched to the NSL and integrates nomenclature information (Figure 2.1C). The Profile Name is also matched to the ALA names cache, which is based on APC accepted names and their synonyms. Therefore, if the name input as the profile name is a synonym, for example Eucalyptus citriodora, it will be matched with Corymbia citriodora and linked data will be delivered to the profile on the basis of this name (and other synonyms).
While the profiles are stored as a flat collection, profiles can be viewed in the context of its taxonomic hierarchy through individual profile pages (Figure 2.1D, and tree button on left) and through the “Browse” functionality. The taxonomic hierarchy is delivered from the ALA based on the APC accepted hierarchy. Occurrence data, as per herbarium records in the AVH, is also drawn from the ALA matched name, and is displayed in a separate tab (Figure 1.1F). Similarly, photographic images are drawn from the APII via the ALA and are presented in a different tab (Figure 2.1G), and with a single image for display on the main page. Keys are provided by the contributor, but linked automatically from Keybase (Figure 2.1H), based on an exact match of the profile name.
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