Example
Before the beginning of the BioGaliano project in 2015, a total of 607 vascular plant species were reported for Galiano Island, represented by 1,698 records, including 446 herbarium specimens (Fig. 1). After five years of concerted search effort, amounting to >18,000 observations, we documented 559 species on the project, confirming 432/607 historical species reports (71% of the historically reported diversity) and adding 127 new species to the list. This left 175 species still at large by 2020.
Figure 1. Baseline analysis of Galiano Island’s vascular plant diversity (A) Galiano Island (dark grey) lies in the Southern Gulf Islands of the Salish Sea, a transboundary bioregion that spans southern coastal British Columbia, Canada, and Washington, USA; Inset Map: historical occurrences of target plants (red dots); (B) Heatmap (1×1km grid scale) of Galiano Island vascular plant records from 1948 to 2014 (n=1,698), before the beginning of the Biodiversity Galiano project; (C) Heatmap of occurrence records from 1948 to 2024 (n=20,435), including all records consolidated on the project to date. Herbarium specimens (n=446) housed at the Royal BC Museum (V) and UBC Beaty Biodiversity Museum (UBC) represent 14% of historical data, with the remainder comprising records from the grey literature, private species checklists, and the BC Conservation Data Centre. Most records (75%) of the total dataset were reported via the iNaturalist platform. The map scale is identical in A (inset), B and C.