Herbarium collections: Venezuela's botanic heritage in jeopardy

Juan Núñez-Farfán, Javier A. Simonetti & Thalia Morales Roja AffiliationsCorresponding author Nature 549, 31 (07 September 2017) doi:10.1038/549031b Published online 06 September 2017 Subject terms: Plant sciences Funding Politics The National Herbarium of Venezuela, a cornerstone institution for plant sciences in Latin America, is under threat from vandals. We implore the botanical community to join our efforts to save it. The vandalism is a result of Venezuela's fragile economic and political situation, and has led the research institute at the Caracas Botanical Garden (the IEJB), which hosts the herbarium, to suspend access to it. The institute's electrical and computing facilities have been repeatedly plundered this year, wiping out databases and compromising the herbarium's collection of more than 400,000 specimens. Herbaria enable the study and classification of Earth's biodiversity, promote the discovery of species and provide DNA samples for analysis of extant and extinct populations. Among other services, such collections catalogue past and present plant distributions, establish the onset of plant invasions, and record alterations in plant seasonal cycles caused by climate change. Civil society and the Venezuelan authorities must protect this priceless resource for science and the cultural good. The Latin American Plant Sciences Network offers a channel for the aid urgently needed for its rescue (e-mail: rlb@iecologia.unam.mx). Author information Affiliations Latin American Plant Sciences Network, Santiago, Chile. Juan Núñez-Farfán & Javier A. Simonetti National Herbarium of Venezuela, Caracas. Thalia Morales Roja Corresponding author Correspondence to: Juan Núñez-Farfán