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Major Change in Mapping for BFNA |
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April 8, 2002 (and September 2007): Important
Announcement of a Recently, in St. Louis, the FNA Management Committee voted to "get out of the atlasing business." The reason was that the Flora of North America has simply taken too long (since 1989), and a major hold-up has been that too much time is spent by authors doing the required detailed albeit small maps. The FNA will now model itself after most other major, continental floras (e.g. of Europe, U.S.S.R.) in merely summarizing the "known" geographic distribution in a short sentence. Therefore, it was decided that all vascular plant volumes (after the ones presently nearly finished) will have the small maps composed by John Kartesz's BONAP group, with one dot per state or province or Greenland. BFNA authors now do not have to do any maps at all. The sentence
in the treatment summarizing known distribution should combine both the
literature (if not definitely dubious) and the author's examination of
specimens. The authors may point out in the text that they have eliminated
from that sentence certain states and provinces based on re-examination of
material or when clearly doubtful, when appropriate. BFNA authors do not have to submit lists of specimens, even a list of
one specimen per state or province (but may do so if available). Those lists
were never intended to be published by FNA, and are now unnecessary because
the scientific review will be based largely on taxonomic adequacy, not
details of distribution. We have arranged for the authors to publish distribution lists themselves through Evansia but this is optional and not a formal part of FNA. This may be done (either as "Representative specimens" at state/province or at county level, or as vouchers of Rare and Uncommon Species) through Evansia or elsewhere if they wish; contact Dr. Robert Magill (bob.magill@mobot.org) at the Missouri Botanical Garden for more information on style and format. If the authors want to do detailed maps of distribution, or have already done them, the BFNA Web site will be glad to put them online in neat digitized versions (as is done at present). Doing maps for the Web site is, however, entirely optional; doing maps for the hardcopy version is eliminated. Therefore, authors can concentrate on producing a fine identification manual, and should borrow material of taxa they are unfamiliar with, to resolve taxonomic problems, or find material for illustration. If authors have time to borrow and examine a large number of specimens they should do so, but we want the three volumes done with all possible speed. Authors need not cite published records in their one sentence on geographic distribution for states and provinces or Greenland for which they have not actually seen specimens. Geographic distribution information for both Flora (Greenland, Canadian provinces, states of the United States) and non-Flora areas (Mexico, Europe, etc.) should be given in that sentence without citation of a publication (unless the author feels that a particular publication should be pointed out) but specimens may be cited in the discussion paragraphs. For citing specimens, use this format style: "B.C., A. Doe 1527 (NY)", or "(Ohio, Cuyahoga Co., A. Jones, 1934, US)". Do not use any modifiers for Greenland, provinces of Canada, or states of U.S.A. such as “e” or “sw” or the like. You can use them for countries and continents outside the flora range, e.g. “e Asia.” All major publications citing geographic distribution of Flora-area bryophytes will be cited in an introductory chapter, and such easily obtainable publications do not need to be referred to in the sentence on general distribution. If authors want to give more geographic detail to the distribution list, use this form in the distribution sentence: se Europe" but it is not required to be so accurate. IMPORTANT: Elevation citations need not be in meters if little data is
available; authors can alternatively use the phrase "low,"
"moderate," and "high elevations," or translate the
phrases into approximate meters (low = 0--300 m; moderate = 300--1500 m; high
= 1500--10000 m) as best you can from maps that show elevations. Hepatic treatments need not give season of capsule maturation since
most species apparently fruit around the same time; moss treatments need not
give the season if the author has not enough time to examine enough specimens
to make the citation informative, or if the data is simply not easily
available. Just leave it out. This refocusing should make the job much faster, since we will be mainly writing treatments for identification purposes, not struggling to re-identify hundreds or thousands of herbarium specimens in order to draw tiny detailed distribution maps. This will surely annoy authors who have already examined many specimens, and the Editors regret this. Continuing as we have done is simply not effective or worthwhile. _______________________________
However, if you have time and would like to do maps for a publication elsewhere (such as Evansia), here are: the Big Base Map and the Small Base Map). |
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