Western Australian Flora Statistics 2014 Flora Statistics

Statistics for the Western Australian flora at or below the rank of species for all groups traditionally managed by herbaria, including vascular plants, algae, fungi, lichens, mosses and slime moulds.

Summary

Comparison of 2014’s data with the previous year.

• the addition of 250 vascular plant names to the Census of Western Australian Plants database;
• there are 93 additional taxa recognised as occurring in the State: 85 native taxa and 8 naturalised taxa;
• the number of published species rose by 106 to 11,160, including 98 native species and 8 naturalised species;
• a small decrease in the number (-22) of manuscript names in current use, down to 75, continuing the trend of the last 6 years, due either to their formal publication or their conversion to phrase names as part of the Australian Plant Census project;
• a very small increase (+4) in the number of phrase names in current use, up to 1,411;
• therefore, for the fourth year in succession, there has been a decrease (-18) in the number of putative taxa yet to be researched and published, from 1,504 in 2012 to 1,486.
• the net addition of 42 cryptogam names entered into the Census of Western Australian Plants database (including 14 synonyms);
• an additional 29 current published native cryptogam species: 1 moss, 3 lichens, 4 fungi, 9 slimemoulds and 12 algae.

Other Collections Statistics

Data sourced on Thursday, 18 July 2019. Other core statistics often required for citation in various works include the number of:

• specimens now held in the WA Herbarium Specimen Database (WAHERB) = 803,045
• plant names now held in the WA Herbarium Census of WA Plants Database (WACENSUS) = 25,160
• images now held in the WA Herbarium Image Collection = 80,193
• composite images illustrating taxa in FloraBase = 7,455

Notes

Dicotyledons

Used in its traditional sense to retain compatibility with previous tables and for ease of use. ‘Dicotyledons’ now refers to a paraphyletic assemblage of the Nymphaeales, ‘magnoliids’ and ‘eudicot’ clades, see our systematic sequence.

Species

A published name at the rank of species.

Taxa

Commonly refers to a published name at any rank, but these statistics only refer to taxa at or below species rank.

Cryptogams

Statistics for the cryptogamic flora groups were first compiled in 2006. For these, the statistics should only be considered adequate or representative for the lichens, myxomycetes and for the mosses (bryophyta) of the Perth region. For the remaining groups, specialists have provided the following estimates of the actual number of species that could be found to occur in WA once adequate field and taxonomic studies have been made.

Fungi (both macro- and micro-fungi)

Pascoe (1991) suggests the ratio of plants to fungi is about 1:10 in Australia, i.e. 25,000 plants (native and exotic), and 250,000 fungi. So, if WA has 14,000 vascular plants, then the estimated number of fungi in WA would be 140,000 (Neale Bougher, pers. comm.).

Lichens (lichenised fungi)

Ray Cranfield (pers. comm.) suggests that even with the recent publication of a State census of lichens (Cranfield, 2004), there are likely to be in the order of another 70 taxa likely to be discovered in coming years.

Algae (including marine macro- and micro-algae, dinoflagellates, diatoms and freshwater macro-algae)

John Huisman (pers. comm.) notes that the estimated number of macroalgae occurring in WA is 1,400, given that much of the northwest remains to be explored and we are still uncovering new records/species in all parts of WA. He also notes that “my earlier compilation of diatom/dinoflagellate and other microalgal records for WA included around 600 diatoms and 150 dinoflagellates (the other groups were negligible); marine and freshwater were included. The multiplication factor used by Watson et al. (1995) to estimate the world’s algal species was x10, so WA’s microalgae will probably add up to approximately 7,500 spp.” If we also allow around 100 species of freshwater macroalgae, then the putative number of algae will total some 9,000 taxa.

Bryophytes (the paraphyletic assemblage of mosses, liverworts and hornworts)

Streimann & Klazenga (2002) list 212 moss taxa occurring in WA, and McCarthy (2003) lists 90 taxa of liverworts and hornworts. As these figures are comparable in size to those listed for the Australian Capital Territory (a region one-thousandth the area), we might expect there are a number of bryophytes yet to discover. Conservatively, the estimated number of taxa occurring in WA could be put at 400 (Ray Cranfield, pers. comm.)

Myxomycetes (slime moulds)

After the publication of a census of slime moulds (Knight and Brims, 2010) the estimated maximum number of taxa occurring in WA may be put at 200 (Karina Knight, pers. comm.)

References

• Biggs, L. and Chappill, J., (2008). An annotated census of the mosses of the Perth Region, Western Australia. Nuytsia 18 (1) : 1–30.
• Cranfield, R.J., (2004). Lichen Census of Western Australia. Nuytsia 15 (2) : 193–220.
• Huisman, J.M., Cowan, R.A. & Entwisle, T.J. (1998). Biodiversity of Australian marine macroalgae — a progress report. Bot. Mar. 41: 89–93.
• Knight, K.J. and Brims M.H. (2010). Myxomycota census of Western Australia. Nuytsia 20: 283–307.
• McCarthy, P.M. (2003). Catalogue of Australian liverworts and hornworts. Flora of Australia supplementary series. Australian Biological Resources Study, Canberra.
• Pascoe, I.G. (1991). History of systematic mycology in Australia. In: History of Systematic Botany in Australasia. Ed by: P. Short. Australian Systematic Botany Society Inc. pp. 259–264.
• Streimann, H. and Klazenga, N. (2002). Catalogue of Australian mosses. Flora of Australia supplementary series. Australian Biological Resources Study, Canberra.
• Watson, R.T., Heywood, V.H., Baste, I., Dias, B., Gamez, R., Janetos, T., Reid, W. & Ruark, G. (1995). Global Biodiversity Assessment. Summary for Policy-Makers. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York, Melbourne. 46 pp.

Compiled by Alex Chapman; last updated on 1 June 2014.

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