Welcome

The internet has provided many new opportunities to inexpensively share information and the scientific community has been quick to take advantage of this new resource (see "Useful Links" above). Although no funding exists for this site, Herbario Virtual Austral Americano, we have been able to use resources created for other sites, these sometimes supported by grants to Arizona State University from the U.S. National Science Foundation (DBI0847966). The purpose of this website is primarily to support the distribution herbarium specimen data for plants that grow in southern South America (Argentina and Chile), but the database with which it works includes specimens from throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, so wider searches are possible. As a beginning, it will distribute data from specimens held at some North American herbaria, and will provide a structure for the distribution of other data sources as well. The site uses the open source software Symbiota, which is designed to distribute natural history information from multiple sources, including images, descriptive text, checklists, interactive keys and museum specimen data. Other articles about using Symbiota websites in general include Lafferty & Landrum 2021 and Bell & Landrum 2021.

To learn more about the features and capabilities available through this site, read "Introduction to Herbario Virtual Austral Americano" or visit the Symbiota Docs. Join as a regular visitor and please send your feedback to help@symbiota.org. Visit the Data Usage Policy page for information on how to cite data obtained from this web resource.