The methods used to revised the genera, species and families of selected flora of aregion
Revision of a plant group and studying the flora of a region are not the same. Can you clarify what is the aim of your study?
You need to do a botanical survey where you collect a sample of every species and submit to a herbarium :)
If you going for a floristic study, you will have to follow the advice of Andrew.
Additionally you can take help of GIS.
Yes, intensive and periodical field trips should be done of selected region followed by collection of plant specimens is the best approach.
Fr. KM Matthew around 1980-81 published a paper in Indian Journal of Forestry regarding the procedure of a taxonomic revision. A good guide for the beginners.
To begin the analysis you must define the objectives that you propose in your floristic study. From what you write, it seems to me that you are trying to interpret the flora of a landscape (gamma diversity), based on the components that a set of communities has (alpha diversity). The first thing is the perfect identification of the species, which in Cuba is not difficult, due to the wide knowledge of its flora and the great number of botanists of excellence that Santiago de Cuba has. Second, you have to determine the correctness of the names and authors, together with the validity of each species. This is easy with the help of online databases "The plant List" and "Tropicos". From there, I personally would determine the diversity of the wealth for each sample and for the entire territory. Then determine the floristic relationship between samples by a method as simple as minimum distance trees. In this way you would determine possible gradients, as well as differences and similarities between the possible plant formations that you have in your hand. If you do a multivariate analysis you may find some interesting patterns. By the way, for those analyzes you do not have to normalize the samples since all the variables are expressed in frequency. If you determined some weighting criteria for the variables, such as abundance, among many, you will be more comfortable working. From this point, you have enough information to direct any analysis according to the specific objectives.
Dear Antonio,
I appreciate your answer. I just want to say that the accepted names given in The Plant List and Tropicos are not always correct. One should verify from other sources before blindly accepting them.
Dear colleague Subir, I understand your concern, I agree with you that these databases, like all human work are not perfect, I have concrete examples. Neither was the Index kewensis, which was throughout the twentieth century the reference work required, although the price to pay both in the work and in its digital version is very high for Cubans. I spent a lot of time with the editors of that last work and I know all the effort they put into improving it every day, but they are aware of their human limitations. As for the two that I recommend, they have the same problem, that's why they are accompanied by guides that always allow other options, and that improves and facilitates the things of the consultant. The rest, as you will understand, depends on the degree of perfectionism of each author. Personally, I like to find someone who, like you, likes to exhaust all possibilities.
You are correct. The first two volumes of IK attempted to provide accepted names and synonyms. As numerous errors crept in, they discontinued that practice in the supplements.
When I find anything wrong in IPNI, inform Dr Gandhi and he corrects immediately.
I think if you are resurveying the vegetation of a region you must have a clear idea in your mind about the previous work and current objectives
Then you may start as per above suggestions
And by surveying the earlier surveyed localities you can find the change in vegetation and it's structure during the course of time