Definition: A taxon is Data Deficient when there is inadequate information to make a direct, or indirect, assessment of its risk of extinction based on its distribution and/or population status. A taxon in this category may be well studied, and its biology well known, but appropriate data on abundance and/or distribution are lacking. Data Deficient is therefore \r\nnot a category of threat. Listing of taxa in this category indicates that more information is \r\nrequired and acknowledges the possibility that future research will show that threatened \r\nclassification is appropriate. It is important to make positive use of whatever data are available. In many cases great care should be exercised in choosing between DD and a threatened status. If the range of a taxon is suspected to be relatively circumscribed, and a considerable period of time has elapsed since the last record of the taxon, threatened status may well be justified.
Definition: A shape for a biological structure that approximates an ellipsoid. (eg: for a cell, see Table 1, Olenina, I., Hajdu, S., Edler, L., Andersson, A., Wasmund, N., Busch, S., Göbel, J., Gromisz, S., Huseby, S., Huttunen, M., Jaanus, A., Kokkonen, P., Ledaine, I. and Niemkiewicz, E. 2006. Biovolumes and size-classes of phytoplankton in the Baltic Sea. HELCOM Balt.Sea Environ. Proc. No. 106, 144pp.)
Definition: A spheroid quality inhering in a bearer by virtue of the bearer's resembling a ball (a sphere whose equatorial diameter is equal to the polar diameter).
Definition: Seed-bearing organ on gymnosperm plants. A type of fruit, usually woody, ovoid to globular, including scales, bracts, or bracteoles arranged around a central axis, especially in conifers and cycads.
Definition: A forest biome is a terrestrial biome which includes, across its entire spatial extent, densely packed vegetation which strongly limits light penetration to the forest floor.
Comment: "Large" is ambiguous. For details on "Large rivers" (e.g. the Mekong river) see http://worldwildlife.org/biomes/large-river-ecosystems This class will be replaced with a less ambiguous class.
Definition: A forest biome is a terrestrial biome which includes, across its entire spatial extent, densely packed vegetation which strongly limits light penetration to the forest floor.
Definition: an inflorescence with a monopodial growth habit, composed at flowering stage of indeterminate, first order inflorescence axes and sessile, unisexual flowers each subtended by conspicuous inflorescence bracts
Definition: a plant that produces wood as its structural tissue. Wood is a structural cellular adaptation that allows woody plants to grow from above ground stems year after year, thus making some woody plants the largest and tallest terrestrial plants. Wood is usually primarily composed of xylem cells with cell walls made of cellulose and lignin
Definition: National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution (USNM), Washington, District of Columbia, USA.\r\nNMNH and USNM both refer to the National Museum of Natural History. Collections are associated with one or the other acronym. US, the US National Herbarium, is a collection within the National Museum of Natural History. URL for main institutional website, http://www.mnh.si.edu/rc/\r\nURL for institutional specimen catalog, http://collections.mnh.si.edu/
