“Toward the Metacollection: Coordinating conservation collections to safeguard plant diversity”, is a publication that is a result of a three-year grant, “Safeguarding Plant Collections”, funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. It demonstrates the power of the botanic garden network and the role they play in collective conservation. Overall, stopping plant extinction. With over 20 contributing authors, they introduce the Metacollection concept (the combined holdings of a group of collections), with examples of 10 case studies, that provide an overview of lessons learned and the strategies used to effectively conserve rare or exceptional species. Systematic collecting efforts, researching genetic diversity, identifying which species need more representation, identifying populations to sample from, tailoring collection goals to the species biology are just a few of the techniques utilized in these 10 case studies. This publication is designed to inform collectors, scientists, etc. about these techniques and how they can be applied to other scenarios in effectively conserving rare/exceptional species.
