Toward a Flora and Fauna of Galiano Island

In 2020 our community will formalize the results of the last century of biodiversity research on Galiano Island, BC, with a series of taxonomic data papers summarizing the island’s flora and fauna. The proposed series will document over 3,600 species across most major phylogenetic branches of the tree of life.

Sources of biodiversity data are various, from biological specimens accessioned in natural history collections to private list records and iNaturalist observations. We will consider the relative contributions of each source of data to our current knowledge, critically evaluating the reliability of reports made through the combined efforts of academic researchers, conservationists and citizen scientists.

Galiano Island is part of an archipelago that spans the Canada–USA border, falling in the rain shadow of mountains on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, and the Olympic Peninsula of Washington, USA. This sheltered subregion of the Salish Sea has a semi-Mediterranean climate supporting some of Canada’s most imperiled ecosystems, which provide habitat for the highest density of species-at-risk in British Columbia. To set our dataset into context, local diversity will be considered in relation to the diversity represented in the broader regional species pool, providing a baseline for future research in this region of global conservation concern.