Richness and distribution of the vascular flora of the state of Hidalgo, Mexico

The systematization of taxonomic-geographic data contained in scientific collections has allowed the generation of floristic databases that substantially enrich the knowledge about plant diversity and complement what is reported in scientific publications. However, few works have focused on evaluating the degree of contribution of both sources of information (databases and publications) to the floristic knowledge of a region. Here the floristic-taxonomic information for the state of Hidalgo, Mexico, from these electronic and bibliographic sources is gathered and its importance is evaluated in the elaboration of a catalog of the flora of the state and in the analysis of the biogeographic patterns. The taxonomic-geographic information went through an exhaustive cleaning and curation process; for the distribution analysis, the state was divided into cells of 15 minutes of latitude and longitude, where the species richness (alpha diversity) and their floristic similarities were evaluated. A figure of 4,266 species is reported and the biogeographic patterns they portray indicate concordance with already proposed regionalization schemes.