The Commission prepares its “Mediterranean chromosome number reports” series edited by G. Kamari, C. Blanché & S. Siljak-Yakovlev as a standing column in Flora Mediterranea. In the last 3 years, three columns of MCNR have been published corresponding to the volumes 23 (2013), 24 (2014) and 25 (2015).
The publication of this column reached this year its 25th edition and has successfully continued uninterrupted from 1991. So far, 1867 chromosome records have been published, covering most of the Mediterranean countries or territories included in the Med-Checklist, plus the Caucasus area and the Canary Islands. In the last three volumes (2013-2015), representing 78 published pages, a total of 99 new numbers have been reported (7 more than in the previous 3-year period), corresponding to a higher number of studied populations (some contributions reported data from up to 14 populations for a single MCNR).
Chromosome data are still being produced in constant rates by botanists dealing with Mediterranean flora and thus the Commission encourages the preparation of MCNR manuscripts by OPTIMA members to be sent to the editors before the end of September of each year, following the general instructions published in Flora Mediterranea cover and remembering that metaphase drawings are to be avoided and photographs must be of enough quality to be appropriately reproduced.
Ongoing projects
The vitality of chromosome numbers research and databasing appears to increase in recent years during the period 2013-2015. In addition to the existing Mediterranean databases, new electronic platforms (as CCDB), or new initiatives by members of our Commission as a new column for publication (Peruzzi L, Astuti G, Bartolucci F, Conti F, Rizzotto M, Roma-Marzio F (2016) Chromosome numbers for the Italian flora: 1. Italian Botanist 1: 39–53. doi: 10.3897/italianbotanist.1.8818) or a monographic database (Bosch, M., J. Simon, J. López-Pujol & C. Blanché (2016) - DCDB: an updated on-line database of chromosome numbers of tribe Delphinieae (Ranunculaceae) - BioC-GReB, - Dipòsit Digital de la Universitat de Barcelona - uri/handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2445/98702) among others, were considered.
During the meeting of the Commission in Montpellier (5 % 7 June 2016) was agreed to:
1) change the current name of the column “Mediterranean Chromosome Number Reports” in Flora Mediterranea for a most comprehensive title recognizing the true scope of the contributions usually published (which include, karyotype analysis, evolutionary consequences, bibliographic critical review, as well as biogeographical considerations, taxonomic remarks etc., derived from chromosome studies). The proposed new title for the series is: Mediterranean Chromosome Data - 26.
2) include in the next volume of Flora Mediterranea a short introductory notice in the first page of the series, informing on this change and additional instructions to the authors.
3) study, with the Editors of Flora Mediterranea, a better way to recognize authorship of contributions in the Web of Knowledge and other indexations, particularly if the Journal will soon receive some impact score. We suggest you a separate indexation for each contribution as “Author A, Author B & Author C” in G. Kamari, C. Blanché & S. Siljak-Yakovlev (eds). Please consider this suggestion as important because of the needs of young researchers to be appropiately recognized in publication indices, as well as a way to capture new contributors to the OPTIMA columns.
