Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia, 86(4), December 2003 
Figure 3. Goodenia arthrotricha Benth (photograph by H Bowler, used with permission). 
& Sage 1997). Urgent field surveys are required to 
determine the true conservation status of this species. 
Difficulty in identification can hinder knowledge of a 
species and survey work. Goodenia can be relatively 
difficult to identify correctly as some species are 
polymorphic and diagnostic characters can be hard to 
recognize. Taxonomic bias can contribute to this. Some of 
the perennial species tend to die off in summer, and 
without adequate flowering material identification may 
be impossible, or the species may be totally missed by 
collectors (e.g. Goodenia arthrotricha , is often confused with 
Scaevola calliptera ; Fig 3). 
Low collector effort (i.e. few herbarium specimens 
collected and lodged for a given area) can create an 
apparent rarity of a species particularly when herbarium 
specimens are the sole source of population data (Fig 4). 
An example of this is Goodenia drummondii sp megaphylla, 
a new subspecies only recently described from the Jarrah 
Forest IBRA near the Perth metropolitan area (Sage 1998). 
This taxon was listed as a Priority Three species with 
only a few known populations. Recent collector effort in 
the area has turned up a further fifteen populations, all 
in state forest. Thus we recommend the taxon for 
removal from the Priority list. 
Fig 4 illustrates the total collector effort for Goodenia 
lodged at the Western Australian Herbarium. As 
expected, the highest concentration of collector effort is 
in the south-west of the state, becoming more restricted 
to major roads towards the interior. Hence some poorly 
known species, from poorly collected areas, might more 
be a factor of collector effort than actual rarity. 
Figure 4. Total Goodenia collector effort for Western Australia 
(WA Herbarium; PERTH) as of September 1999; major roads are 
shown. 
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