The southwestern United States and adjacent northwestern Mexico, the region of interest for the Southwest Biodiversity Consortium, is home to numerous biotic communities (Brown 1994) and also contains some of the highest species diversities of plants and animals in the United States (Stein 2002). Our region contains portions of the Colorado, Sonoran, Mohave, Great Basin, and Chihuahuan deserts, as well as floristic elements from the Rocky Mountains, Great Plains, Sierra Madre, Mediterranean California, and subtropical thorn scrub, with several mainly tropical genera having their northern limits here (e.g., Bursera, Jatropha). Forested mountains that rise out of the deserts form an archipelago (the sky islands) of biogeographic interest. Large areas remain to be explored and taxa new to science are still being found (e.g., Eriogonum terrenatum Reveal). A large portion of the Southwest is publicly owned (National Forest, BLM lands, National Parks and refuges, or state lands) or Native American lands. Resource managers of these areas need access to biological data and that is the purpose of the Southwest Biodiversity Consortium—to make the existing data about biodiversity in southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico easily available and useful. We provide data from specimens held at 11 institutions that can be viewed as lists of specimens, checklists of species (both static and user defined), images of organisms, interactive keys and maps of distribution.


Brown, D. E. 1994. Biotic Communities: Southwestern United States and Northwestern Mexico. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake.

Stein, B. A. 2002. States of the Union: Ranking America’s Biodiversity. Arlington, Virginia: NatureServe.