Algarium Veneticum. How to revive a historical collection as a tool for the marine algal biodiversity investigation

A forgotten algal herbarium assembled from the Venice Lagoon by Giacomo Zolezzi, Michelangelo Minio and Nicolò Spada between 1941 and 1950 has been recently found at the Biblioteca Storica di Studi Adriatici, located at the Institute of Marine Sciences (ISMAR-CNR) headquarters in Venice. Considering the relevance of this collection and the renewed interest for biodiversity studies, it has been decided to formally establish the herbarium of the Institute. The new herbarium has been named Algarium Veneticum and recorded under this name by the New York Botanical Garden and added with the code <ISMAR> in the Index Herbariorum. Currently, the "Algarium Veneticum" includes the historical collection entitled "Distribuzione e polimorfismo di Gracilaria confervoides nella Laguna di Venezia", consisting of 19 folders containing more than a thousand samples of Gracilaria and a miscellaneous section with specimens of different algal taxa; moreover, a new collection of macroalgae has been initiated and rapidly enriched. The "Algarium Veneticum" has been established with the purposes: 1) to catalog and digitize the historical collection and upload it on the institutional web platforms; 2) to revise the collection by an integrated approach of both classic taxonomic methods and DNA barcoding techniques; 3) to expand the algarium with new collections from the Venice Lagoon and the Adriatic Sea.