1997

PalDat is a palynological database maintained by members of the Division of Structural and Functional Botany (Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research, University of Vienna).

Database first developed by Martina Weber and Ralf Buchner during the course of the project “Entwicklung und Aufbau einer computergestützten, relationalen Pollen-Datenbank mittels digitaler Bildverarbeitung”.

The aim was to catalogue the large amount of palynological data from a variety of plant families accumulated by members of the department through many years.

2000

PalDat 1.0 goes online

2005

First revision of the database

Foundation of AutPal, the “Society for the Promotion of Palynological Research in Austria” (www.autpal.at)

2006

Implementation of FosPal (database for fossil pollen)

Foundation of PalArt (www.palart.org), an association of painting palynologists and friends of PalDat, supporting the database with the sales revenue of their paintings

2010

PalDat 2.0 - Major website updates of PalDat, including a forum and a online submission tool for our research group

2015

PalDat 3.0 - Second revision of the database and new web interface, including a tool for free global online submission and publication in PalDat (with review and editorial process)

2020

PalDat 3.3 - Merge of the PONET database of the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety Ltd. (AGES), with more than 2000 datasets and high resolution light microscopy micrographs of hydrated pollen, to PalDat. In this course additional entry fields regarding light microscopy description have been added.

Moreover, with the second edition of the pollen book “Illustrated Pollen Terms” (Halbritter et al. 2018), some new terms have been published. To use and integrate the new terms in PalDat, changes in the database have become necessary. These changes concern the programming of new input fields in the submission (diagnosis), as well as changes in the publication and the search function.

Plans for the Future

• Implementation of the APG IV system